"Hey, you," he says amicably back.

"Juliet," supplies Juliet. "How goes? How's your Bell?"

"Kidnapped," he shrugs. "Good before that, though. We negotiated peace with the buggers the other day."

"Kidnapped? Shit, I'm sorry. You gonna be able to fix that?"

He grins. "Hope so."

"You got here by dreaming, right? Otherwise I'd be all over going to your world and breaking some shit to help you guys out."

"Aww, that's nice," he says. "Yeah, I'm dreaming."

"Pity. Helpfully breaking shit is front and center of my official destined job description."

Sue laughs. "Nice. What's the job?"

"I'm the Slayer. It's this fucked-up system where one teenage girl at any given time has super-strength and super-speed and the like and is supposed to use it to fight nasty bitey critters, a surprising fraction of whom find humans tasty."

"Cool job," says Sue.

"I'm making it work. Pity it's not voluntary. A lot of my predecessors had a very unpleasant time of it, and none of them has lived past age twenty-six. Which I plan to fix, but I haven't run into a mint yet except Shell Bell, who was all out of big coins at the time and didn't have access to her helper."

"Want me to come to your world and break some shit?" he offers half-jokingly.

"You good at breaking shit? I don't have any candidates lined up right now - usually I go to L.A. on weekends and make some demons very unhappy that my boyfriend found out where they live - but if you need a change of pace from being kidnapped and you can handle yourself on my level, we could wander the neighborhood and see if anything tries to eat us."

"Sounds like fun," he says brightly.

"Okay, but since you are not a The Slayer, let's go spar in the back a bit, see how you are, I wouldn't wanna explain to your Bell why her Whistle's been folded, spindled, or mutilated and all three are unfortunately likely where I live." Juliet leads him to the backdoor. "Unless you have some form of super-strength," she adds, "you don't need to worry about hurting me. Anything breaks I can nap it off in the Belltower, and you probably can't even bruise me."

...Sue laughs.

"What? I know I don't look it, but I'm totally very-gently-possessed by a demon that gives me superpowers, plus Amariah visited once and decked me out with all kinds of witchy blessings."

"Yeah," he says, "it's not that, it's just you're reminding me of my personal combat instructor."

"Yeah? How so?"

"He's a mutant. Heals really fast."

"Oh. Well, I'm hard to hurt in the first place - not least because I don't plan to just stand here like a punching bag once we get started - and I heal fast, too. I haven't picked up any injuries that weren't gone overnight so far and I tangle with stuff bigger and toothier and more venomous and scalier and whatnot than you all the time."

Sue grins. "Okay!"

She finds a nice clear spot in the Milliways backyard, and drops into a ready position. "It won't stick if I wind up hurting you - Shell Bell shot a dreaming alt of yours once, he woke up fine - but I'll pull my punches anyway. Surprise me."

"Glad you enjoyed yourself," laughs Juliet, attempting to hold her face in such a way that the blood doesn't get on her shirt. She goes up to Bar and gets tissues and peroxide for the drops she missed, but she's already stopped actively bleeding by the time these things appear. "Okay, if you can give the Slayer a bloody nose, you can walk around Sunnydale with her for a bit, if you want. We probably won't find anything."

"Awesome," he says, bouncing along in her wake.

"I'm gonna pop up to the Belltower real quick - I just found this door and haven't been yet - but assuming it's empty and there's not much to catch up on in the book we can go straight after. You want another look at the book yourself?"

"Sure! It's been a while for me," he laughs.

Up the stairs and into the Tower. It is unoccupied. Juliet catches up on the contents of the book and lets Sue read over her shoulder.

"Lot of stuff's happened since I was here the first time," he comments.

"Us Bells like to keep busy," says Juliet. She hands him the book so he can see what happened before the point where she last saw the records. "What's yours been up to? You could put in an update, we do like to keep up with one another."

He snorts, and scrawls a note about negotiating peace with the buggers.

"Man. Do all Whistles have handwriting like that, I wonder?"

He laughs. "Dunno."

"I think the others mostly have keys to the Belltower, so they could write in the book if they wanted to, but if they come in here without their Bells to have a reason to do that, I don't know about it. Probably they don't do anything that belongs in the book that their respective Bells aren't covering, anyway. We don't need a case-by-case record of how many times they've all hooked up."

...He snickers.

"Although the time my Sherlock and Amariah and Amariah's Whistle and the relevant daemons all got a room might warrant a note just because it was exceptional. I only know about it because Amariah told me, didn't want me to get a nasty surprise about Sherlock non-monogamy. Sherlocks are a little lower-key on that topic than you guys." When Sue's done writing, she says, "Sunshine visitation time?"

"Sure!" he says.

And into Sunshine they go. "This is my house. There aren't any demons in it unless you count the domesticated one that gives me Slayer powers," says Juliet. "It's broad daylight, so we won't run into any vampires, but we probably wouldn't at night either after what I've done to the place besides my Sherlock. Other demons are sometimes out and about in the day, though." She closes the door, and reopens it to her closet. "Shoo into the hall for a sec, I originally opened this door to change my jeans."

Laughing, he shoos.

She comes out wearing functionally similar jeans that she did not spill juice on during breakfast. "You're gonna attract attention on the street in that uniform. Do you care? I could loan you some old things that I don't care if they disappear when you wake up."

"Ooh. Sure!" he says.

Juliet produces some shorts - all her jeans would be too short for him, however relaxed the fit elsewhere in the measurements - and a unisex T-shirt proclaiming affiliation with her stepfather's minor league baseball team, and she shoos herself into the hall.

"What, you just wear uniforms all the time?" Juliet asks, showing him down the stairs. "...If we meet anyone I know, which we probably won't, you're my old friend from Phoenix and you popped up here to see me while your family's in the area to go to Disneyland. Cover story could probably do with a name that isn't 'Sue'."

"Pick one, then," he shrugs.

"I'll call you Matt, I knew an actual Matt in Phoenix and he answered to approximately your description," shrugs Juliet. "And I'm Bella, here, not Juliet. Outside Milliways-type encounters only my boyfriend calls me Juliet." Here is the front door. She picks up her messenger bag from where it rests, puts it on, and strolls down to the sidewalk and hangs a left.

Sue ambles after her. "Okay," he says agreeably. "This is a nice town, I like it."

Bella bursts out laughing. "This town is a hotspot for all kinds of demonic activity and even with the vampire population shrunk as small as can be it's got a ludicrous death rate. It's not even much to look at if you ignore that. Gosh, you really have been in space for a long time."

"Ten years," he says, grinning.

"That is a long time. I'm sure it has its advantages even if it makes Sunnydale look like a nice town, though." They turn a corner. It's a hot day, but there's a breeze coming from this direction and some yards have trees and shrubs in late flower.

"I got to save humanity!" he says brightly. "It was fun."

"I'm supposed to get a few chances to do that. Haven't yet. Slow apocalypse year, apparently. Any tips for when some nasty reaches for the destroy-Earth button?"

"It's probably different," he says.

"Probably. How'd you do it?"

"Cheated," he snorts.

"Ooh, that sounds like a fun story."

"You know how I'm a mutie? Well, I linked up my whole command. And then when we got to the buggers' home planet, I linked them and they surrendered as soon as our side found somebody for them to surrender to."

"Oh, nicely done. Reminds me of how I handled the Prom Ghost, only yours is obviously much larger-scale."

"What's a Prom Ghost?"

"Her name's Minnie. She got killed at her prom about eighty years ago, and her ghost had serious anger issues and she killed some people at proms thereafter if they met certain criteria. I found her, talked to her a bit, and used some of the square wishcoins Shell Bell made for me when she visited to fix the emotional problems and the part where she could only haunt prom, and now she's running around enjoying herself someplace. Standard procedure would have had me disperse her instead."

"Good one," he approves.

"Thanks. Now that you've made peace with the aliens, what're you and Aegis gonna do next?"

"Be admirals," he says. "If we can get ourselves unkidnapped first."

"I wish you the very best of luck. What do space admirals do?"

"Not a whole lot, when there's no war on," shrugs Sue. "But we're gonna be talking to the buggers for a while. Right now I'm pretty much the only one who can."

"Because of the mutation thing. Can you do that with your Bell or does she shut you out? What about me? And you met Angela and Stella and Amariah before, right, did you try them?"

"I can do Aegis if she tries," he says, nudging Juliet's mind.

Juliet's version of the power doesn't work like a wall. It works like she's insubstantial. There is nothing to nudge, even if it looks like there should be. Juliet doesn't appear to notice him doing anything.

"But not you, apparently."

"Huh. Well, we all get the same sort of power, just in different ways - Stella and Golden are pretty closely matched but even theirs aren't exactly identical. Did you try the other Bells you met, or did they not think to inquire?"

"Don't remember."

"Fair enough. I wonder how long it'll take Aegis to find her way into Milliways. I wanna meet her."

"She's the best," Sue asserts.

"We do seem to have a knack for attracting companions and significant others who'll assert that about us," says Juliet. "I wanna meet her so I know what makes her different from Bells in general."

"We had a kid together," he offers, as a possible distinguishing feature. "Not the usual way - I don't think she's had sex, and she definitely hasn't had it with me. But it turns out this game we both played a lot ended up turning into a person."

"...That," says Juliet, "is definitely a weird one. Angela and Micaiah are gonna have a kid but I think they produced the happy news in the traditional way. How did a game turn into a person?"

"It's a computer game," he says. "And she's really smart. Her name's Jane."

"So Jane's a... computer-person." Pause. "I wonder if I should introduce you to Jarvis."

"Is Jarvis a computer-person?" he inquires.

"Yep. He was made on purpose, though. The one here is a copy of one from another world, because the one originally from here died and my Sherlock missed him."

"Awwwwww," says Sue.

"Yeah. You might want to consider seeing if you can back up Jane to disk somewhere in case of malice or disaster. Computer-people are not invulnerable."

"...I don't know if that makes sense," he says. "The way she talks, it's almost like she is computers, not just a program running on them."

"Huh, what do you mean?"

"I dunno," he says. "I'd show you, but—" he smiles, shrugs.

"Right," laughs Juliet. "Pros and cons, but on the whole I'm glad I'm one of the opaque ones."

"One time they drugged Aegis to shut down her power," he says. "It was really fucked up. But they backed right up when she told 'em I can link her anyway."

"That is fucked right the hell up," Juliet says. "Who's they? She gonna overthrow them and replace them with benevolent dictatorship Bell-style?"

"The IF," he says. "And she did ask Jane to help her take over the world..."

"Good, good, she's ahead of schedule, then," laughs Juliet.

"Course she is," says Sue. "Because she's the best."

"Amariah explained it in terms of how long it takes to get the relevant resources. I'm sure most of us would've been ready, psychologically, to rule the world from a pretty young age, but most of us don't have the wherewithal to do it right then. Like, I'm a one-of-a-kind superpowered hero person and I still don't think I could pull it off because my superpowers are about punching things and that's not how to maintain a global empire."

"Says you," laughs Sue.

"Well, yeah, says me, how would you take over and keep the world with my resources and nothing else?"

"I wouldn't," he says.

"Neither would I. I'm holding out for a mint Bell to pass on her powers to me. Then it'll be easy. Right now there's too many risks. Lots of critters want me dead, I am just barely powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with them and win, and I just don't have the resources to fend them off and also attract more attention. I'd get, say, shot in the head. I'm not that good at healing."

"Good luck," Sue says cheerfully.

"Thanks!" She turns another corner. "Hmm, are you hungry?"

"Little bit, yeah."

"Let's swing back by my house, I'll fix us sandwiches."

He beams.

"You're very cheerful, aren't you," she says, leading him through a circuit of the neighborhood that will take them back down her street.

"Yep!"

"Sure," he says, amused. "No problem."

Sue does indeed let her do the talking. He's still happy, but he's also... subdued, more so than he's been since she met him.

"You okay?" Juliet asks Sue as she heads into the kitchen for bread and cold cuts and condiments.

"Who, me? Yeah, I'm fine," he assures her.

"Okay. Salami or turkey or both?" she asks, assembling Charlie's sandwich.

"Both!"

"And if I ask the same question about the available condiments will the response be 'all of the above'?"

"It's like you know me," he laughs.

"Your dad seems nice," Sue comments, as soon as the named party is safely out of earshot.

"Is. I take it you haven't met Aegis's? Hers would be about like mine."

"Nope," he says. "We're in space, remember?"

"Yeah, but I dunno how expensive going to and fro is when and where you're at, for all I knew he visited every Tuesday."

"It's pretty expensive," he laughs. "Even my dad couldn't manage it."

"From what I hear, that's a good thing."

"Yep."

"Lucky you. Aegis seem homesick much? I'm betting not especially but that they write?"

"I don't really ask," he says, shrugging.

"Fair enough." Juliet sits down with her sandwich and a glass of water and lunches. "How's your overcondimented monstrosity?"

"Tasty!"

"Let's do it!" he says happily.

And out they go. Juliet takes them on a different route this time.