This was part of an RP between myself and Kira Walker (and someone else, but her character makes no appearance here). I've taken the back-and-forth post format and smoothed it down, into this continuous stream of text. And now I need opinions. I'd like to make this as good as I possibly can, because I plan on showing it to some rough critics soon.

I've taken out Kira's character's name (it was Kira) because I plan on revamping this scene for other vampire stories, where the character would be someone else.

I've titled it Nicoleon Mortaparte, although that is not the character's name.

Here it is:

Vincent looked with bewilderment at the woman standing before him. The last person who had insisted that they follow him home, at night, in his own city, was a particularly brave and persistent salesman who ended up shaken, confused, and unhappy in a dumpster that was a clear shot from Vincent’s window.

Vincent had also had to put up with hunters like this woman, all of whom employed various well-thought-out tactics to kill him. This woman was considerably younger than any of them, and judging by her demeanor Vincent assumed she hadn’t yet encountered a vampire older than fifty or sixty years.

Surely she must realize the position she’s in. We are in my house, the door is locked, we are on the twenty third story, and she has a Swiss Army knife.

Vincent stood up. He stared at the woman, but not at her eyes. After a few seconds, she realized that he was looking at her neck.

“I'm sure you're going to hate me for this,” he said, “But I said what I meant. I am not a mindless killing machine. I analyze my situation thoroughly before I kill someone. And I wouldn't even have tried,” he said, his odd smile returning to his face, “had you not been so insistent on following me back here.”

For a moment, the young woman simply watched him, her expression bewildered, as she processed what he said. Then realization came and she immediately scrambled to her feet, narrowing her eyes at him, her face set in anxiety.

“What the...you can't be serious! I...hell, I let you walk away! I didn't call you in! I could have had ten guys after you within an hour, but I didn't, so why the hell are you getting like this now?"

She felt angry, and frightened, knowing that her knife wouldn’t do much good. She could give it a shot, though, it was better than nothing. Maybe she could escape out the window? She'd had to deal with long drops before, and maybe if she was lucky there'd be a ledge or something she could catch on the way down. However, even with those natural emotions, she felt rather humiliated. She'd allowed herself to believe that maybe she could get along with this guy, even if he was a vampire. But, apparently not; he still saw her as a meal. Despite her situation, the woman’s hand slipped down to her pocket and she grabbed her knife, not caring how small it was. It was better than nothing at all.

Vincent had a very short argument with himself. This isn't going to work. She'll never go down without a fight. But so what? What's she going to do? I can't believe she didn't expect this. How can I let her get away? Perhaps it was too easy. Perhaps she can get away from me. Or, perhaps she trusted me. Either way, she certainly doesn't trust me now.

Vincent stared into the woman's eyes, saying, “I know. I know what you could have had done to me. However, when I am dealing with someone who I know cannot trust me; I tend not to trust them. Halfway through our conversation,” he grabbed a hold of her elbow, causing her eyes to open wide with surprise, “I realized that you were, in fact, one to be trusted.” It wasn’t a lie; he had come to the conclusion that this woman did, for some strange reason, trust him, and that he could trust her as well. Still, although the chipmunk may be cute, the hawk has to eat too. “But at that point, I just felt like eating you.”

The young woman's eyes narrowed in anger and indignation. “I'm not a meal!" she shouted furiously, trying to jerk her arm away so she could get at her knife again, and only succeeding in hurting her shoulder. And, of course, this only made her more frantic. There was no way she was going to die in this state, not even able to put up a decent fight. When she'd thought of her death, it had always been similar to her stepfather's; a proper battle, long and exhaustive, fighting to her last breath and taking her enemy out with her. Not in a fruitless struggle in some random vampire's apartment, armed with nil except a Swiss army knife.

“Look, dude, I probably taste like crap!” she said, grabbing at straws. “Look, I'm all scrawny and junk, and I don't eat right, and I smoke, and I drink, so trust me, I'm gonna taste horrible," She tried arguing, hoping that maybe she might at least stall him while she came up with a plan. If worst came to worst, she'd tell him she had HIV and that he'd die from drinking her blood. But she was not about to get killed like this.

Vincent raised his eyebrow and put his other hand on the woman's shoulder. She’s going into the “I taste bad” routine? Time to play the moral card. “You kill people to make money,” he said. “I kill people to survive. When it comes to morality, I think I win.” So what, you're just going to kill her? Vincent thought. The woman jerked away, and Vincent tightened his grip on her elbow. Or what? If she lives, she'll grow up into something competent.

“I make money to survive!” she argued back, trying to twist away again, wishing she'd picked a more advantageous spot to sit down. Like, in front of the window. Or the door. She could have kicked it down, she was sure.

What, she's not competent now? Vincent continued in his head, arguing with himself. She's killed other vampires, dummy. You weren't the first time she’s tried to take out a vampire, and obviously she’s been pretty successful up until now.

“It's the same damn thing!” the woman yelled.

And with that, she kicked him. In the shin. Hard.

Vincent yelped and doubled over, his hand still clamped onto the woman's arm. She grinned and laughed, having inflicted enough damage to at least cause some pain. Encouraged, she moved to try again, but this time she was less successful. Thanks to the awkward position her arm was now in, she stumbled, and with a yelp of surprise fell forward, banging her forehead against something very hard and making herself quite dizzy for a moment. "Ohh...shit..."

"OW!" Vincent yelled as his cranium collided with the woman's. "What have you got in there, bricks?"

He yanked on her elbow, allowing his hand to slide to her wrist before tightening his grip again. She was nice and on the verge of a concussion, like he would have been had he been mortal, which allowed him to grab hold of her other wrist. Then Vincent realized his arms were crossed. He rolled his eyes.

"Oh, sure."

The woman shook off her slight dizziness and glanced up at Flint again. Growling, she yanked at her arms, only succeeding in hurting herself again, and cried out in exasperation, “Dammit, why me? Why the hell didn't you just grab someone off the street?”

“Because,” Vincent hissed irritably, yanking the flailing woman towards him, “If you'll remember, it was you who insisted on following me back to my house.” She was stronger than average for her size, but she gave him opportunities to circumvent her strength by attempting to make conversation. He wasn’t very skilled at vocal hypnosis, but he was good enough to weaken her muscles enough to enable him to hold her in place. He pulled his arms up over her head, twisting her arms and spinning her body around. The woman cried out in pain and frustration, trying in vain once again to pull her arms out of his grip as she felt his chest press against her back. He moved his head next to her ear, and the position caused him to fight a short battle with himself, with one half wanting to respect her personal space as much as he could, and the other half wanting his mouth as close as it could get to her neck.

“You were practically taunting me into this,” Vincent said wearily. “How could I say no?" He pressed the woman's right hand into his left, holding both her wrists in a grip that attained vicelike quality due to the woman’s weakened state. He unwrapped his arms from her body, holding her like a cop would hold a criminal after handcuffing. She began to squirm, trying to figure out if there was some way she could try and elbow his gut, but as she heard him speak she felt his breath on her neck, causing her to panic slightly.

“Look, I'm sorry I followed you!” she said.

So am I, Vincent thought.

"I'll leave, I'll leave right now and won't ever bother you again, I swear!"

Wrong on the first, right on the second.

"I'll forget I ever even ran into you!" Yeah, she continued in her head, and as soon as I'm back on the street I'll call in my buddies to kick your ass. If she got out of this fix, there was no way he was going to get away with treating her like this.

“Didn't I say, when we first met, and you tried and,” Vincent said with a slight chuckle, “failed to kill me, ‘You didn't see me, meaning you won't tell your little friends I'm here, and I didn't see you, meaning I don't kill you?’ And you were all gung ho about me attacking you then.” With both of the woman’s hands now secure in Vincent’s left, he brought his right hand up to the level of the woman's face, and placed it between her mandible and collarbone on the left side of her neck.

The woman squirmed again, trying to pull her jaw away from Vincent’s hand, but not being able to do very well because of the fact that her hands were restrained. She felt like crying, but she didn't, out of embarrassment both internal and external. Although she didn’t want to show any weakness to the vampire, she also didn’t want to show weakness to herself. She'd been in bad situations before, and hadn’t broken down. Mind, they hadn't been nearly this serious. She'd always had a loaded gun on her at those times, and the only time she hadn't, her stepfather had been there.

The woman gave up on trying to give the vampire good reasons why he ought not to kill her. Partially because she realized that from his perspective there probably weren’t any. “Come on, there's got to be something I can do that'll convince you not to do this! Anything at all, please!" Wow, stooped pretty low to beg like that, haven't you? Shut the hell up! If you’re going to lose either your dignity or your life, let it not be your life! She then realized that she was having a mental argument with herself, and abruptly stopped.

I hate pleading, Vincent thought. I hate it. I think I'll just kill you so you stop begging me not to... But how could I murder a defenseless little girl in cold—wait, who’s defenseless? She could probably take me. Vincent looked at her, smiling slightly. Well…maybe not…

“I'm not going to leave you the way you are,” Vincent said, “But if you—” Vincent stopped, his right hand on a delicate chain.

"What is this?" Vincent said, more to himself than to the woman. He fed the chain through his fingers, and found that it grew more painful to touch. Upon realizing what must be on the necklace, he said, “Well, we can't have that, can we?”

He wrapped his hand around the chain and pulled it away from the woman's neck, and it snapped. The woman blinked, her mouth open slightly as she'd been about to respond, then she gasped a tiny bit as she felt a sharp tug and the snap as the chain broke. The cross charm attached to it sent waves of pain, much like those created in your mouth when you eat wasabi sauce, throughout Vincent's right hand and up to his elbow. He winced as he threw the necklace across the room. If The woman had been concentrating on that, perhaps praying for her immortal soul, he wouldn't even have been able to touch her, let along remove that necklace. Fortunately for him, fear, and no doubt revolt, had been first in her mind.

“What I was going to say,” Vincent continued in a very low voice, “is that if you continue to present yourself as one to be pitied, I will kill you as slowly and painfully as I can. We both know that you despise me right now, and if I let you go you will not rest until you have had your revenge.” The woman ignored him.

“Hey!” she shouted, surprised and angry, as she heard the necklace hit the wall on the other side of the room. “Why the hell did you do that?" she demanded, furious at the loss of her necklace to the point that she momentarily forgot the situation she was in. It had been a gift from her stepfather; he'd given it to her when she'd first become his apprentice. He had told her it would keep her safe, and she'd believed it wholeheartedly. As she thought of that, she realized just how stupid her begging was. If she was going to die, she may as well try and break him up a bit in the process.

With a growl of anger, she turned her face to bite his hand, the one near her face, as hard as she could, and she felt her jaws clenching on the joint connecting his thumb to his wrist. Vincent yelled with pain, but his attention was rapidly diverted to his left shin, where the heel of the woman's left combat boot had just made contact.

All right missy, no more Mister Nice Guy.

Vincent turned his head sideways, as if he was eating a taco, causing strands of his hair that were not fully secured in his ponytail to fall onto the woman's face. He located the tendon connecting her left collarbone to her skull—a rather easy task, considering how her head was flailing around, pulling random tendons—and placed his jaws on either side of it. He pressed them together, piercing her carotid artery and jugular vein with practiced accuracy.

Immediately, the woman released his wrist as she cried out in pain and anger, furious that she hadn't been able to get out before this happened. She felt his fangs press into her neck and bit her own lip hard, trying her best not to scream. Frantic, she pulled as hard as she could at her wrist, aiming another kick back towards him as she did so, trying to pry herself away.

Vincent freed the woman's wrists, using his now unoccupied left hand to push her head back, while her heart innocently and unknowingly pumped blood up her carotid artery and into his mouth. He repositioned his hands so that he would be able to support her body when the blood began moving too quickly through her brain, no longer flowing to the capillaries and secondary veins. Unfortunately for Vincent's legs, that time had not arrived, and the woman's feet were still attempting to cause as much pain as they could.

This is taking too long...

Vincent pressed his mouth to the wound on the woman's neck, pulling her blood out faster than her heart was pumping it. This caused the blood to flow backwards through the jugular vein, away from the heart. It also caused back flow in the carotid artery, pulling the oxygenated blood away from the woman's brain. Her heart rate increased, in a vain attempt to refill the peripheral blood vessels in her arms and legs.

Another wave of dizziness, more severe than the last, hit the woman, and her legs shook for a moment as she nearly lost her balance. She gave up on kicking Vincent at this point, because it was wearing her out faster. The less blood she used up with things like that, the better. The adrenaline rush she was getting definitely wasn't helping.

"I felt bad for you!" she yelled at him. "I actually felt sad for you, with that damn sob story bullshit you pulled!"

Bullshit?

"But hell, if you're this much of a damn backstabber then it's no wonder your wife went to someone else!"

Excuse me?

"She was probably better off there than with you, you stupid v-vamp!"

Vincent took a drag on her neck as one would on a cigar. The woman cried out for a moment, feeling an extremely unpleasant sensation and having a very difficult time keeping her thoughts in order. Vincent noticed her go cross eyed for a second. But the woman resigned not to give up; if nothing else she was going to give him a metaphorical bitch-slap before she died.

"This is exactly why you deserve to be hunted, you bloody animal!" The woman said, her volume lessening but her vigor undeterred as she descended into class three hemorrhage. "What civil being would eat someone?"

Listen darling, it's not all fun and games being dead, you know.

She laughed slightly, the sound disjointed and tired. “That's s-so pathetic, vamp! You can't fight me normally? You gotta resort to immobilizing me and eating me? That's why you didn't want to fight back there! Too s-scared of what I'd do to you, like all those other vamps! That's so sad, r-really…” Crap, she thought. Is that the best I've got?

Vincent removed his mouth from the woman's neck, making a horrible sucking sound that just avoided masking a sigh of relief that came from the woman. She, incidentally, should have been quite glad that Vincent had her face turned away from his, because he looked quite repulsive with his mouth covered in blood. The most she was able to see from her current position was a blurry mess, seen by only her right eye, and hindered further by the fact that her senses were starting to go wonky.

Whether or not Vincent was aware of this remains to be seen, but at that moment he removed the hand on her chin that was pressing her head back, and took the Swiss Army knife out of her pocket.

“You are suffering from either class three or four hemorrhage at this point, Missy,” he said, trying to keep his voice level. He couldn’t make eye contact, so the best he could do to keep her calm was to talk. He held her body upright by her neck with his left hand, holding her on the opposite side as the wound he had inflicted. “This same thing would be happening to you if you had been hit by a bus, and were losing this much blood.” The barely heard as he spoke to her, but at that precise moment, she couldn't find herself caring incredibly what he was saying anyway. She felt extremely weary, and found herself having an incredibly difficult time focusing as he moved her.

He opened the knife, wincing as he drove the blade into his own carotid artery, then pulled it out and placed it on a coffee table. Caring little of the blood that was now seeping into his collar, Vincent guided the semiconscious woman to a wall, where he propped her up against it. The woman felt her back touch the wall, and distantly noticed that the vampire was bleeding. That’s strange, she thought. I couldn't have landed a hit like that.

Vincent put his hands on her cranium and mandible, and gingerly opened her mouth.

“Here you go, sweetheart,” he said, in the tone Morticia Addams used when feeding her pet plant, “I'd like to see how you deal with it.” He placed her mouth over the cut in his neck, then tipped both his head and the woman’s, so that his blood would fall into her mouth. He pressed her head to his neck with his right hand, pinching her nose closed with his left.

The woman coughed and tried to pull back, choking as she tried desperately not to swallow, but she was unable to breathe or pull away. She coughed again, trying to hold her breath, and made a couple of weak attempts at clumsily beating him away, but, inevitably, her lungs tried to expand, pulling in air from where it could where her mouth wasn't in contact with his neck, and at the same time involuntarily swallowing a mouthful of blood. She choked; the taste was strong, unfamiliar, and decidedly revolting.

Very quickly, the woman was distracted from her discomfort by something else, namely a burning sensation in her gums, which quickly escalated into immense pain. The sensation spread rapidly to the rest of her body, making her skin feel as if it were on fire, making her head spin and stars flash in front of her tightly closed eyes. She tried to cry out in pain, but it died in her throat as the world began to grow dim, and her legs gave way. A moment later, she lost consciousness.

Vincent felt the entire weight of the woman's body fall on the hand pressing her head to his neck. He resumed an upright position, moving his hand from the back of the woman's head to her upper back. Then he bent down, put his other hand under her knees, and carried her to the sofa.

You do realize, of course, Vincent thought, addressing himself, that she will need to stay with you now. She’ll need to be taught how to live like this. She can’t go back to her old life; people she once counted as friends would kill her on sight. Now you’ll have to take care of her. Good luck with that.

Looking over at the woman, Vincent muttered, “Dear God, what have I done to myself?”

Yay! Fantastic! Superb! That's fantastic, DC. Is that the only part you've typed so far, or is there more? I'd love to read the rest.

PS: Good choice for the post. I love this part to little bits, I do Haha. Excellent work.

I did a bit more of it, but this is the only bit I really thought was...well, worth it. The rest of it wasn't anything special, I thought. I was particularly proud of this because I stink at PvP combat. Although, when both parties have the end in mind, it's easier.

Haa. Well personally I love it and would love to read the rest. Out of curiousity, have you decided on a new name for Kira yet? If not, am I allowed to help come up with one? :3

I'll read it with more detail and give a proper critique later on, DC, I'm a tad out of my senses right now. In the meantime, I think I could probably split that RP into the text of each person accordingly, read the first few words in each paragraph out loud.

X
X
Vincent
Y
Y
Vincent
Z
Z
Vincent

See what I mean? It's not too tough playing around with words in order to change the order. If you get stuck whilst doing so, searching for a synonym on Google will not only get you out of the mess but also give you new words to your repertoire ^^. I notice it disappears somewhat around the middle and then sprouts back coming closer to the end-- that is what I meant by separating each player's posts. If the story is now to appear without pauses for interaction (without either being too careful not to control a character they don't own as it's already written), you should get rid of that choppy feeling by changing your play on words; passive sentences work wonders for this. Here is an example:

"Tony ate a sandwich, then he went up the stairs and he opened the door. He sat on the desk and he turned on the computer, he accessed his e-mail and he found some new messages he'd received from his aunt."

Good graciousness! Look at that, two and lines and... 7 times! 7 times the subject pronoun 'he' appears in that little 'post.' In the following change, I will not try to add more detail, (though it is inevitable to some extent if you use passive sentences) I'll just change the play on words in order to give a better feel to the post.

"Tony had finished the sandwich. With rhythmical banging, he went up the stairs and entered the room. Upon sitting on the desk, the computer was turned on, shortly afterwards accessing the e-mail, only to find some new messages from his aunt."

Note I still use the pronoun once as a subject and another time as a possessive pronoun, however even changing the type aids in giving the text a new feel. Regardless, it's better to avoid pronoun repetition altogether as opposed to changing its type.

It's really that noticeable?

Oh, yes it is indeed. Do give me a while to have a more focused read now and I'll post (or edit out) my review soon enough. Thus far, it's the only problem with your structure that's noticeable at a glance.

c.c
I don't mean to scare people away...I think Sasifan's got a point in that overuse of words is bad.

Although, I'm reading it again, and I don't see where she's seeing the repetition.

I'm a he, haha. I'll show you now! As a matter of fact, I had this ready from a day ago or two, but I decided to wait some more. First of all, let me tell you this is a very nice read - it keeps the user (at least myself) stuck to the screen, waiting for more; my applause to the people involved in its writing!

Now just to end my previous point, yes it is noticeable that you choose to begin a sentence in the same word (the, as and pronouns tend to be the most common in role-playing), in this case I made emphasis on 'Vincent', where you repeat this name as a sentence starter 14 times (I may be mistaken in the count.) This tells me more than you'd think, not only does it seem repetitive, it speaks to me about your sentence structure altogether (note I'm evaluating this as a finished effort and not as two people going back and forth PMing.)

Good and done with, the structure is, in my opinion, the least important part of writing in this case. Where things like poetry would suffer greatly from a cruddy structure, stories have more leeway in this term, but in turn must employ better description and a more interesting writing. One last issue with the external area is your choice of formatting: at several points of the text, I found myself confused and if it weren't for their personality traits shown, I wouldn't have known whom spoke at which point. Take the time to add color tags or underline one character's dialog to differentiate them from one another.

Internal issues I believe you've less of, but for starters, is 'vamp' a canonical shorthand for vampire? Otherwise your readers may have trouble understanding that as vamp is an actual word referring to patches or redone items.

I like your description, it tells me about where they are, however leaves me enough room to imagine the rest of the room, it may have done you good to describe the shape of the room to give an idea of dimensions however. Also, the level of description when they get into closer range (as Vincent subdues X to bite her), as it really clarified what could've been a very confusing scene.

The characters flesh out nicely despite the short amount of real time this takes, it also tells me about your choice of vampire lore at some parts, adding depth and preventing the more hardcore vampire fans from being lost along the way.

Sorry for the back and forth but back on the external plane (damn you, text structure), you've a punctuation error on the use of ellipses. When utilizing an ellipsis, one must leave a space after them before beginning to write again, whether you capitalize the first letter or not is up to the writer however.

Hope you've noticed these issues mainly have to do with the structure you use within the text - that means the content (my critique, my opinion >.<) is good! Props to you two for such a marvelous piece. I'd much rather read this than certain... Other vampire literature of today.

"Vamp" used as a shortening for "vampire" was actually a Kira thing, but I sort of liked it. The first thing Kira (the character) thinks when she hears "vamp" is "vampire," and anyone she talked about vampires was likely to know what she was talking about, and use similar lingo. Vincent, in the actual thread, actually has quite a problem with it, because he's a jazz pianist, and he thinks she's calling him an ostinato. Hence, you'll never see me use "vamp" for "vampire" unless we're in Kira's head, or, more likely, if Kira is actually speaking.

However, I maintain that starting a sentence with the subject of the sentence is not poor structure, even if used repeatedly. You may find me using "Vincent" to start paragraphs a lot because I was following a rule for a while that the first mention of a character in a paragraph should be with his name, but now I'm thinking that wasn't such a great idea. Also, I've found that starting sentences with "as a matter of fact," "also," "on the other hand," etc., just to spice things up, looks somewhat unprofessional. Mind, starting the sentence with the subject over and over again also looks unprofessional... so yeah.

And what's this about ellipses? I thought that if you end a sentence with an ellipse, you leave a space, and begin the next sentence with a capital letter, whereas if you have an ellipse in the middle of a sentence, you have no space, and no capital letter. Now it's become a habit (in fact, in the last wording of this very sentence, I had an ellipse which I used incorrectly in just that fashion.)

I'm so glad you like the description! I loathe reading scenes I can't picture---it makes reading the post like an uphill slog through molasses in January. I specifically wrote that way so Kira (the writer) would know exactly what situation her character was in, to minimize unintentional cheating, and I was very happy when she did the same thing. I mimed some of what Vincent does and looked in a book on human anatomy I have to make sure I was doing it right. Ditto for the characterization thing.

Could have sworn this was the poetry section. Guess this was considered 'prose' over better alternatives.

Uh... huh? There isn't a Poetry section. This section is for poetry and prose... and prose is just everything that isn't poetry.