Behold: a graveyard. It is, mercifully, night.

Well, Emily has a veil of her fabric in a pocket, because why would she ever not.  But the other two probably don't, so.  Probably for the best.

(There's so much light here, and artificial - not really in the graveyard, but she can see it past the edges of the property and it's bright enough to light up the whole sky -)

(The gravestones she can see from here - some usual names and some weird ones, but mostly in an English-ish style when they are - the dates - wherever the three of them have landed, someone set up a whole cemetery with support to the claim that people kept dying with mortal lifespans all the way into the "1900s" - and aha, there's a "2004" - it looks like real stone - she'll investigate more closely in a minute -)

Ugh, she has a pencil but she took her diary out of her pocket to dance.  And she's not sure she'll be able to trade for a new one on the power of her name, here; she might have to make one from scratch.  Ughhhhhh.

The paired couple establish that their partner is fine before turning their attention outward.

"Are you alright, Emily?"

Nod.

"Any idea what just happened?"

Headshake.

Crickets chirp. Somebody hurries along on an errand down the street in the distance.

'Hurries', sure.

"Think we should go greet them?"

She nods but takes a handful of each of their clothes, and starts walking over.  Somewhat fast walking, but fundamentally that and not just reacting to the idea that she wants to be over there and letting it happen.

The adults seem somewhat baffled but allow themselves to be walked.  Very slowly.

"...Do you think that's a mortal?"

Emily shrugs.  She lets go of Celine to gesture to a gravestone, Michael Cartwright, 1943—1997.

"...Huh."

Even limiting themselves to walking, vampires are pretty fast; it doesn't take them very long to catch up with whoever it is.  They stick to the relative shade of the cemetery to try and get a better look at the person before making themselves obvious.

The hurrying person glances over his shoulder and hurries faster, but remains a human guy.

This is an extremely strange place.  The ground is so flat, and the buildings are made of really uncommon materials, and she doesn't know what's up with that - okay, it has wheels, but why would you make it out of something as heavy as glass and metal; it's got to weigh a couple tons - but there's nothing to pull it with, so it has to be that it moves on its own - she'll stick around and supervise the adults while they talk to this person but her attention's not really on that.

"Excuse us!" Ellis calls to the guy.

Nope he will not excuse them he will try to go faster and not really succeed because he has a limited ability to do that.

Ellis looks to Emily about whether they should go after him.

The doors of the thing over there are so flat and smooth, for something built by humans.  (If they were that.)  And there are bits made of a clearer material, that isn't glass, she thinks, and they aren't windows; they're not placed for it.  They might be lights??  She bets they're lights...

Celine goes and catches up to the guy, keeping pace with him.  "Excuse us," she repeats.  "We're rather lost; where is this?"  Her smile has obvious fangs.

He screams and breaks into a run.

- Huh?  Ugh.

When the rest of the group doesn't seem inclined to chase the guy further, Celine returns to them.  Reactively, because why not.

Hug; hairpet.

Okay, if there are no other mortals around, Emily wants to go check out the ~wheeled thing~.  She crosses the street in an instant and starts peering in its windows.

It's a 1998 red Chevy.

And it has chairs inside of it, primarily; almost all the space inside of it is chairs.  So it's more for helping people travel than objects, which makes sense if everyone or almost everyone is mortal - she taps on the window, yep, glass, and then what she thinks are lights (they totally are; there's shiny stuff inside to make them brighter) are complex resin, on the outside; metal metal metal, very firm rubber...

Can she open any of the doors?

They're locked, does that stop her?

....For now, yes.  Ugh, if she hadn't emptied her pockets out for dancing it's probably good to orient more to this place before doing anything she knows will make someone unhappy.  Who knows, she might have to trade with this object's person for a diary.

But she can see more of these - wow, a lot more of these, there must be multiple people who devote their whole lives to making them - and she's going to go down the whole street, adults tailing her, checking for any with unlocked doors.  (Or, doors she can open.  She's pretty sure they're locked but she could just be doing something wrong.)

Everybody locks their car in this town. She can find one with the passenger side window rolled down a crack, if that helps?

Sigh.  No.  She'll try and figure out the control scheme from out here.

(There's always a wheel, and always on the left side....)

Is there literally anyone else around.

N-

- yeah there's a woman who is not in a terrific hurry over there.

Celine notices her too, but he has to tap Emily's shoulder to get her attention.  They approach at a brisk mortal pace.

Biiig smile from the woman. "You three are out la-a-ate!"

Oh, is it almost sunrise - no, no, that's probably not what she meant.

"We're lost!"

"Oh no! All three of you together and none of you know where you are?" ...she's sniffing the air and maybe a tad confused about it.

"Not a clue!"

"And -" Sniff. "Where did you come from?"

"Dakota."

"North or South?"

"Somewhat in the middle."

(Emily gestures a loose fist to Ellis, tightening it rhythmically in twos.)

(...Yes or no? he signs.)

(She shakes her head.)

"It seems like you know a lot more about this place than we do," Ellis addresses the woman.  "Maybe we could go somewhere off the street to orient a little?  I'm sure we could make it worth your while."

Sleeve tug!

"My wife and I."

"Huh... sure, why not." There's an alley over there.

"About what time is it, first of all?"

"Like five a.m., maybe."

"And when is sunrise?"

"It'll be in about an hour and a half but if you're very friendly maybe you can crash in my crypt."

"Emily here isn't very friendly but Celine and I can probably be sufficiently so to make up for it, if you'd let her stay as well.  Quickly."  Alley!  Waving goodbye to Emily!

In the alley, Celine pulls aside the shoulder of her dress and arranges her hair away from one side of her neck.

...the local is presently somewhat confused about what exactly they're expecting to happen in this alley. Does nice-biting even work on non-humans? ...okay well it's a neck and it's right there, presumably she knows what she's doing. Nomf.

Celine doesn't complain.

Ellis snuggles up next to her and pets the local's back.

(Emily goes off to look at more cars.  They all have different letters and numbers on metal rectangles on them??  She doesn't know what's up with that.  Also some houses have boxes on posts out front; she starts opening those when she finds them to see if she can determine what they're about.  So far they've all been empty, except sometimes for spiders.)

There's folded up paper rectangles in this one! And a shiny cardstock restaurant advertisement!

What does Celine taste like.

Definitely different than a human, and... worse?  Yeah, probably that's worse and not just strange and new.  But not bad, overall.

Huh. Well, a snack's a snack. She doesn't taste, like, toxic. Are they also going to have sex, that's kind of what this vampire was expecting.

Well, once the biting's done, Celine starts out with kissing, with both of them getting ambiguously handsy, but once she shoves her husband to his knees and starts at the local's pants it probably becomes pretty clear.

By comparing enough boxed paper, Emily can find out... not much.  She has guesses; it's clear that these are associated with individual houses, which means that they're probably for either giving or receiving the papers, but it's hard to say which.

Then she sees a street sign, and goes back and checks it against some of the text she remembers, and yep, that's a match.  She'll have to ask Ellis whether mortals had a system like this, before.  It's pretty impressive, if it mostly works, which it might not.

All the pieces she finds have 'Sunnydale, CA' on them, somewhere, and it wasn't hard to find some with what she thinks must be different towns.  But can she find anything that's obviously from somewhere farther away than that?  A different state or territory?  A different country?

Most of the mailboxes are still empty but some of the scant pieces available have destination or return addresses in other towns, even in other states.

That makes sense, because why else would they be writing the state on here.  (Though notably, yeah, they aren't writing the country.)

What else can she figure out.  Why is the ground (again, impressively flat for the outdoors) different colors and at slightly different heights.  The side sections are kind of human-width, ish, and the painted lines are about the width of the big wheeled things?  But that's taking up so much space, for just those.  There's got to be something more to it.

She climbs to the top of one of the streetlight poles and checks for solar panels.

None! Also it makes an annoying whining noise.

Huh.

Back down.

It wouldn't do to get too far from the adults, but she can do a quick scouting trip to see if there's anything more than the cemetery and these same sorts of houses.  She travels five blocks very quickly, with plans to orient, turn left, and repeat that three times.  Unless she sees something interesting.

There's a truck trundling down the street.

Oh, it's kind of loud; that makes sense.  She's going to follow it.  Just for a bit.  Non-obviously, zipping from shadow to shadow.

It doesn't notice her. It turns a corner. The driver is sipping coffee and listening to Radiohead.

On the one hand she's good at directions and on the other hand she doesn't think the adults are going to take that long.  She'll follow it another few blocks; she really wants to hear more of that music.

The song concludes, the truck continues, the next song on the mix is Pink Floyd.

...It'll be harder to navigate this new... planet?  World?  And listen to more of its music, if she loses track of the two other people who have the same context as she does and can talk for her and stuff.  She heads back to, well, down the street from the alley they disappeared into.  She doesn't really want to overhear anything if they're still going.

The local vampire isn't going to get tired any time soon but they do have a dawn to avoid. They have earned their crash space. Her crypt's thisaway.

In the same cemetery they appeared in or elsewhere?

Different one. Lotsa cemeteries.

Huh.  It does seem like there might be a lot of mortals here, so maybe it makes sense that they'd have this many dead ones?  Maybe when she gets some paper she'll attempt some math about this.  (If she can remember that she wants to without the ability to write it down.)

....But there's a much more obvious question here, which is, why would a planet seem to be mostly made of mortals when there are enough vampires that the second person they met was one???

There are a lot of potential reasons this could be, and she doesn't have a great way of distinguishing between them, right now.  Hopefully Ellis and Celine succeeded in already trading for information in addition to shelter.  She's reasonably hopeful about that; Ellis has that whole thing where people call him 'Eighty' sometimes.  Worse comes to worst, she can veil up and excuse herself while they do some more trading, although she would really prefer not to.  She doesn't know whether anyone here's invented daytaming fabric, and if they haven't she really doesn't want to reveal that she has any.  At least until she has enough of a base of operations to make more.

Does it count as information if the vampire says, "I'm Trisha."

Kind of.

"Ellis, Celine, Emily,"  Ellis gestures.  "Where is this?"

"Sunnydale California! Home of the Hellmouth."

"Sounds wicked.  What is it?"

"Well, that's what I came here to find out, but no dice yet."

"Where did you come from?"

"San Diego."

"How long have you been awake?"

"Oh, I slept on the train, I just got here, I don't need to crash yet."

"...I mean how long has it been since you woke up.  Without a heartbeat, for the first time."

"Oh, two years."

"How did you get a crypt so fast?  Do you have friends here?"

"No, I'm not sure why this one wasn't taken! It seems pretty dead here, so to speak, compared to all the rumors about the Hellmouth."

"What sort of thing is a Hellmouth, even if you don't know quite what it is?"

"Oh, a portal to some sorta Hell, most likely."

"Nice.  Strange question, but what month is it?"

"June, why?"

"Didn't know it; wondering how long we'll be sun-trapped."

"Oh, yeah, it's not the best time of year. Better here than San Diego though."

"I've sometimes summered as far polar as New York, though the circumstances were somewhat different."

"I went to New York once when I was alive! I hated it. Maybe I'd like it now."

"What didn't you like about it?"

"It was so muggy. Bleah. And there's no elbow room even just walking down the sidewalk."

....There's still a little bit of time before sunrise, and based on what Trisha said, they could probably find a crypt of their own before then, so maybe it's worth it to explain their circumstance - but, no, crypts here are likely different than the ones they're used to and finding them might be hard.  "Sounds annoying, if you're alive enough to be annoyable by that."

"I think the elbow room thing'd still bother me."

Shrug.  "Is it really that bad, even at night?"

"I went when I was alive, but New York's still pretty crowded at night too."

"Huh."

"How'd you get woken up?  Two years ago, you said?"

"Yeah, this guy just super raped me to death and then I guess he decided he wasn't done 'cause he turned me and I hung out with him for like, a month, but he was a drag, so I split."

"It took you a month?"

"Eh, he showed me the ropes of how to eat people and stuff."

"Mm.  Mine didn't."

"Well, you seem to've figured it out, I guess."

"Yep!  It takes a certain sort of person not to do that, in a hundred twenty-some years."

"I mean, some people probably just get themselves burned up from not knowing anything," she shrugs.

"...Some, I guess.  I don't think it's very common."

"Maybe it's not. So are you like from Europe or something, are Europe vampires different?"

"Might be.  We're from Paris, originally."

"That explains how come you smell funny."

"Mmhm.  Maybe Americans burn faster?"

"Maybe!"

He loves his wife.  "Is two about a normal age around here?  Or are most vampires older."

"Haven't met that many, especially not Sunnydale ones."

"Do you think that's odd, or do you think you are for coming here?"

"I was really expecting more nightlife, not sure what's up with that yet."

"Maybe most people left for some reason."

"Yeah, maybe there's some big vampire party in Las Vegas that I wasn't invited to or something."

"Hm.  What do you normally do, overday?"

"I sleep and I get myself off and I read trashy romance novels and I eat popcorn."

The married couple exchanges a look.  "Popcorn is what?"

"Oh, I'll make some now." She fires up her little camp stove and grabs a thing of popcorn.

Pop. Pop pop. Poppoppoppoppop.

Baffling.

And then when it's done she extinguishes the stove and opens up the popcorn. Behold. She pops one into her mouth.

"- You eat it??"

"Sure. I can't live off it but I can sure eat it."

"...I don't think we know anyone who does that.  In Europe."

"Huh. Maybe they don't have popcorn there."

"Maybe not."

"Sometimes I've chewed bones?  I don't really feel like I've been missing out by not eating anything."

"It's not like I have to have popcorn, I just still like it. Oh, is chewing bones good? That never occurred to me but maybe actually I should be eating bone marrow all the time."

"It's fine.  I mostly only do it when I have a dog."

(Oh no her cats.  ...She will figure out how they got here and then figure a way to get back to her cats.)

"Huh, I don't think I ever heard of an American vampire with a pet."

"Most people in Europe don't really get it either."

"Somebody told me there was a kitten poker scene around here but I haven't seen any sign of it so I think he was lying."

Ellis is not going to ask what that is in front of Emily while they're trapped in a room with this person for the next sixteen-or-whatever hours.  "People do that, yeah."

"Or maybe there normally is, but everyone's out of town for the party."

"Well, the kitten poker is more of a demon thing than a vampire thing really, so if there was a vampire party in Vegas there should still be people playing kitten poker..."

Emily signs, I want to know about the - and she sketches out a quick ground with four circles on top and a boxy form between and above them.

"So what's up with the big metal things outside some of the mortals' houses?  With the wheels?"

"Okay I know they have cars in Europe, don't fuck with me, just because I don't know sign language doesn't mean I'm stupid."

"We haven't really been engaging with mortal society."

"You still have to eat! I'm not stupid!"

"From each other!  Can you not??"

"- what? I mean, I can drink it, but I can eat popcorn, too, that's not dinner."

"We would have died a really long time ago if we couldn't be sustained from each other."

"What even are you? You're not vampires at all, are you?"

"We call ourselves vampires -"

"- And have for our whole undeaths."

"But it sounds like we're different in some notable ways, yes."

"Europe has cars."

"Then it sounds like something pretty strange has probably happened to us!"

"I guess maybe you're from another dimension, those are supposed to be a thing and maybe some of them have weird vampires."

"Huh, maybe.  So what's a 'car'?"

"...it's the metal things with the wheels and the windows, they let people get around faster."

"How do they work?"

"Dunno, I'm not a mechanic. They need gas in 'em. I know how to hotwire one if I ever want one and haven't got the keys."

Ooh.  She still will probably mostly not do that but it seems good to know.  She can pick locks back home but it would be surprising if these weren't different in some way.

"How do they get made?"

"In factories, I guess."

"Huh."

How do people make them work?

"Are they easy to operate?"

"Sure, any fool teenager can learn to drive."

"But you do have to learn?"

"Yeah, it's like picking up a new video game or something."

"Hm?"

"God, you just don't have, like, anything where you're from, do you. It's not hard but you have to learn, you don't fucking, control it with your brain."

"It could have been more like a cart, where it's basically trivial."

How how how

"Can you give us a rundown of the basics without one present?"

"Not... really... when the sun goes down we can steal one and I'll show you I guess."

"Cool."

Writing gesture?

"...Oh, do you know where we could get some blank books?  And writing implements."

"If you don't want them to be super nice just break into, like, any drugstore, if you want more selection get like an office supply place. Does she not talk?"

Headshake.

"Not so much, no.  - I was going to ask whether you could point us to some shops but I guess you're also new in town."

"Yeah, I'd just walk around till I saw a Walgreens probably."

"We also don't know what that is."

"It's a drugstore. Wow, you really don't know anything."

"We really don't!  Can you think of anything else we might not know about and should?"

"I dunno, what things do you know? How to speak English I guess?"

"And a fair number of other languages...  We woke up in the 1880s and had fairly normal human lives until then."

"And haven't really interacted with normal mortal society since."

"Did they not have cars in the 1880s... I guess I don't know... well, there's electricity now. And... science. And... there were, like, World Wars, two of 'em."

"We have electricity.  Though, less, I think.  They're certainly enthusiastic about light, here.  - Were, and not are?"

"Well, yeah, they're over."

"That's good.  Sounds inconvenient."

"Musta been, yeah."

Ellis glances at Emily.  "I think we have science?  Unless you mean something alien by that?"

"The thing where, like, now there are airplanes, because someone did airplane experiments till they made it work."

If she draws a question mark in the air does this person get that.

"I don't speak si- i don't... hand...? sign language."

Eyeroll.  She'll ask Ellis to - okay probably she knows how to spell that, and also even if she's wrong the person won't notice.  But it's easier - "What's an airplane?"

"Like a flying car, only big and not as fun as it sounds."

That's probably accurate because it sounds like one of the most fun things possible.  It's like she was just thinking she was going to make someday!  So either the people here are smarter than at home or - it's the thing that makes them have cars, and that's something else that isn't smartness.  Which this person probably isn't going to successfully convey to her.

What she really needs is to get to a library....

"I mean, sounds pretty fun."

"Yeah it sounds it but it's the worst. I guess maybe it's better once you're a vampire, I haven't tried it since."

"What's so bad about it?"

"It's pukey and dry and jiggly all the time and there's no elbow room or leg room and it smells bad."

"Those almost all seem like they would be improved by undeath, yes."

"Yeah. But like, if it gets delayed, there's windows, so."

"Well, the -"

"That seems like a risk, yeah."

"The what?"

"I was going to say there's.  And leather."

"But maybe that doesn't work for your kind of vampires?  Or even if it did, something about it might not make airplanes in daylight tenable.  Like if you can't just hide on them."

"Oh, the windows have little shutters built right in, but there's loads of humans on them all. I guess you could go in the cargo hold," says Trisha thoughtfully.

"Yeah, humans are the reason I expect you couldn't just leather-mummy it.  Cargo hold sounds worse in terms of comfort but maybe not that bad?"

"Oh, I think it'd be pretty bad but at least not sunny. Probably the plane won't take off if you get seen and have to get a witness out of the way though." Yawn. "I'm gonna crash. I don't have spare pillows or anything, sucks to be you." She's got a bit of a nest in a corner of the crypt.

"Yummy dreams."

"Ha, I like that. Yummy dreams."

Zzz.

Thank nothing. 

Does she seem to sleep as deeply as one of their kind of vampire?

Nope. She moves around a little. Makes the occasional facial expression.

Then they hadn't better discuss anything more important than... teaching Celine sign language?  Sure.  For really so many hours.  This crypt doesn't even have a proper light-testing hole so you can tell whether it's light out without getting burned.

Trisha sleeps for really so many hours and then she yawns awake. "Hey." She checks her watch. "Couple hours to go. You wanna play cards or something?"

Nod.

She has a deck of cards. "Do you know how to play, like, any games from this planet."

"...I don't think I have a guess for whether or not we will."

"Okay. Let's play poker, we don't have kittens but we can bet, like, leftover popcorn, I bet you don't have a speck of money." She starts haphazardly explaining the rules of poker while distributing the popcorn she didn't finish.

The adults already know it and can cover for gaps in the explanation.  All three of them are wholly uninterested in eating the popcorn, but yeah, it works for chips.

Trisha doesn't want it either after it's been getting stale all night, frankly. She's not great at poker but she's a good sport insofar as being a good sport doesn't entail not wishing death on all her opponents whenever she loses a kernel.

Weird phrasing but on second thought all the normal things are ruled out by the child being present, so this seems all in good fun.  They wish she'd die too.

And eventually she checks her watch and says, "Sun should be down enough. For me, I dunno what your deal is."

"Go ahead and try it."  It's been so many hours; it feels long enough for June.  "We'll stand over here so any beams won't hit us right away?"

"Sure." She pokes her head out. "Yeah, I'm good but you can stay another fifteen minutes if you can't handle even the, like, reflections off the clouds."

Ellis sticks a hand into the doorway.  "Seems fine."  They emerge.

"Cool. Have a nice unlife, I'm gonna go get breakfast."

"Same to you."  And yeah, they should have breakfast too, even if they can source it amongst themselves.  He'll drink from Emily, and she from Celine, and Celine from him.

And then they'll wander around looking at more things?  What more things are there??

There are: cars! Birds! Buildings! Sidewalks! Hedges!

Trisha ambushing a guy and biting him while he screams and struggles!

There are vampires here but there are also mortals.  If -

I think she's killing him -

They'll rush over??

"Hey I'm not sharing, bitches," she snarls, "get your o-"

And then she explodes into dust and the man collapses to the ground.

!!!!!!?

- Ellis descends on the guy's neck.

And he too sprouts a crossbow bolt.

He flinches quickly enough to take it in the arm.  "What the fuck?"

Three more in quick succession.

Nope nope nope, now that they're forewarned none of those are getting close.  "Excuse me!"

"You are not fucking excused, stop trying to eat people, asshole!"

"He was trying to save him!!"

"Pull the other one, it's got bells on! If you wanna win Vampire of the Year give the man a wide, WIDE berth so I can call 911."

He puts his hands up and blinks across the street?

"Jesus fucking Christ. Farther than that. At that intersection. You too, lady."

Fine.

And her too?

...And not her?  Did that seem directed at her or can she watch.

At the moment the stranger is letting her exist but looks prepared to violently regret that decision at any sudden movement. She pulls out a device and pushes buttons on it.

She just watches!  What does it do?

Beeps. And then there's a tiny voice coming through it. "911, what is your emergency?"

"Maple and Thirty-third, man's bleeding from the neck, Sunnydale special style."

"Can you stay on the line?"

"I can try. May have to hang up suddenly, in case anybody with a barbecue fork shows up."

"Does he have a pulse?"

"Well, he's still bleeding pretty rhythmically, I haven't gotten that close."

Oh, it's like a radio??  It's so small!  And she just saw a person explode and die?? it's not connected to an external power source!

"Can you check, please?"

"Yeah." She edges toward the guy, still keeping a close eye on all three surviving vampires. "He's got a pulse. Not much of one."

"Ambulance is on the way. Do you need cops?"

"Don't think so."

What's an ambulance.  Cops are...?  She doesn't know what cops are.  Is she going to get depressed later if she doesn't call the adults over so they can incapacitate this woman and try and wake up the guy....

"You still there?"

"I cannot stay on the line if you're going to distract me."

"Are you behind the wheel -"

"I'm going to hang up the next time you say anything that is not essential to getting this guy to a hospital."

...So that's a car?  Ambulatory; wheels -

If there's a moment of quiet she can maybe hear this guy's heartbeat, if he still has one...

He does but just barely. Human girl is standing over him.

There is a loud unpleasant noise approaching.

Ack okay.  She - has already seen a lot of things here that humans and even vampires couldn't have done, back where she comes from.  Maybe making people not die in unusual ways is another.  If the adults are staying over there, she won't try and interfere.

Eventually the human girl gets permission to hang up. She puts her phone away. Stands guard over the man till some people emerge from a Loud Bright Vehicle and load him into it and Loud Bright Vehicle him away.

And she definitely can't still hear a heartbeat over that.  In fact she's going to cover her ears until it's gone.

"So what the fuck is your deal?" she asks, once they're gone.

It's not me who just killed someone, she signs, fully expecting this to be noncommunicative.  She points over in the direction where the adults are waiting?

"No hablo ASL." Crossbow in one hand and stake in the other she nods her head fractionally to the other vampires.

They wait for Emily to whistle sharply, but then Here They Are, standing in a cluster.  Ellis has a hole in his shirt but is no longer sporting a bolt.

Jesus fuck they're fast. "What is your deal."

"...I think we'd rather know yours, first."

"I didn't ask what you'd rather, but I guess as long as you remain in the running for Vampires of the Year we can have a slightly friendlier chat, sure. I'm the Slayer, I run around wrecking vampires and demons before they can rack up more of a body count."

"...That seems like a strange thing to focus on.  Not really any of your -"

"Unless you mean actual, dead bodies.  Fully so."

"Did it look somehow to you like she was going to take a respectable one pint like the Red Cross and send him on his way? Like hell. I guess I can't rule out she was going to turn him but that's worse."

"That's not what I meant."

"It's not worse.  ...Unless it is, here."

"Why would it not be worse? There's probably people who do in fact want to be vampires but that's because they're excited by the murder lifestyle, and then you have all the people who do not want to be vampires."

[Null] and demons?

Sigh.  "'And demons'?"

"Catchall term for nonhuman sapients probably originally from other planes or something. Perhaps many of them live normal lives without murder and do not come to my attention."

The group exchanges meaningful eye contact.  "I think we're more like one of those than like the vampires you're more familiar with."

"But you drink blood and turn people into more of whatever you are?"

"Yes."

"Yeah don't do that. That is not permitted in this jurisdiction."

"Is there anyone around who might be able to stop us?"

"- Don't phrase it like that; mortals are anxious.  Not even to save someone's life, we mean?"

"It doesn't count as saving someone's life. - I guess I have no idea what you guys were like before you turned into whatever you are, but I'm not in fact going to just straightforwardly believe you if you tell me it didn't affect you mentally."

"...Well, it does, yes.  They're just nearly all good changes."

"Says fucking who."

"...Do you want to go somewhere else, maybe sit down?  To have this conversation."

"I'm fine standing."

"If you say so.  Says me?  I like it better, and even if I didn't like it better than mortality I definitely like it better than being dead.  - But Emily," gesture, "would still be alive, and she chose it, and chose it much earlier than nearly anyone else.  So, y'know, that's something."

"Bearing in mind that I have only your word to go on, Emily's case is promising, though it would be a lot more promising if she didn't look twelve."

1 3

"Thirteen. Whatever. Maybe where you're from, there's a thriving culture of whatever it is you are making excellent role models of yourselves and humans rationally choose to join you on a routine basis and you are great about policing each other so that nobody attacks people for their blood and everybody's got an advance directive saying if they'd like to be turned on an emergency basis if they have a heart attack. I don't live there, I wouldn't know. But here? Nope, do not."

"...Is that guy Trisha attacked going to be alright, do you think?"

"Don't know. Could be. They can get him a transfusion, stitch him up. And, y'know, now he won't go home to his family and eat them."

"...If we woke anyone up we would keep them from doing that, yes."

"So they might want to, just like a normal vampire?"

"Eat, yes; kill, no.  In terms of want."

"Since I have nothing other than your word on what your kind of vampire is like, it doesn't seem like a great use of time to ask a lot of questions about how that works. Suffice it to say that I acknowledge it is possible that you are some kind of... eripmav, or whatever, which is transmissible with mental overhaul included, and drinks blood, and in spite of these disturbing features is not at drastically elevated risk of losing all interest in the welfare of others and could, back wherever you came from, live alongside human beings peacefully. That's possible. Wouldn't be the strangest thing to ever happen. But you're not at home. And I will not have you biting or otherwise injuring or transforming any humans for any reason. That includes me even if you should happen to through what I am so serenely sure would be no fault of your own find me dying, in case that was less than perfectly crystal fucking clear and in case you give a damn. And if you cannot live peacefully which means keep your teeth to yourselves alongside the human beings here, whom it is my job to protect, we are going to have a problem."

"- Do you in fact have any evidence that you could stop us from doing something.  Putting aside for the moment the question of whether we want to do anything you'd want to stop."

"Why do you suppose I might care to discuss that with you?"

"It seemed worth asking."

"I'm sure."

I want to know about cars.  And to have a diary.

"...I don't suppose we could make some sort of trade, where in return for some help in orienting to the local system, we'll... what exactly do you want?"

"I want you to be not turning or killing anyone. As long as I'm making a wishlist I'd love some way for that to be verifiable. I've made lots of progress cutting down on the local vampire population and don't want something new to come exponentiate into the niche."

"If we started exponentiating we wouldn't stay in the niche, or the locale." 

"Also I don't swear things without an endpoint."

"Nor I."

Shrug.

"Oh, that's fine, I don't consider solemn promises a form of verifiability."

"I didn't mean it as one."

"Well, you could perhaps figure out how to go home, which already has whatever utopic or dreadful equilibrium it has with there being you lot around, and that's an endpoint."

"I think it's somewhat likely that your world would be much better off if nearly everyone were - eripmavs - and while I'm not going to do anything drastic, I don't want my honor to be the only thing between me and that when it doesn't even mean anything to you.  I'll give you my word not to wake anyone for a month."

"That's not much time, aren't you even immortal?"

"We are, which is why I'm concerned about every person we don't get.  More time to lose out on."

"What in the world would you all eat if everybody were eripmavs, to say nothing of the unprecedented atrocity it would be to mass-convert everyone?"

"One, we can feed from each other.  Two, it's not unprecedented."

"Oh, pardon me, the precedented atrocity you propose to spread here."

"It's - something people write books about, the chance to save a whole world but do it right this time, carefully..."

"Right this time, huh?"

"Children don't wake up."

She gestures exasperatedly at Emily.

"Younger than that."

"Right, so, last time millions of children were murdered and this time it'll go great as long as you skip that step, never mind that it involves attacking people and altering their brains?"

"I mean ideally people are sufficiently inclined toward the idea that any 'attacking' is theatrics.  Because they know the brain altering to be favorable."

"You know what they call it when someone agrees to something, knowing that if they do not agree there will be an attack and it'll happen anyway?"

"I'm saying it is possible that we could do this slowly and carefully enough that everyone who wakes up does so without being threatened or coerced into it."

"Can you call it something other than 'waking up'. You don't have to say 'turning' if you don't want to share words with regular vampires but personally I wake up every morning."

Sigh.

"Sure.  If you can cause me to obtain a blank book and something to write with."

She hesitates for a bit, then puts her crossbow back in her bag so she has a hand free to get a blank book and a pen. She clips the pen into the spiral binding, and then Frisbees the book right at him.

- Blink.  Catch.  Blink.

It's an odd object.  Though not quite as odd as many of the other things around them.  ...He passes it to Emily.

Woahhh weird.  She dashes over to sit on the ground against the nearest vertical surface and start writing.

122.9.08

Hello new diary!  Exceedingly strange things are going to be recorded in you!

(It's not that she's not superhumanly fast at writing, but the rate at which her hand moves across the page is less than one might expect from having seen her move quickly.)

"Thank you.  - What did you want me to call it?  Turning?"

"That's what it's called with local vampires. But you can make something up, if you'd rather."

"I wouldn't.  So, I'm hopeful it could be possible to turn people into eripmavs without threats, coercion, or force, which is why I don't really feel like promising to not turn literally anyone for much longer than a month."

"I would be much more open to this idea if I thought that you would commit to avoiding threats - both open threats and ones held in reserve if you don't like the answers you get - and coercion and force, even if this, again, means you don't like the answers you get. The population you propose to turn is not, ex hypothesi, three years old, and should accordingly not be managed with strategies akin to 'do you want to wear the blue shirt or the red shirt, continued refusal will be met with an unavoidable power struggle you will lose'. Also, I'm starting to suspect that some of the mental changes involve wanting to spread your situation around, so I'd love to be confident you could police new eripmavs at whatever pace you had in mind to make sure none of them would flip off the detente."

"...New eripmavs don't have much of an offense against, for example, chains.  But it seems to me that if we've reached the part of the conversation where we're getting into details like these, we're accepting a fundamental amount of cooperation and might be better off coming to a baseline agreement on which we could build a relationship as, you know, thinking beings who aren't going to kill or shoot each other."

"Oh, that entire conversational branch is predicated on anything you say being, uh, true, I'm still attending to the possibility that it is not and that would impair relationship formation where we go sit and chat about this without me having a weapon in hand. See, from my perspective you were hanging out with a normal vampire who murdered people on the regular, and then tried to turn her victim, which again I am not at all convinced isn't worse than death, after I shot her? I did not find you innocently playing chess in the park."

"I see.  Do you know of any reason, from our perspective, we shouldn't just leave and find someone else for orientation?"  ...Well, that's not quite fair; she did give them the blank book.  But now he's said it.

"Most people don't know vampires exist."

"...Not that I knew any did for very long before I got turned, but... how?  If people are getting killed in the streets this regularly."

"Don't know. Something makes it - hard to retain, somehow, and I don't know how to fix it. Which would also impair your plans."

"Hm."

On a blank page, Emily holds up:

Is there a library nearby?

(But her writing is kind of small and she's not very close.)

"I'm sorry becoming an eripmav did not fix your voice but I can't read at that distance and do not want you to come closer."

She adds,

I can talk, I just don't.

and tears out the page, has it folded into a cylinder shape within a few seconds, and flings it over.

She catches it neatly out of the air and unfolds it annoyedly with one hand so she can keep her stake in the other. "There are libraries. They are not open at night."

Meaningful eye contact? 

"Most people call her Emily Daytamer."

"...how charming. The public library is about twelve blocks that way and hang a right and it'll be on the left."

Nod nod!  She writes that down and signs something to Ellis.

"Is this level of mistrust one at which you're willing to explain 'cars'?"