"Probably. Would you like me to find out?"

"Yes please. I think asking would probably draw more attention to me than the books on witchcraft I took out already did. As-is he may just think I'm a budding Wicca."

"I will do that, then. And I will avoid contact in case it interferes with diplomatic relations later."

"He seems fairly nice, from what little I've seen," remarks Bella. "I could easily have done worse. But I'm obviously not sure yet that I want to introduce myself. Well, except in the sense that I already handed him my student ID to check out books, and it has my name on it."

"Then I will investigate him thoroughly," Sherlock promises.

"Thanks! You are handy. Tonight's neighborhood is farther away. You want in the truck or do you want to show off again?"

"Truck," he decides. "May as well."

She gets in the cab and unlocks the passenger door for him.

In he hops! He even does up his seatbelt.

"Definitely learn martial arts," he says. "I expect that to be reasonably engaging."

"I expect so too. I dreaded anything resembling exercise before I activated, but it's definitely on this side of fun now that it comes easier and less... well. Clumsily."

"I was a killing machine even before I became a soulless bloodsucking fiend, so I have no comparable experience."

"...I am uncertain whether to congratulate you or pity you," muses Bella. "Say. Is there anyone in town you talk to besides me? ...Kitten poker buddies?" she asks, recalling something along those lines, as they pass the alley he identified as leading to the demon bar.

He snorts. "Not really."

"That sounds lonesome." Bella hasn't exactly made friends at school, but she's made people-she-can-sit-with-at-lunch.

"People frequently bore me, and then I am usually tempted to eat them, and I have been refraining," he says with a shrug.

"And now I feel like I ought to ask for a public service announcement of some kind on what bores you."

"Unlikely to help. 'Dull', in my experience, is a personality trait rather than a set of behaviours."

"And one that people stably do or do not have?"

"Stably do, more often than any kind of don't."

"I think you will take my meaning when I say that's not quite the information I was fishing for."

"If you would like me to tell you whether or not you will one day suddenly become boring, believe me, so would I. I don't expect it, at any rate."

"Well. If I do suddenly become boring, can I have a head start?"

"If you suddenly become boring," he says, "I will not eat you, I will leave. Which probably still works out to killing you, but at least not actively."

"I do appreciate the distinction," Bella says dryly. "Maybe I can manage to take long enough about it that I'll know how to handle myself in close quarters by then. And then I can aspire to live to the ripe old age of twenty-six. Or I suppose I can move to Renée's and pretend not to be the Slayer and let somewhat more people die."

"As you please," he says cheerfully. "In this hypothetical scenario I won't care a bit."

"Understood. Just thinking aloud. I do that, especially when I'm driving and can't think into a notebook instead," Bella snorts.

"In the likelier event that you retain your natural tendency to be interesting, I expect we can set a new record for Slayer lifespan. Thirty, perhaps," he jokes.

"I want to live forever," says Bella, hands tightening on the wheel.

"Slightly more troublesome. I know of only one method, and apart from its many other problems it only prevents you from dying of some things. True immortality is beyond my means."

"Yeah, and it has that inconvenient personality revision problem. I want me to live forever, I don't want some superficially similar creature to live forever."

"I consider myself to have continuity with the person I was, but I know not all vampires do. The objection is fair."

"What exactly do souls... do? I mean, I know what usually happens when the soul is removed. But it's apparently not consistent, I don't know the psychological mechanisms involved, and I'm wondering what function precisely they tend to serve."

"Interesting question," he says. "I could tell you what mine did for me, I suppose. Or try to. I've never exactly thought of it in those terms."

"Please do." She parks in the driveway at her house but doesn't get out of the car.

"It was a source of some distress on lonely nights, yes."

"Your working definition of 'real person' having been what?"

"'Not me'. If it were a rational worry I would still be having it."

"Yeah, that makes less sense than half the things they tell me in my Government class, and let me assure you, many things they tell me in Government are nonsensical."

He snorts.

"What's the... shift in ethical feeling... like? I have a rudimentary understanding of what it might be like to be that way, but less of what it would be like to become so - to wake up and find one's brain rearranged."

"I hardly noticed at first," he says. "I was ocupied by other concerns. It did occur to me while waiting for Obadiah that while I would have thought about torturing him to death before the change, I probably would have left out the torture in the end."

"But you would've killed him either way?"

"I reiterate that he had my entire family murdered. Yes, I would have killed him. I'm fairly sure he assassinated Tony's parents, for that matter."

"Oh, yes, I understand completely. Under the circumstances I can barely manage to blame you for the torture, let alone the killing. Just wanted to confirm. Tony's parents? They'd be genetically yours too, whether or not you ever met them. I confess I am quite ignorant about how clones slot into their creator's families."

"Poorly," he says. "Tony's parents were not particularly close to him, but at least they had met."

"You would've had to pretend to be twins with Tony regardless - was he like your brother, or what?" Her next guess is 'parent'.

"Not remotely," he says. "Nor my father, before you ask. He was... Tony. I loved him. Further labeling did not seem productive."

That makes sense. Bella nods.

He smiles faintly.

"Do Watchers tend to know much about magic?" Bella asks in a complete topic change. "I'm still not accomplishing anything with what supposedly simple spells I've attempted and unless Slayers just fundamentally can't do magic, I'm missing something obvious that someone who knows magic would be able to tell me. It might be worth exposing myself to lots of crustiness just to get that figured out. Of course, maybe there are less crusty freelance witches who can take students and wouldn't need to know I'm the Slayer to find me worth their time."

"...I have no concrete data to support this," he says, "but my feeling is that the Watcher's Council is not an organization you want in your life. Even if they can teach you about magic, and I don't know if they can, or would."

"Freelance witches are probably a better first choice," agrees Bella. "Don't suppose you can find out if there are any of those lying around who take students? In addition to checking out the librarian?"

"Such a busy life I am acquiring. By all means," he says cheerfully.

"I like to be busy, don't you?" Bella inquires innocently.

"Beats the alternative," he snorts.

"Exactly."

"I ought to get on with it, then. Farewell, dear Juliet," he says teasingly.

"Until tomorrow," she returns, and she hops out of her side of the truck and goes inside only when she's sure he's out of range of the porch lights.

Bella avoids taking out any more suspicious books the next day, although she does return the ones she's read - he can probably look up her borrowing history anyway, and he's more likely to do that if she's overdue with something. She gets no more than a raised eyebrow when she dumps her items into the bookdrop and scurries home.

"Yes," is the first thing he says to her, "your new librarian is a Watcher."

"D'you know if he suspects anything?"

"I do not."

"Okay. Did that take all night or do you know about local witches, too?" She hops in the truck and unlocks the other side for him once he's finished his blood and she can stop holding her nose.

"What I know about local witches is that there are a lot of dead ends," he says. "Competence and friendliness seem to be mutually exclusive qualities. But I have not exhausted my resources yet."

"I'd take a friendly incompetent if it came to a choice between the options, at least to try - I'm happy to do self-study once I know what I haven't been able to make anything work yet."

"The friendly incompetents I have looked up would be no use to you."

"Are they so incompetent that they only imagine they're doing magic?" she inquires.

"Correct."

"Wow. That's serious incompetence. I wonder if some people just can't? It would suck if I were someone who just couldn't," muses Bella.

"I suspect the fault lies somewhere between mindset and methods, but I have not made a concerted study of the matter."

"Mm. What are the unfriendly competent witches like?"

"The example that stands out the most has switched bodies with her daughter, without the daughter's consent," he says mildly. "I would not go to her for occult instruction if I were you."

"Ah. No, that doesn't sound like a good teacher. Why did she do that? Just to be younger?"

"Her reasons are opaque to me; that is as good a theory as any."

"I want to fix that but without knowing any magic I don't have the first idea what I'd do. Dammit."

"I'll look into it," says Sherlock.

Sherlock accompanies her with his customary unobtrusiveness.

"Well, there's this charming crypt I've been staying in recently," he says. "It's quite comfortable if you don't mind the cobwebs."

"I'll fetch a featherduster, shall I?" Bella says dryly.

"If you must."

She must, apparently. "Walking distance?" she asks when she's emerged with the implement tucked into her messenger bag with everything else she carries on nighttime excursions.

"For me, certainly."

"More or less than two miles?" Bella tries.

"Oh, less."

"All right then, lead the way. Slayer's First Crypt. Should be a pop-up book."

"Why is a crypt wired for electricity?" Bella asks, eyeing the kettle and the lights while attacking the cobwebs surrounding the largest open space that will suit for combat practice.

"I don't know, but I do know I am not its first ambulatory occupant," he says. "Perhaps the previous one could answer that question, if they are not a pile of dust by now."

"Did you have to evict them or was it unoccupied when you found it?" Dust dust dust. Her duster is getting quite repulsive; she peels off a layer of spiderweb and chucks it into a corner where at least it will be out of the way and makes another pass.

"The latter. A broom might have done you more good," he says.

"Less pleasant to carry all this way," she says. "I think I've interrupted local vampire reproduction sufficiently that a broom's potential value as an impromptu stake is not a significant factor." She deems the second pass sufficient, cleans off her duster again, and says, "So. Where do we start?"

"Not sure," he says. "I have never tried to teach this sort of thing before. And to complicate matters, I have no idea how much you already know, or can access because you are the Slayer and have been loaded up with all sorts of interesting muscle memory."

"I've watched a few hours' worth of aikido tutorials on the Internet," says Bella, shadowboxing a throw with a Japanese name she can't remember. "And about fifteen minutes of parkour."

"It seems I have some work ahead of me, then," he says. "Has any of this valuable research taught you how to properly throw a punch?"

"No. Aikido seems to be more of a throwing art. I do know that the thumb goes outside the fist?" she offers.

"Well, that's a start. Observe," he says, and stands beside her to demonstrate in slow motion.

She follows along promptly. "Is this all going to be shadowboxing or at some point do we hit each other and be glad we have super-regeneration?"

"For lack of better targets, yes," he says. "Unless you manage to accidentally knock my head off, the worst that will happen to me is I might start giggling and quoting Shakespeare."

"And this doesn't bother you? I don't think anyone I've read has remarked, however unreliably, on the relationship between turning and pain tolerance."

"There isn't much of one. I was nearly as unbothered beforehand."

"Did it make you quote Shakespeare then too?"

"You could say that," he muses, with a slight smile.

"Am I treading on personal territory?" asks Bella. Convinced that the shape of her fist matches his, she throws an experimental series of punches at the air.

"Oh, very good," he says, reaching to correct the position of her elbow slightly. Deadpan: "And no, not at all, the subject of my sex life is open for discussion."

"Technically I didn't ask if I was treading on forbidden territory," she points out, adjusting her elbow on the other side to match and having at the air a bit more.

"My mistake." He observes another few punches. "You can go much faster than that, I'm sure," is his commentary.

"Much better," he says. "You'll find that while plenty of nasty bitey sorts have superhuman speed, very few of them put it to good use."

"Fail to put it to good use how?" she asks, throwing in a kick to break up the rhythm of the punches. The air would be tripped, if it were not air.

"As simple as that: they don't use it," he says. "I don't believe I have any special physical advantage over other vampires, but I move and react faster than they do because I pay attention and I know my own abilities. They don't push themselves. Perhaps because they don't usually have to."

Bella pushes for a little extra burst of speed, which she can achieve but not sustain, and then she starts adding more kicks to the pattern, and then she spins once to make the front kick a roundhouse. "Don't vampires sometimes get into fights with each other? I'd think that would incentivize pushing even if most of them are never going to run into me or one of my predecessors. Or successors."

"They do, yes," he says. "But judging by how easily I kill them, they don't do it often enough. Try making that more level," he says of the roundhouse.

She adjusts the angle and tries again. "Some of them manage to live for hundreds of years. Have you tangled with many of those?"

"I think one or two of the gang who turned me had a few centuries behind them."

"What makes you think that?" Punchpunchpunchpunchpunchkickpunchkickkickpunchpunch -

"How they spoke, how they moved. It is sometimes possible to estimate."

"On the other hand," (she throws in a backflip that would snap any neck attached to a chin caught in her foot's path, then resumes her flurry of blows at the air from farther back) "hearing you talk I'd figure you for English. And you also fail to look six or seven years old."

"I said estimate, not pinpoint," he says mildly.

She snickers. "Opinions on the backflip? I was so pleased when I discovered I could do that."

"Flashy, but potentially useful."

"Is it ever useful to be flashy solely for the purpose of being flashy? Does it scare people, or anything?"

"It can scare them, or make them underestimate you, or distract them. All very useful, under the right circumstances."

"The backflip would make someone underestimate me because...?" Her onslaught against the vile villain, The Air, is unslowing.

"It's flashy," he repeats. "If you consistently display unnecessary theatricality, you look inexperienced, or arrogant."

"I am inexperienced. I'm not arrogant about this." Pause. "Yet."

"Personally," he says, "I tend toward maximum economy of movement unless there is some reason to act otherwise. And yet I am probably among the most arrogant vampires on the planet about my fighting abilities—granted, not without cause."

"Yeah, I saw you, you're very good," Bella agrees. "Do you have any more notes about how I'm doing at beating up all this nitrogen-and-whatnot?"

"My comment is that you are good enough at beating up the atmosphere that you might benefit from a more substantial opponent."

Bella decides to see if she can obtain any value from whatever limited element of surprise she can get against Sherlock, and aims a kick at the back of his knees.

Bella is going as fast as she can, and she needs to, to compensate for his skill and her lack thereof. Most of the aikido she watched involved working from someone attacking - she remembers this one throw - she tries it.

Half aikido and half making things up, she tries something else. The sooner she can convey her repertoire the sooner he'll know what else to teach her.

"You're definitely a Slayer," he remarks—naturally, not out of breath. "Your instincts are good. Listen to them. But instinct can be improved upon."

"Yeah, how?" She's using her lungs differently than he is, but she's not tired - not yet.

"I can probably do that." (attack, attack, whoa duck dodge roll regroup jump kick) "Figuring out what's going on in my brain is a hobby of sorts for me."

"Good hobby," he says cheerfully.

"Well, usually," (duck spin swat) "it involves me sitting alone in a room" (sweep-kick block catch throw) "with a notebook, first" (ouch back up and punch) "but this'll be valuable material for it when we're through."

"Pleased to hear it," he says, evading a punch and then catching her hand to draw her forward and off balance. "It is also," stepping back out of the way of her counterattack, "quite a lot of fun."

"Yeah, I can see the appeal. I wonder if I'm going to be sore in the morning or if I'll just fix up overnight?" she says, still interrupted by the occasional wind-knocking-out or roll or that one time when she goes ahead and bites his sleeve but overall getting the hang of carrying on a conversation while in whirling violent motion. "I know I heal a lot faster but I don't know how it holds up against the kinda muscle tearing vigorous exercise causes."

"No predictions," he says cheerfully. "Do let me know."

"You'll be able to tell by whether I wince or not when you come by and it is time to do this again."

"Of course I will. But that does not make your observations worthless."

"I suppose I'll have more precision available. I am starting to get tired but I'm not actually sure if that's physical exhaustion or it being late. There's no clock in here. Hang on a sec while I get my phone?" she asks, executing a throw that, if allowed to land, ought to send him flying into a wall and give her the leisure to do that regardless of permission.

She consults her phone. "Not quite bedtime, but close enough that it's probably a good place to stop and head home," she says. "You escorting me?"

"Of course."

They are not attacked on their way to her house. "See you tomorrow," Bella says cheerfully as she parks the truck and hops out.

"Au revoir, Juliet."

"You look pleased with yourself," he comments when next he sees her.

"Slayer instincts want to be patched," she reports. "Once I made up enough vocabulary to write about them, it was easier than not being mad when people interrupt me."

"I am delighted," he says. "Let's go and give your revisions the smoke test, shall we?"

"Do let's." She practically traipses to the crypt. Once there, she divests herself of excess baggage and attacks without further warning.

Bella's shunted enough of her intelligence into her handy new autopilot that she can focus her immediate consciousness almost entirely on reading his body language and his attacks to tell it which patterns to pull out. She feels like nothing so much as a conduit between sense and motion: she sees this, and her seeing directly causes her weight to shift, her hand to strike, her foot to jut out just so and force him to dance away. All she's doing is keeping her eyes open, keeping her attention laser-focused on the fight, and feeling the feedback from every sense she's got.

"Brilliant," he compliments.

"This is just what I was able to patch without knowing what I was doing. Feel like learning about thirty new vocabulary words and trying to read my notes-to-self?" she asks casually.

"Yes," he says immediately.

"Now, or after we've run through more of the new improved Slayerness as-is?"

"Not yet," he decides. "I do want to see what you've come up with on your own."

"Mostly just - well, for one thing, did you know that my self-preservation instinct was cut down to size for some reason? I didn't start wanting to throw myself in front of a train or at a demon nest, probably because I already wanted to be immortal and the change wasn't big enough to get me to regular, let alone sucidal, but it was there, which was... well. Interesting design choice. I left it mostly the way it was in the short term because I really don't need to be as concerned about injuries as I used to be - except brain damage, that's still a big deal - but I did not want that long term deathwish."

"Interesting design choice indeed," he says.

"I suppose they don't want their Slayers deciding that, no, fighting nasty bitey nightlife is scary and they'd rather take up knitting," says Bella. "This is, after all, a system that was deemed preferable to any option involving volunteers."

Sherlock snorts.

"I mean seriously. I'm not complaining - no crusty people have located me, I have not been maimed or killed, I pretty much just got gift-wrapped superpowers and a visit from a possibly divine being of some sort to tell me what was going on and this strictly beats the alternative especially as I was living in Sunnydale anyway - but I do not know what those people were thinking. Is magic just that constrained, that they didn't have a better option? Or did they like throwing teenage girls to the metaphorical wolves for some reason that appears in the DSM? Or did it seem like a really good idea at the time -" she plants a solid kick right in his chest where her previous instincts would have had her aiming a punch for his ear - "to hang the entire globe's hopes for a defender against what have to be millions of not billions of nasty bitey threats on one less than willing individual who they have additionally saddled with a deathwish?"

"Is that Mr. Giles's first name? Have you decided that I might want to introduce myself after all?" she asks, dropping into a ready stance to counter him when he comes at her again.

"I found out he has some knowledge of the occult and left him an anonymous note about the body-stealing witch, just to see what would happen. If he deals with the situation in a reasonable way, it may be worth an overture of friendship. I suggest you leave me out of it at first, however."

"Nicely handled," says Bella. "That is a good test for a potential Watcher. I can leave you out and explain how I know anything about what I'm doing solely by lies of omission and reference to the Internet and my self-hacking, that's probably a good idea."

He takes a slight bow, and then attacks again.

After about fifteen minutes, Bella says, "I think you've seen at least one instance of all the changes I've made in action. Although obviously if you had six legs or poison stingers or something they'd be manifesting differently, I don't think we should spend any time attempting to outfit you with same for a more thorough picture."

Bella indulges in a backflip to disengage, and then fusses briefly with the wisps escaping from her practical ponytailed hair and fetches her notebook from her messenger bag. She started a fresh one for this project on the expectation that she'd be handing it over. "Behold," she says grandly.

"Seriously?" laughs Bella. "I tried to tidy it up a little, since I figured I'd be showing it to you, but I generally expect the contents of my notebooks to be at least half opaque, and this one is mostly made-up words to boot."

"I also have an extensive capacity for analysis."

"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.

"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."

"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."

"No, it doesn't," he agrees. "Do you think it would be helpful if I demonstrated what I mean?"

"Maybe." She flips onto her feet again. "Am I still defending like before or am I just letting you show me something?"

"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."

"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-kiss-your-neck gambit?"

"Either."

Isabella lets autopilot do its job with the goalset she gave it, and watches carefully.

Eventually he asks, with a flash of a smile, "Learning anything?"

"Nothing I can articulate yet. I'm certainly paying attention and this is certainly different."

Onward indeed. "I'm not really seeing how to translate this into modifications," she says after a few minutes.

"No? What would be more helpful?"

"Well, you seemed to be able to understand the format I wrote my notes in. You could just tell me."

"I don't expect that to work. But if you insist."

"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.)

He spends a minute or so staring thoughtfully at the page, and then writes a proposed subroutine and hands her back the notebook.

Sherlock spreads his hands in an understated told-you-so gesture, and lets her think.

"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?"

"Absolutely," he says.

"Excellent. Sequence of about thirty seconds to start, we can step it up as I get better at this and have more complicated basics to build on. Autopilot engaged, hit me," she says, dropping into stance.

He attacks at full speed.

Again. Precisely the same, to start, although when she deviates from the original script he adjusts to match.

Sherlock repeats himself one more time.

"Gladly," he says, and attacks again.

"Certainly, dear Juliet," he says with a laughing smile.

"It has been a pleasure," he assures her.

There is a minor commotion at school the next day. Something to do with cheerleaders.

"I didn't notice anything that was definitely that. The only notable event at school today was something about one of the cheerleaders quitting abruptly." Pause. "Was the evil body-switching mother being a cheerleader under her daughter's identity, by any chance?"

"She was, yes."

"That sounds promising, then. Most people aren't going to be able to tell what I am just by how I walk, are they? I could ask Mr. Giles about magic lessons without letting on and see how he is in that capacity, if he's up for it at all. I don't suppose a Watcher who doesn't know he's got a Slayer under his nose has a lot to do in his spare time."

"No, most people are not. Not even most vampires. And given everything we know about Mr. Giles, I think that would be a very wise plan."

"I shall go conspicuously take out more books on magic at school tomorrow and then approach him about it if he gives me the least reaction to work off of," Bella decides. "But for tonight, let's carry on with what worked last night, that was fun and productive."

"Extremely productive," Sherlock agrees. "And extremely fun. If you keep pinning me to things I am going to become very attracted to you."

This startles Bella enough that she stops walking cryptward.

"Sorry," he says, not sounding sorry at all.

"Shall I be optimizing for arranging to fling you into walls or something instead, or does it not matter either way? Is that going to be - awkward?" she asks. Slowly. Awkwardly.

"Will it be awkward," he muses. "Between the two of us I'm not sure I am the one best equipped to answer that question. If you would rather not make it your business at all, you needn't."

"So you're not going to make a big deal about it and you're just letting me know FYI," says Bella. "...Okay. That is a reasonable behavior." She resumes walking. "You didn't answer about the flinging-you-into-walls alternative."

"Successfully flinging me into walls is also an attractive behaviour, yes."

"Ah-huh. You are wired funny," she reports.

"I certainly am," he says cheerfully.

It occurs to Bella to ask as they approach the crypt, "Would anything meaningfully improve about the practicing if I took off the crucifix? I don't know how much of your attention not reacting to it takes, and there's always some possibility it'll pop out of my shirt and hit you in the face or something."

"...It could make a slight difference," he allows. "It doesn't take up very much of my conscious attention, but I am always aware of it."

"So it's probably not hampering your ability to challenge me yet but it could do so in a few days if I keep improving at this rate, which is admittedly optimistic because low-hanging fruit is called that for a reason," Bella concludes. "Okay. I can take it off for this purpose after making reasonably sure that no one has tried to move into your crypt or anything."

"All right," Sherlock says agreeably.

"Well done, fair Juliet," he says with a laugh.

"My head hurts. I need to start bringing ibuprofen with me," she says, sitting down heavily. "Aaah. Thanks though."

"I'm going to start taking everything you say as innuendo," observes Bella.

"You may be right to. Is it not to your liking?"

"It's - flattering? Unprecedentedly flattering. I mean, random people utter innuendo all the time, but it's not based in any genuine regard, whereas I'm pretty sure yours is." She pokes at her scalp gently, wincing when she reaches the point of impact and maps its borders.

"I have a genuine regard for you on a number of levels. The fact that you can throw me into walls is only one among many."

"Many? Okay, at the risk of sounding - completely accurately - like I am fishing for compliments, I count throwing you into walls and my talent for analysis. That's not many."

"A successful fishing expedition," says Bella, ineffectually hiding her faint blush with her hair. "Charlie would be so proud."

"Oh, no," he says cheerfully, "encourage away. It's delightful."

"Good, I always hate it when I wind up feeling ethically obliged to self-hack." Her head isn't ringing any more; the spot is still tender but she's got plenty of tender spots. "I think I'm good for one more sequence played through till I have it down and then it's time to go home, ice various anatomy, and get in some sleep."

Sherlock looks like he is about to say something, and then doesn't.

"Well, now I have to know what you were going to say," Bella says. She puts her crucifix back on.

"It's very flirty," he says. "And possibly alarming. Are you sure?"

"Were you going to say that you vant to suck my blahd?"

"Well, since you're not fond of the smell and I drink the stuff, there does seem to be an obvious efficient way to get rid of the excess. It does no one any good dribbling off you like that."

"You're not like unto a shark in any relevant way, are you?" Bella asks consideringly. "But I can't think of a way to make the transfer that doesn't involve you licking me."

"That would be the flirty part."

"Yes, I suppose so. I do not wish to be licked at this time except in the metaphorical, educational sense, and even in that sense I'm done for the night. Oh, I suppose I could dab at the cuts with a teabag? Is it Tea Sacrilege to combine with blood?" Bella asks speculatively. "...And please answer the thing about the shark characteristics, I am not actually sure."

"It really isn't doing anyone any good, as you point out, and my objections to licking have approximately nothing to do with the resulting ingestion. Besides, for some reason I didn't think to bring, like, gauze or cottonballs. Let's have a teabag, if you want a bloody teabag." She holds out a hand.

"I'm flirting with you, not awkwardly traversing the baseball metaphor with you," she says. She catches the bag and applies it to the scrape on her forehead.

"Fair enough," he says. "In that case, should I mention that it is widely rumored in the vampire community that Slayer blood is an aphrodisiac?"

"I do hope you aren't a shark in that respect either," she says, rolling her eyes. "Besides, I suspect that for the typical case in which a vampire gets to drink Slayer blood, they're hopped up on every hormone necessary to make them quote Shakespeare; maybe they attribute that to the blood." She dabs the teabag on her elbow and her ankle and her arm and hands it over.

Bella giggles. (She is pretty sure this is Shakespeare for "take off your clothes", at least on one level of interpretation. Her clothes stay where they are. But she does laugh.)

"Is there a lot of flavor variation from person to person?" Bella inquires.

"Some," he says as he puts the kettle on. "Enough that I can tell individuals apart if I'm paying attention, which I always am. You are unusually tasty, but I'm not sure whether that's the Slayer thing or a personal quirk."

"How odd," laughs Bella. "Why would that be a Slayer thing - wouldn't they have to do it on purpose? - I guess it could be a side effect of the mechanism behind the superpowers, depending on how those work. Or they could've just factored it in along with the deathwish to induce regular turnover, maybe. Pity I have no prior samples to compare against."

"And we are unlikely to find another Slayer to compare you with in future, given the conditions for activation. Although I suppose death is not such a binary proposition as people like to think."

"Do you know if any Slayers have been turned into vampires before?"

"I do not."

"It seems likely, just based on the disproportionate vampire attention we get," she muses. "But I feel like an ex-Slayer who was still walking around would be pretty well-known such that you'd have heard of her."

"I begin to suspect that we may have stumbled on one of the lesser-known duties of the Watcher's Council," he says. "Just because I think that if any such thing occurred, none of them would rest a moment until she had been set on fire."

"Oof. So you think - or you think they think - she'd retain the power boost even after redeeming her soul for valuable prizes?"

"I think they wouldn't take the chance. I think even if she didn't they'd get after her."

"Do Slayers tend to be privy to fascinating secrets - or just lots of training, which they'd hang onto regardless of the superpowers - or is it just terrible PR?"

"Secrets no, training yes. And of course the PR. And of course the insult to their personal and institutional dignity."

"So their job is to supervise girls with artificial suicidal impulses, send them against creatures with parasitic reproductive habits, and then be sensitive about it when one gets bit and bites back."

"In essence, yes."

"I'm actually really confused about how that second part's supposed to work. I don't think human natural responses to being attacked tend to include blood-drinking. Does that usually happen as force-feeding while unconscious, or what?"

"Force-feeding, yes; while unconscious, no. In my experience. And in theory it is sometimes consensual."

"...Among people who are deceived about the side effects, or just don't care?"

He shrugs. "Either, I suppose."

"What are the usual motivations for turning someone, anyway?"

"I suppose most people aren't as patient as you were with people trying to shoot them while they attempt to make friends, but a careful vampire could pass long enough to find someone who'd tolerate the revelation. I guess that's not sociopathically hedonistic enough."

"Well, the problem with making friends with a human is that it is much harder to pretend they are not going to die," he says lightly.

"Yeah. I could see that being a problem." She chews her lip. "Isn't there any other method of immortality? All these demons and all this magic flailing around everywhere - that's really the only game in town?"

"There are rumours. Judging by the tone of the discourse, it seems every method has its tradeoffs, and vampirism is by far the most readily available. I don't know details of any others."

"Hmm." She beholds a wall contemplatively.

Sherlock lets her think.

"Well," she says. "I will see what Mr. Giles is like starting tomorrow. Maybe he knows something. Or maybe he can get me far enough that I can invent my own spells. An immortality one with acceptable drawbacks if any is a priority."

"I advise you to be very cautious about that," he says.

"Absolutely. If all the options in circulation have serious problems with them, there's probably a reason. Caution is the order of the project. That doesn't mean it's not worth looking into."

"True enough," he agrees.

"Is the median vampire lifespan that much to brag about, anyway? I mean, the upside potential is sweet, but the violence and the inconvenient catching fire if struck by sunlight parts have got to cut the average something awful."

"I haven't gathered statistics," he says.

"I don't see why not," says Bella. "I suppose you have enough reason to believe yourself an outlier that they wouldn't be especially predictive for you, but they'd be interesting."

"Yes, but the reward is not commensurate with the effort."

"Asking vampires you meet how old they are and taking down the information and then doing some statistical work to find out how your likelihood of meeting them interacts with their age?" Bella says. "I guess you'd have to like math or compensate for less math with more data-gathering. I don't like math much myself."

"And there is also the matter of meeting all those vampires."

"Yes. It might take a while, or a shorter while moving in more hazardous circles. So I suppose I can see after all why you wouldn't want to take on the project if it didn't hold much intrinsic interest."

He lifts his mug in an ironic salute.

"So does tea go with blood after all?"

"Astonishingly well, yes."

"I'm sure this information will come in handy later, probably in act four in some ironic manner," says Bella.

He cracks up.

"I'm not sure," he says. "I would describe it almost like... pressure. Like they exert a very slight outward force to push me away. Except that they don't, and it is in fact all in my head."

"The way I've seen other vampires react to them it looks like it's value-laden. Aversive. Not just neutral pushiness like an air current."

"Yes," he says. "But the pressure metaphor is the one that springs to mind. The original emotional content has been worn away by months of stubbornness."

"What kind of emotional content was it?"

"Unpleasant," he says cheerfully.

"That's not very specific. Do you not want to talk about it?"

"It's difficult to analyze something I reject so thoroughly," he says.

"I guess not everyone is me. I have to know what I'm getting rid of before I can make it go away."

"The actual experience of encountering a cross, before the aforementioned erosion, was very much like watching someone sidle up to my basic emotional processing and say 'I'm going to make you feel like shit now', and watching my basic emotional processing reply 'The fuck you will', and being a bystander to the ensuing argument."

"That sounds very uncomfortable indeed."

"I suppose so, yes."

"I am glad you have gotten it to go away. I do not harbor a desire to drive you out of town in the course of shooing the bitier ones."

"I only find them mildly annoying now, and usually not even that."

"Good. I would miss you if I'd wallpapered the town with something too aversive and you moved away."

"Yes," he says. "I would miss you too."

"Hello," he says, looking at her with mild curiosity from behind his glasses.

"There's a lot of books like this here," she remarks as he stamps them for her, just this side of audibly. "I don't think my old school had any..."

"Yes, well, this is Sunnydale," he says wryly.