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There's a new high school librarian. The old "high school librarian" was a cash-strapped student aide of sorts; apparently it's hard to keep staff working on the Hell Orifice. His name is Mr. Giles. He is British. And sort of old. And sort of crusty. And when Bella takes out certain books he looks at her with certain scrutiny.
"Is my new librarian a Watcher?" she asks Sherlock the day after Mr. Giles joins the faculty.
cross_and_bow
cross_and_bow
"Fair enough, I am likewise impressed. So. What obvious low-hanging Slayer-instinct-revision fruit did I fail to pick?" she asks, stretching this way and that in idle reaches and lunges to loosen up the tension accumulated in the fight.
eversomuchfun
"Hmm," he says, flipping through the notes. "The word that comes to mind is straightforward. Aggressive. Direct. Good for efficiently defeating anyone who is less skilled than you, or has fewer advantages; less good for an extended fight against an opponent of equal or greater ability. As you may have noticed."
cross_and_bow
"Okay." Bella flips over and balances on her hands for variety. "So I want some subtler subroutines, but that doesn't tell me what they ought to be."
eversomuchfun
"No, it doesn't," he agrees. "Do you think it would be helpful if I demonstrated what I mean?"
cross_and_bow
"Maybe." She flips onto her feet again. "Am I still defending like before or am I just letting you show me something?"
eversomuchfun
"For the purposes of this demonstration, you are a vampire who is trying very hard to kill me and I am a Slayer who is disinclined to let you."
cross_and_bow
"Trying very hard like you or trying very hard like a vampire who has already given herself away and cannot try the no-I'm-just-a-club-girl-who-wants-to-
cross_and_bow
"All right."
Vampire wants her target disabled but with a beating heart; vampire wants to avoid breakage but doesn't care about bruising; vampire is motivated by hunger and will break off if her target is too dangerous to be worth eating. With this in mind, Bella launches herself.
Vampire wants her target disabled but with a beating heart; vampire wants to avoid breakage but doesn't care about bruising; vampire is motivated by hunger and will break off if her target is too dangerous to be worth eating. With this in mind, Bella launches herself.
eversomuchfun
Sherlock fights nothing like he usually does. He is defensive, deceptive, fractionally slower than he is really capable of. He fights as though he is nearly outmatched and has to use every trick in the book to keep her off him.
There are a lot of tricks in his book.
There are a lot of tricks in his book.
cross_and_bow
Isabella lets autopilot do its job with the goalset she gave it, and watches carefully.
cross_and_bow
"Nothing I can articulate yet. I'm certainly paying attention and this is certainly different."
cross_and_bow
Onward indeed. "I'm not really seeing how to translate this into modifications," she says after a few minutes.
cross_and_bow
"Well, you seemed to be able to understand the format I wrote my notes in. You could just tell me."
cross_and_bow
"Maybe not, but worth a shot," she says, disengaging and plucking the notebook from the floor to hand it over. She also has a pen in her messenger bag. (And a pencil, but that seems like it might be a vaguely threatening thing to offer a vampire.)
eversomuchfun
He spends a minute or so staring thoughtfully at the page, and then writes a proposed subroutine and hands her back the notebook.
cross_and_bow
She looks at it. She consults her glossary.
"Yeaaaah I could install that but I think it's ugly and do not want it in my brain," she says, tossing the notebook back where she got it. "Maybe if I ever need to leap into an uncomfortable form of expertise overnight for an emergency we can try that. Okay, there's got to be some other way for me to figure out what goes in, hm." She begins to pace.
"Yeaaaah I could install that but I think it's ugly and do not want it in my brain," she says, tossing the notebook back where she got it. "Maybe if I ever need to leap into an uncomfortable form of expertise overnight for an emergency we can try that. Okay, there's got to be some other way for me to figure out what goes in, hm." She begins to pace.
cross_and_bow
"Can you be - repetitive? Can I try a dozen things against the same attack pattern - a serious one, not one you're dumbing down for me, although please don't take my arm off or anything - and then see what works best, what feels right, and then figure out a higher level of abstraction that would've generated that without knowing what was coming?"