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in spite of a nail
Permalink Mark Unread
Bella wakes up in a house she's never seen before that has to violate six building codes and an air quality regulation. There's furniture - abandoned, crappy furniture - but she's on the floor in the plaster dust among shards of glass that miraculously haven't cut her. She's got her cross on her neck but no crossbow, no stakes, and she feels like she's moving through gelatin. She's not sure if she could stand - she used to be able to stand! - let alone walk, let alone kick a vampire in the chin.

Oh, fuck, what happened, the last thing she remembers is -

- her birthday magic teacher clearly not being Giles's present after all, stupid, stupid -

- she doesn't seem injured. There's a tender spot in her arm but no bruise, just - is that a needle mark. Oh, powers that be fried on a stick.

She shuffles on her knees over to the door, slowly, slowly, sneezing. She tries the knob. It doesn't work - she thinks that's a lock and not her kittenish weakness. Well, of fucking course, you don't dump incapacitated girls in houses and leave the door open, but she had to try. She tries a window. It is also locked, what the fuck kind of house locks from the outside like this, and painted shut to boot. She could punch right through the glass if -

She can't punch through the glass.

Maybe among the debris on this floor is something she can improvise into a lockpick. She's acquainted with the theory, just because she keeps having to break doors down -
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"Well, would you look at that," says a voice from the shadows, lighthearted, faintly sarcastic, vaguely British. "They left me a snack. How thoughtful."

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Bella tries to freeze, but she can't even do that right anymore, so she sort of shakes where she was crawling in search of moonlit bobby pins.

Talk, you idiot, talk, it's the only thing you can do, do it!

"But they didn't leave you any fries with that. Send me back and demand a manager."
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Giggling, the vampire steps into view. Glass crunches under his boots. He's wearing black jeans and a white button-down shirt with dark spots on one rolled-up sleeve. If it's true that you can judge a vampire's age by fashion sense, this one must be fairly young.

And there's something familiar about his face, but the low light isn't helping anything.

"I like you already," he says. "But regardless, I wasn't planning to eat you. If the Watcher's bloody Council locks a vampire alone in a house with a teenage girl, one must assume they do not mean him to have her for breakfast and walk away whistling."
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One of her hands does its level best to clench. (It closes gently as though she is holding a baby bird in there, but still.) "Break down the door for me and, optionally, call 911," she suggests. "That'll piss them off."

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"Could do. What—oh, of course, you're the Slayer," he says, glancing at the barely visible mark on her arm. "Drugged to suppress your powers. That's fucking vicious, that is. I begin to think I actually could kill you and make it out of here alive. Still won't, though. My contrary nature has been thoroughly activated. Where do you imagine I'm going to get a phone?"

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"I'm not sure exactly where we are, but there's a few functioning pay phones in town and you don't need quarters to call emergency services."

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"True. I'm not sure that solves the problem, though. They might just decide to try again since their first vampire was inexplicably a dud."

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"Depends on what their goal is. Where did they even get you? You look sort of familiar, are you the vampire of somebody local, or... famous?"

(She is still fucking terrified, because this guy could decide to drain her like a jelly donut at a moment's notice and may in fact just be concealing an intention to do so because he likes psychological games, but for now, if she keeps him talking, that'll give whatever the fuck they did to her more time to wear off. They didn't outright murder her, they didn't bleed her out while she was unconscious, so they must want something out of this more complicated than her death.)
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"New York. Long story. Look, if you were the Watcher's Council and you decided to suppress a Slayer's powers and lock her in an empty house with a vampire, what would you be trying to accomplish?"

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"Plausible deniability and Slayer turnover, probably. I haven't interacted with the Council per se to know what might have annoyed them about me; any number of things, potentially, depending on what my Watcher reported back to them. It's my birthday, which might or might not be a coincidence."

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"There are less elaborate ways to kill someone. Even a Slayer. Even if plausible deniability is a significant concern. If I had to guess, I'd say this is a sink-or-swim situation. Either you manage to kill me somehow and prove what a clever Slayer you are, or you die and they start over with a fresh girl. But if I don't play along, the test is void."

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"I don't think I could kill you right now even if I had more tools because I would have to lift those tools. If it's supposed to be that, if this is some sort of idiot coming-of-age ritual, they overdosed me or they were lying when they said there have been Slayers who were eighteen and up."

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"Or you had an unusual reaction to whatever they put you on. I doubt most sincerely that Slayer-depowering potions are rigorously studied. You'd have a hell of a time putting together a trial group."

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"Yeah, maybe they didn't account for how I was before I activated, or something. Irresponsible fuckheads."

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"I'm not terribly impressed with them myself. What to do about it, now, that's the question. If this is the town in southern California I think it is, breaking the door down and calling 911 won't leave you with particularly good odds of survival, not in your condition and most especially not if any locals saw this whole business being set up."

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"I'd give myself decent odds. There aren't that many vampires around Sunnydale anymore and you could tell the dispatcher who I am."

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"There aren't that many vampires around Sunnydale anymore, she says. Why not?"

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"Me. And my key to the morgue."

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"And who are you, with a key to the morgue and a name sufficient to extract useful intervention from Sunnydale emergency services?"

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"My dad's a cop and he knows all about the sacred calling."

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"Hah. You know what, I think I'm reconsidering my objectives."

He pulls a laser pointer from his pocket and flicks the beam across his fingers, producing a quiet sizzling noise and a perfectly straight burn like he slapped a red-hot wire. Then he twirls the laser pointer theatrically and tosses it to her; it lands on the floor, within easy reach. "See if you can lift that."
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She picks it up. "Um."
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"Yes?"

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"What is it?"

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"Ultraviolet laser pointer, what's it bloody look like?"

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"Well, it doesn't look like an insta-kill, as per your hand, so even if I assume that you're some kind of exotic breed of suicidal vampire if you change your mind mid-lasering I have a problem, and I don't know why you might be some exotic breed of suicidal vampire well enough to guess if it'd persist."

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"At this range you could burn most vampires no trouble, even in your current kittenlike state. I'm not most vampires, of course."

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"I did notice that. Which makes me a little iffy on killing you, at least in a hurry."

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"If I had to guess, I'd say you heard about me on the news," he adds. "Probably went something like, 'gruesome murder of eighteen-year-old engineering genius Tony Stark and even more gruesome murder of family friend and former guardian Obadiah Stane; Tony's eccentric twin brother wanted for questioning'."

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She blinks at him. "...British accent suggests eccentric twin."

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"Very eccentric. Not technically a twin as such, but that's a somewhat longer story."

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"Even if I burned you to a crisp right now I wouldn't have a way out of the building until my drugs wore off anyway," she points out.

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"But by my best estimation you'd have cleared the test," he says. "Which may not apply if I break down the door for you."

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"If keeping you talking until I'm at my usual strength and then breaking the door down myself doesn't constitute a win, then this isn't a test in the first place, is my point. And exhibiting this strategy will be a lot more boring if I have to sit here without anyone to talk to for that long."

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He snorts.

"How may I entertain you, then?" he asks dryly.
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"Tell me your long story," she suggests.

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"Once upon a time," he begins, "there was a lonely young genius by the name of Tony Stark, who first wrote a functioning artificial intelligence at the age of eleven and then cloned himself at the age of twelve, ostensibly to see if he could but actually because he had exhausted all other avenues in the search for an intelligent creature who would love him back. He made a laughably awful parent, so much so that the clone grew up without a name and had to scrounge one out of a book."

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"This is the first time I have ever felt awkward about asking personal questions of the undead."
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He cracks up.

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After a minute, the giggling subsides.

"Shall I continue?"
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"If you don't mind, but only if you don't mind."

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He shrugs.

"As you seem to have guessed, the clone was me. Sherlock Holmes, at your service." He sketches an ironic bow. "So, I was on an accelerated growth schedule that cut out as soon as I caught up to his development, around the time he turned fourteen. A little before then, his parents died in a quote-unquote car accident which, I recently confirmed, was actually a subtle assassination. It turns out that Family Friend Obadiah Stane was a little too eager to get his hands on the family business. Unfortunately for him, and perhaps more to the point unfortunately for Tony, Howard Stark left the company to his son and not his best friend. Obadiah only got guardianship of both business and child until Tony turned eighteen."
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Nod.

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"Tony actually didn't mind having Obadiah take care of the company at all, but he did plan to take it over after he graduated from MIT, so from Obadiah's perspective it was not a stable situation. I probably didn't help matters by confronting him about the assassination of Tony's parents, but then again he would've had to set up well ahead of time, so the fact that the gang of vampires he let into our home struck that night might just have been an ironic coincidence. They destroyed the AI, probably for practical reasons; killed Tony, which I'm sure was on orders; and turned me, which I suspect was for the entertainment value. And I killed them all as soon as I woke up, and then I waited for Obadiah." He flashes a very nasty grin. "I did at least grant his second fondest wish before I tortured him to death."

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"His second fondest wish?"
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"Oh, he'd been salivating after Tony for years, I'd just never had sufficient evidence to convince Tony of it. So I put on my best Tony impression and played pretend. My best Tony impression is very good, but it's still moderately hilarious that he bought it."

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She is now somewhat more inclined towards killing him at some point rather than looking for alternative solutions.

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"And then the boys with the magic net caught me wandering by the side of the road, and I didn't care enough to defend myself, and now you know how I came to be here and vaguely recognizable and ambivalent about my own survival. Questions?"

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"Why are you such a weird vampire? I mean, torturing a guy to death is sadly par for the course but killing the vamps who turned you isn't, nor is the apathy."

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"Maybe it's the self-constructed personality. Maybe anyone would've felt the same in my situation and my situation was just rare enough not to have made an impression on the public consciousness. Maybe I'm just a fluke. Does it matter?"

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"It could. Although not very much if it's any of your guesses."

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"Under what circumstances would it, then?"

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"Well, here you are, having a polite conversation with the Slayer, whom you have just handed a deadly weapon. If there were any scaled-up way to displace conventional vampires with you-vampires that would be nice, given that conventional vampires sometimes torture people to death too."

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"I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you."

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"They weren't very up, especially since you seem to want me to kill you and I worry that if this were a widespread incentive I would have a lot of problems."

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"In what sense?"

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"If there were only like thirty of them they could just form a line. If there were a whole lot they might have to compete for my attention, and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't pick ways I'd like to be prioritized for staking."

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"Yes, that does sound like it would get awkward rather precipitously."

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"Exactly. And somehow I doubt that the relevant traits can be mixed a la carte."

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"Will it help if I say that I would not at all be inclined to participate in that competition?"

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"I mean, not in the hypothetical where I'm considering releasing your personality virus into the air, but maybe. What are you going to do if I don't kill you here today?"

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"Who the fuck knows."

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"You haven't even been a vampire very long - I don't remember when I saw the news story but it wasn't that long ago..."

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"Yeah. And I can tell what losing my soul did to me, and it really doesn't seem to be as drastic as advertised. Maybe my personality just happens to be naturally resilient to the loss of its moral compass."

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"Or maybe it's a weird interaction with cloning, or somebody cast a spell on you... no good way to tell."

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"A spell to do what? If I'd kept my soul, I still would've killed Obadiah but I wouldn't have bothered with the elaborate torments first."

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"I don't know, I'm not exactly an expert on magic, I can't get any of it to work on my own and haven't found a teacher to troubleshoot."

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"You wanna know how they got me?"

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"Fake magic teacher?" he guesses.

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"Yep. I'm not even sure if they had the ruse planned ahead of time, I just showed up and instead of my Watcher there was this other guy and I asked if my Watcher got me a magic teacher for my birthday."

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"And he ran with it. Proving, I suppose, that not all Watchers are hopelessly stupid. And now here we are."

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"Here we are. I don't know how much my Watcher knew."

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"Couldn't tell you. Wouldn't surprise me to hear that he was in on it, but maybe you have an unusually ethical Watcher."

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"He seemed like it, but."

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Shrug.

"My sympathies, for whatever those are worth coming from a soulless murdering fiend."
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"I'm pretty sure the guy who tried to use you as a murder weapon had a soul. Souls seem increasingly like a statistical thing."

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Snort.

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"I'm Bella, by the way."
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"Pleased to meet you, insofar as I am pleased about anything."

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"Are you not? Pleased about things."

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"One hundred percent of the people I have ever been close to are dead. 'Pleased' seems a ways out of reach just now."

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"Okay, point. Still, suicide by Slayer a week out seems like jumping the gun. ...The laser pointer."

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"I don't actively want to kill myself, I just can't be bothered to give the vaguest approximation of a fuck whether I live or die."

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"Ah."

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"Whereas I'd be somewhat annoyed if you died. I'm not much in the habit of liking people, but I like you."

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"Because I made a cheesy joke about fries?"

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"I think it was around 'me and my key to the morgue' that I became more than idly charmed."

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"I mean, the Slayer power set - much though I miss it right now - is really badly designed. It makes much more sense to sneak up on incipient vampires when they aren't twitching."

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"Eh, cut the originators some slack, I'm sure the situation was very different several thousand years ago when they cooked it up. I'd be more inclined to question their choice of specifically and only teenage girls as potential recipients."

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"Yes, I object to that too. I like saving the world as an occupation, but nobody actually checked on that first."

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"Well, if the chain depended on consent it would only take one generation of unusually recalcitrant potential Slayers to fuck everyone over. But if I had to design the thing, assuming a context where the need for a superpowered champion to beat up demons was desperate and immediate, I still wouldn't limit it to girls and I would not if at all possible limit it to one at a time. Limiting it to teenagers is a little more defensible on practical grounds, slip the superpowers in with all the adolescent biological upheavals so the recipient has a better chance to adapt, take maximum advantage of all that youthful energy, but if they could've had the whole package guided a little more sensibly on its way from host to host they wouldn't have needed to rely on that kind of approximation to boost the chance of landing an effective Slayer."

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"I think my wording when I was complaining about this to my Watcher was something like 'fifty adult volunteers'."

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"I'm sure it comes down to some combination of 'operative constraints on the magic' and 'they were idiots'."

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"Yes. Some unknown combination that as far as I know no one has tried to reverse-engineer. I think that series of complaints also objected to the fact that I don't get a budget."

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"That part is the fault of the modern Watcher's Council, who are certainly idiots."

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"Any ten of them with a day job and a tithe the typical Mormon manages to cough up could free me up for full-time Slaying. As it is I'm stuck living with my dad until I find some kind of income stream that accepts 'sorry, I have to go punch things' as an excused absence."

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"And I suppose you can't just take up theft."

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"Be an awkward transition period between cohabiting with the cop and fencing enough art and jewelry to make rent elsewhere."

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"And I assume there would be ethical concerns."

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"Yes. I mean, I did once find a vampire nest with a few thou in a drawer, and I kept that because I had no idea where they'd gotten it and I had just Slain all the occupants, but I can't rely on targets with deep pockets."

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"Bit of an irregular income source there, yes."

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"Yeah. I guess I don't know what you'd do for any non-blood liquidity needs you might have if you left this house."

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"Depends. Theft is certainly a possibility. I could also join up with one of those infamous bite shops, which would take care of both the blood and the money."

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"Bite shops?" Blink.

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"Vampire prostitution? You haven't heard of this?"

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"No, actually. Is that what it sounds like? People paying vampires to chomp them? Is that a sustainable business in a town that can't keep two decent Italian joints open at the same time?"

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"I have heard, but have admittedly not confirmed, that the chomping can be made such that the comparison is apt. The fact that a sustainable customer base exists in at least some places does imply that there's something to it."

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"I didn't know that, either. What kind of selective Watcher propaganda have I been reading? Nonfatal vampire prostitutes sound like perfectly acceptable neighbors, in a low rent sort of way."

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"Well, you have no guarantee that they won't turn to more traditional sources of sustenance when business is slow, but yes, they're still a step above the average vampire from your perspective."

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"Yeah, I guess if a regular prostitute doesn't get work for a day translating savings into lunch is more straightforward than the bite shop case."

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"Indeed. Opinions on the palatability of animal blood are varied, I've heard."

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"Did the Watchers or whoever they contracted this little fiasco out to feed you?"

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"They did not. My most recent meal was Obadiah. I confess to being noticeably peckish."

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"...I wouldn't actually consider feeding an otherwise well-behaved vampire completely out of the question but if anti-Slayer drugs work like drugs in general I'm probably neither nutritious nor particularly resilient against blood loss right now."

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"Yes. I am very much inclined to suspect that eating you would not be good for my health or yours."

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"I do feel a little better than I did when I woke up. Headache has fewer sharp edges, I don't feel as much like the air is mud."

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"Well, that's promising."

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"Yeah, but at this rate it'll be hours before I can bust a door. I'd apologize for keeping you waiting but that would be a truly bizarre thing to apologize for."

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He snickers.

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"I wonder how they picked you. New York seems like a weird place to go vampire hunting. Isn't Cleveland more hellish, even if they didn't want to risk crossing paths with me in my hometown?"

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"I have wondered about that. My strongest hypotheses are that they had a tipoff about the movements of the gang that turned me, or that someone had only so many hours in which to kidnap a vampire before boarding their next flight and went with the first one they saw. I did in fact make the trip across the continent cocooned in a blackout curtain in an American Airlines cargo hold."

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"That sounds uncomfortable."

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"Just a bit, yes."

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"God, this entire test is so fucked up and stupid."

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"You won't catch me arguing."

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"The Watcher's Council needs to be disbanded. Or maybe just reorged, but that actually sounds harder, considering the 'punch things' skillset."

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"Yeah. Alas, I know of no mystical artifact that would make you supernaturally good at politics."

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"Pity. It'd be handy."

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"With potential ethical implications depending on how it made you supernaturally good at politics, I suppose."

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"If it mind-controls nearby political actors it is not 'making me good at politics', per se."

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"Well, arguably. And it could just deliver you everyone's juiciest blackmail material, thus making you much better at politics than someone who has to rely on mere ordinary spies for that sort of thing."

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Snort. "That's not a skill! I wouldn't say someone who, say, has enough money to buy fourteen US senators was 'good at politics', either."

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"No? They're certainly effective at politics."

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"Yes, but not in a skill way. It's like cheating on a math test and then claiming to be good at math."

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"I could certainly imagine something in the mind-control-and-blackmail genre being known as an artifact of political skill."

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"On that I will not contradict you."

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Shrug. "Anyway. Have you decided if you're going to kill me?"

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"No. Do you need very badly for me to make up my mind in a hurry?"

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"Not in the least."

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"Because on the one hand it doesn't seem like you'd mind, you have reportedly tortured a guy to death and he might have deserved the death but not the torture, and it would make my solution to this idiot puzzle a little more unassailably what my testers have in mind. On the other hand, fuck my testers with a cello. And you might be able to lead an otherwise harmless life considering that your choice of torturing-to-death target was so personal in nature."

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"I am not at all motivated to torture anyone else to death. Without the personal connection it just sounds tedious."

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"The risk there would be that you are having me on - unlikely, considering, I think - or that you develop other antagonistic personal connections while going about your business."

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"The threshold amount of antagonism is pretty fucking high."

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"And I have no particular evidence against, but the torture is really the sticking point here. Vampires clearly have higher reasoning faculties even if most of 'em don't use them, and I kill them all the time just because they're so darned antisocial, but I do not torture them."

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"Right, but my point is more that I am all out of family members to assassinate."

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"I realize this might not seem especially plausible a week out, but even the really antisocial vampires occasionally form new relationships."

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He shrugs. "I don't deny it. But it's still not the same. I might very well find someone else to love, and they might very well be killed, and I might very well respond by killing the murderer, and granting all of the above I would probably not choose a maximally pleasant method, but that still doesn't hit the threshold for 'torture someone to death'."

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"Mmhm. All of which adds up to me really not wanting to kill you. I mean, quite apart from your potential as a harmless vampire prostitute, you're good conversation."

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He laughs.

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"...Also you're, what, six, I have not actually met anyone who was turned at age six before and haven't fully considered the eventuality, although you definitely don't trigger the 'that is a first grader' protective instincts."

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"As far as I can tell, whatever lingering effects my bizarre childhood has had, they don't add up to me being effectively a six-year-old in any relevant practical sense."

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"Because murdering adults to placate asshole Watchers is so much better. No, I really do not care to kill you, although I'll be honest that having a gadget with which to do it is very comforting to the parts of my brain which still think you're planning to kill me."

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"So what's the plan, then? Wait, regain strength, break down door, confront asshole Watcher...? Hope he isn't carrying anything more aggressive than his peacefully administered Slayer-depowering potion?"

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"He didn't sell the magic teacher act with anything more impressive than a hunk of rock he had me staring at as a 'focusing exercise'. When I'm up to normal I can take an asshole with a gun if I have to."

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"On the other hand, being a Watcher, he must know that. And I can't imagine the idea that you might object to this farce is totally foreign to them, so it's not implausible that he could have come prepared to handle an angry victorious Slayer. I can't comment on exactly how likely it is, because the Watcher's Council sure does seem to be a pack of fucking fools sometimes."

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"It's possible he has something else up his sleeve, but they couldn't routinely use this strategy if it resulted in Slayers they had to control by force on a regular basis."

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"On the other hand, turning into a Slayer they have to control by force could be among the standard ways to fail the test. We're not going to collect statistics on how many live, how many die, and how many get enormously pissed off from inside this abandoned house."

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"It would also slightly strain credulity if it resulted in Slayers they had to kill after putting them on their guard. But you do have a point."

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"How applicable of a resource is your previously mentioned father who is a cop?"

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"Pretty applicable. Do you have a phone? He took mine with the rest of what was in my bag."

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"I do not."

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"If I'm missing long enough, he'll worry, even look for me, but he won't necessarily find me soon, especially since he doesn't necessarily want to bring everybody in on a hunt that could end neck-deep in demon ichor."

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"And I could sneak out to find a payphone - I wouldn't put it past them to be watching the place, but I doubt they're watching it flawlessly - but I am not fully confident in the effectiveness and security of the 'call 911 and drop your name' plan for letting your father know your whereabouts. Hm."

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"It'd probably get to him, but rapidity is not guaranteed. Aaaand I can't even send you to my house - Charlie wouldn't invite you in but you'd get fried by the porch lights. Do you have quarters to just call his house, because I don't."

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"I'm sure I can get my hands on a quarter without killing anyone. Less sure I can do it very quickly. Can I not approach your house from some non-porch-light-involving direction? I suppose that would impact my credibility from his perspective."

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"It would definitely impact your credibility. Like, a lot. I can't even tell you something a random vampire wouldn't know because that just shifts him from thinking you're winding him up to thinking you're tormenting me in some cobwebby basement of the kind so popular among vampires. Nothing to write a note with to demonstrate the nonshakiness of my handwriting - if my handwriting would even be nonshaky now - maybe you could get Giles, determine if he was in on it, and if he wasn't, bring him to talk to my dad? Eenh. And then what if he was on it, or if he wasn't and is therefore on a plane to England right now, or if he won't believe you and knows enough magic to make him more dangerous than Charlie's sidearm..."

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"It's not strictly necessary for your father to think I'm on your side as long as whatever he thinks gets him here quickly," Sherlock points out. "You can straighten out any confusion after the fact."

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"I'm aware that we're only putting this much effort into letting you survive this experience because I don't happen to like murder, but he might be able to hurt you, at least a little. Spare holy water balloons and such."

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"I honestly don't expect to care."

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She eyes the mark on his hand. "If you say so. ...Christ, I wonder what the bastard thinks I'm even doing in here, if he is staking the place out. How were you cooped up, was it timed or what?"

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"Heavily sedated and dumped in the basement."

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"What if you'd woken up before I did?" she wonders disgustedly.

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"I'm sure they were watching the timing, but yes, we've established that their care for your safety is low."

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"...Now I'm actually curious, though, what would you've done?"

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"Waited, probably. If you'd taken a while I might've broken out and left you."

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"Mm. ...How confident are you that you actually can get out of here without being spotted?"

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"Highly. Stealth is a longstanding hobby of mine. I believe the relevant quotation is, 'I followed you.' 'I saw nothing.' 'That is what you may expect to see when I follow you.'"

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"I was trying to find something to pick the lock and didn't come up with anything, and breaking shit is loud - out here in what sounds like the middle of nowhere even forcing a painted-shut window might be loud."

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"I can get out of this house without making loud noises or being more than minimally visible. If they are watching all the exits, very closely, then they'll see me. I don't think they're watching all the exits very closely, because that takes a significant resource investment."

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"I suppose once you have an exit traversable we can always fall back on 'confront the asshole' if it turns out you do make a sound. So you get out, if you can find a payphone you try 911 and if that doesn't work you find a quarter and call my dad -" She provides the number. "And tell him where I am. If you can't find a payphone find my house -" It has an address, fancy that - "don't go too near the porch, I think he's home tonight but if he's not 911 will work better anyway."

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"Understood. Suggested approaches for 911 and the house visit? Particularly, if your father wouldn't believe I am an innocent vampire coming in peace to alert him to his daughter's state of peril, what will he believe?"

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"Tell the dispatcher that you... found me, which is almost true anyway, and read my school ID. Isabella Marie Swan. When you talk to Charlie, whichever way you wind up doing it, tell him - I don't know, um - tell him that you are a friendly shenanigan and I need a ride away from an unfriendly shenanigan. If he calls bullshit you can be all movie villain 'very well. But regardless, your daughter is at thus and such an address' wherever it turns out we in fact are, and then he has to check it out anyway. Do not make any attempt to be invited into the house, give him a berth on his way out to the car."

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"I can work with that."

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He grins brightly, steps out of the light, and soon afterward ceases to be perceptible in any way. Well, he did claim to be very stealthy.

(A quick circuit of the ground floor to map all the most obvious exits and decide where he would be watching if he were imperfectly watching this house; then he picks a back window that is not visible from any likely vantage, and carefully coaxes it open. Out he goes, without making a sound.)

Now: payphones, or Bella's house? Which shall he find first?
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He finds a payphone first, but it is broken. Very broken, probably by either a car or a demon.

He finds the house before he finds any other pay phones.
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Without getting within porch-light-activating distance of the front door, he comes close enough to listen—is anyone home?

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Somebody's pacing.

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That sounds promising.

He goes around to the back door and knocks politely.
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Footsteps; there isn't a peephole so Charlie looks through the window.

"What do you want at this hour?"
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"Message from Bella Swan. She describes me as a 'friendly shenanigan' and requests a ride away from an unfriendly shenanigan at," he gives the location of the abandoned house.

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"...You're a friendly shenanigan?"

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He shrugs. "That is what she said, yes."

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"What's the unfriendly one like this time, then?"
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"Reasonably ordinary humans with an inscrutable agenda kidnapped her, drugged her, and locked her in an abandoned house. It seems there was meant to be a danger present for her to either cleverly overcome or die of, but that part didn't work out as planned, so she is not in immediate peril and managed to send me out to summon a rescue."

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"Rrrright. You stay put."

Charlie gets his gun and peers out the front window to detect a lack of Sherlocks there and goes and gets in his car and drives. Lights, no siren.
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Sherlock makes himself comfortable in a handy shadow and awaits developments. It's not like he's going to get ahead of the cop car if he tries. Maybe if he'd had a little longer to get to know the town.

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The cop car is back, with Bella in it, twenty-five minutes later.

"Friendliest shenanigan?" calls Bella. "You there?"
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He appears.

"How'd you guess?"
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"Dad said he told you to stay put, seemed even odds." She gets out of the car, a little wobbly but able to stand. "Now I just need to figure out where my bag is and whether Giles was participating, but I think first I need dinner and maybe a nap. And you need dinner too if I remember right. There is a hole in the wall of a demon bar which might do in a pinch, go that way until you hit Main, left, second right, go six blocks, it's between the pet store and the payday loan place."

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"Thanks. I will probably be back to see how you're managing."

A-vanishing he goes. Since he has no money, he keeps an eye out for alternatives on the way to the demon bar. Is that a faint smell of blood from over thataway? Why yes. And lo, a butcher's. He picks the lock on the back door, raids the stored animal blood, forms a strong suspicion that this place is supplying the demon bar, and makes his way back to Bella's house.
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Bella is visible through the open curtain, enjoying a slice of pizza.

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"Do I have you to thank for the tiny crosses all over bloody everything?" he calls.

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She looks up, then opens her window. "What'd you say?"

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"I said, do I have you to thank for the tiny crosses all over bloody everything?"

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"Oh! Yes. Sorry I forgot to mention those. That is the other reason there aren't many vampires around anymore."

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"They're hilarious."

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"Did they make it very inconvenient to get dinner?"

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"Not especially. Although I have now firmly resolved not to flinch at them, as a point of stubborn pride."

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"Luck with that."

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"Thank you very much for that ambiguous blessing. And how goes the investigation?"

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"Charlie's doing legwork - seeing if anybody knows who might have visited Giles at school and stuff. I am eating pizza. Delicious, delicious pizza. We could have this conversation without yelling if you came around to the side window."

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"As you like."

He goes around to the side window.
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She opens that one. "So now that you are fed what's next?"

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"I'm moderately interested in helping you solve the mystery of whether or not your Watcher betrayed you to his colleagues. And the attendant puzzle of what to do about said colleagues either way."

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"I'm still not a hundred percent and don't have my phone or gear, but if you want to go do legwork last time Charlie called he hadn't tried Giles's house. Giles does not have scary porch lights but he may have other anti-vamp measures, though."

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"I'll survive. Probably. Where does Giles live?"

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Bella tells him. "Please be nice if he wasn't involved. Before today he was a fairly exemplary example."

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"I will be the very model of kindness and courtesy."

He bows theatrically and vanishes into the shadows.
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Bella eats three more slices of pizza. And a bowl of froyo. She gets up and walks around every so often to see how she's doing; improvement is gradual.

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Sherlock returns.

"Nothing interesting at the house. He was not kidnapped from it, nor did he conspire against you there in any way that left signs visible from the outside."
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"Well, that's promising as far as it goes. Charlie called and says nobody signed in to visit Giles but he found my bag and he's bringing it back before he hands off bits of the case to the department."

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"And on the other hand Giles is not at home, which at this hour strongly suggests that he is either conspiring against you or kidnapped..."

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"I feel slightly bad for hoping he is kidnapped."

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"A valid perspective, I suppose. If he is kidnapped, where do you think he might be?"

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"There's all kinds of places to spirit away a kidnap victim, but most of them aren't that human-friendly. Fake magic teacher asshole was from out of town, too - he knew about the house where he stashed me somehow but I'd be a little surprised if he had a comprehensive network of boltholes. I wonder how hard it would be to get a kidnapped Giles into a hotel or something."

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"I could manage it just fine. Even if there is no kidnapped Giles, it's a good bet that the fake magic teacher might be staying in a hotel. Did he give you a name which may or may not be fake? Could you describe him? How many hotels are there around here?"

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"He did not give me a name of any fakeness. Fifty and change, maybe sixty. White. Five-nine. Low-key boxer build under a lot of tweed, broken nose, don't remember eye color, lazy about shaving but no actual beard, salt-and-pepper hair, authentic victim of British dentistry."

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"I could pick him out of a crowd on that basis, I think. It remains to locate the crowd. Hotels?"

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"There's some crappy motels he might or might not be too classy to use even for a kidnapping excursion, and a Holiday Inn and a Marriott, and if he went a little ways out of town a Four Seasons."

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"I do get the impression that the Watcher's Council are the sort to be classy about their kidnapping excursions, but individual preferences may vary, of course. Hmm. Should I go skulking around hotels, do you think?"

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"Do those count for vampire hospitality thing?"

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"Haven't personally verified it, but my intuition is no."

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"Then that sounds potentially productive. I think I'm at eighty, eighty-five percent now, if you want to wait for Charlie to bring my phone I could come along so you don't scare possibly-innocent-Giles."

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He shrugs. "Suits me fine."

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Eventually, while Bella is confirming her ability to balance on one hand again, Charlie returns. Bella emerges from the house to collect her bag and wave Sherlock into her own car.
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Into her car goes Sherlock.

"Which is closer, Holiday Inn or Marriott?"
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"Holiday Inn." She drives. It is not that far off.

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"Do we have a plan more detailed than 'skulk'?"

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"Ask them if your uncle, witness the similar accents, checked in already?"

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"Yeah, I could sell that. All right."

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In they go.

"Good evening, how can I help you?" says the receptionist.
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"My genius of an uncle forgot to tell me which hotel I was supposed to meet him at; please tell me you've seen a tallish late-middle-aged Englishman today, broken nose, excessively fond of tweed, is any of this ringing a bell or must I turn around and check the Marriott...?"

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"Oh! Yes, he's here," she nods. "He didn't say he was expecting relatives, but you're welcome to wait in the lobby or go knock if he mentioned his room number."

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"Perfect, thank you." He smiles with a reasonable approximation of charm and breezes on into the hotel.

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Bella trots after him. "So, does tweed have a distinctive smell...?"

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"Occupied rooms are distinguishable from unoccupied ones, I doubt the occupancy of this hotel is that high, we can rule out any room containing nonhumans, and if we're lucky I'll be able to pick him out by some stronger scent than tweed."

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"He didn't smell of smoke or anything obvious. Did Giles's house smell sufficiently of Giles to do the trick if Giles is here?"

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"Could be. I don't have a lot of practice with the vampire senses, so it's hard for me to estimate how strongly the smell of Giles is going to pervade a hall he was briefly dragged along."

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"Fair enough. I'd recognize Giles's voice, if he happened to be talking... loud enough to hear through a door, my senses boosts are pretty trivial except in terms of what happened to my reaction time."

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"If either of them happened to be talking I could place their accents, which would be a big hint."

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"Yeah, especially since the lady didn't need to ask clarifying questions." Stroll stroll down the oddly carpeted hall.

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Stroll stroll. Stroll stroll stroll.

Pause.

Closer inspection of the door that smells ever so faintly of Giles.
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Bella listens, when he stops.

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"Well, if the fight isn't decided by now I'll eat my hat. Don't you worry, Rupert, if you've done well with her in spite of everything she'll be quite all right. Better in the long run."
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"No comment."

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Sherlock listens to this exchange, glances at Bella, and raises his eyebrows. What excellent timing they seem to have.

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It doesn't sound like Bella caught all of the asshole's remark, but she recognized Giles's voice.

When the door opens, the person opening it is Very Startled And Confused!
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Sherlock grins at him. It just seems like the thing to do.

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"Is this a valid answer to the test?" Bella asks, taking a step forward into the asshole's personal space. He steps back into the hotel room. "See, I didn't read the instructions. That you didn't give me. So I may have done the exercise wrong. I probably went wrong back when I forgot to bring a number two pencil, didn't I."

"I - this is not what you were supposed to -"

"No, I was supposed to kill him, probably, because all the vampires I have already killed are meaningless when you want to know if you can sic me on whoever or whatever suits you like I'm some kind of assassin-cum-slave labor. Well, I failed your test alive. You want to try to fix this imbalance? Giles, it is an enormous relief right now that you are tied to a chair; should I be scared of this creep?"
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"Probably not," says Giles. "He has stakes and a gun, but I don't believe it's loaded."

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"Stakes! How terrifying," says Sherlock.

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"I'm quaking in my boots. So, asshole, what's your name?"

"Now see here, young lady -"

Now the asshole is on his face on the floor with his hands pinned behind his back and a knee in his sciatic nerve. "I have a name. I'm going to assume you know it. Or you could go with a nice, respectful 'Slayer'."

"Slayer," says the asshole against the carpet, "attacking a human being is -"

"- what you did to me this afternoon," says Bella sweetly. "Sherlock, can I get you to untie my Watcher and call my dad, please?"
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"Of course," he says cheerfully.

He unties Bella's Watcher. He calls Bella's dad.
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Bella's Watcher eyes the strangely helpful vampire suspiciously, but doesn't try anything.

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"Charlie Swan," Charlie answers the phone.

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"We have found the man who kidnapped your daughter," says Sherlock. "She has him under control."

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"Where are you?"

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"At the Holiday Inn." He provides the room number.

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"On my way."

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"He says he's on his way," Sherlock reports to Bella.

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"Thank you, Sherlock. Giles, what is this tweedy creep's name?"

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"Arthur Mallory."

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"Right. Arthur Mallory, I'm performing a citizen's arrest, slightly out of order. Stay put and don't try anything until the cops show up." She stops kneeing his sciatic nerve, isn't that nice of her?

Arthur Mallory growls.

"Is there some Watcher protocol for getting around legalities that he may have been hoping to lean on?" Bella asks Giles.
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"Not a protocol so much as a longstanding tradition of quiet bribery. I doubt it will stand up to the current circumstances."

He pauses, then adds, "Don't you worry, Arthur. She doesn't seem at all inclined to feed you to a vampire."
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"I mean, I dunno, Sherlock, did you get enough dinner?" She isn't serious. Quite.

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"I could be convinced to find room for an after-dinner snack."

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"So behave," Bella tells Arthur Mallory. "I would only be mildly embarrassed to explain a bite mark on your person to my dad."

Growl, goeth Arthur Mallory.
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Sherlock giggles.

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"Although it's arguably no more than he deserves, I must advise against feeding Arthur to a vampire," says Giles.

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"You're probably right," sighs Bella theatrically. "Anyway. Is my working hypothesis that this was some kind of fucked-up test about right?"

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"Unfortunately, yes. I was under the impression that it had been discontinued centuries ago, but it seems I was wrong."

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"Does my solution technically count?"

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"I'm not familiar with the details, but I predict the Council will not be happy with this outcome even if it does fall into some sort of loophole. How did you manage to, er, ally with the vampire...?"

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"Oh, Mr. Mallory here overdosed me. I could barely twitch when I came around and he located me. So, a bit lacking in options, I engaged him in charming conversation. I'm very charming, Giles, did you notice? And he is an unusually nice vampire."

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"I see."

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"She is very charming, it's true. I am very charmed."

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"And, I mean, as charitably as I can possibly interpret the entire mess, it was a test of some combination of my wit and social skills, since my superpowers were inoperative. I think I passed with flying colors."

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"Hear, hear."

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"I don't know why I was ever worried."

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"A lot of it was luck in the choice of vampire. And timing. If I'd woken up a minute later or him a minute sooner and he was anybody else, I'd be dead - or possibly left there as unappetizingly drugged while whoever it was considered rampaging through Sunnydale and then decided to go somewhere less cross-infested. If we'd woken up at the same time but he wasn't such a friendly vampire there might likewise have been a problem. But this is the test Mr. Mallory set me. So."

Mr. Mallory is apparently exercising his right to remain silent while his face is mushed into the carpet.
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"I'm glad you're all right."
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"And I'm glad you didn't help kidnap me. But I'm a little annoyed that you didn't actually get me a magic teacher for my birthday."

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"I got you books. They're very useful books."

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"Books it is."

Mallory twitches. Bella tightens her grip. He stops twitching.

Eventually, Charlie shows up, cuffs and disarms the arrestee, and carts him off.
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"I am going to go home," says Giles.

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"I don't technically have anywhere to sleep," remarks Sherlock. "Do you suppose I can get away with taking this hotel room for the night?"

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"Probably. They'll charge him either way. But you might be in a bind when they try to kick you out during the day tomorrow."

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"Yeah." He shrugs. "Oh, well, maybe I can find a nice homey crypt before sunrise."

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"There should be plenty of vacated ones, considering. I'm wired, do you want me to help you look?"

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"Sure, why not."

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"Bye, Giles, thank you for not being evil." And out of the hotel they go. Bella drives to a likely graveyard.

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"I'd heard Sunnydale had an unusually large number of graveyards even accounting for the absurd mortality rate, but actually observing the phenomenon with my own eyes is something else entirely," he remarks.

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"Yeah, it's really something, isn't it? I've mostly controlled the vampire population but there are still a lot of deaths from other kinds of demon."

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"Such an unfriendly planet we live on."

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"It sucks."

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Giggle.

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"No pun intended."

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"But it was such a charming pun."

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"Not all of my charm is deliberately calculated!"

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"I suppose if it were that might be less charming."

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"Probably. I was being pretty deliberate about it early on."

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"And yet, it still worked."

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"For which I am very grateful."

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"Your Watcher seemed surprisingly disinclined to sneak up behind me with a stake," he mentions.

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"Well, you didn't kill the Slayer while you had her helpless, so perhaps he believes in the friendliness of your shenaniganhood."

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"Your father's reaction when I used the phrase was hilarious."

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"I tried to go for 'inimitably Bella phrasing, unlikely to have been produced under duress' and I nailed it!"

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"Well done."

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"Anyway, I killed a bunch of vampires in that mausoleum the other month, and it looked fairly habitable as these things go and may still be empty. Let's check it out."

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"Sure."

Into the mausoleum they go. How habitable is it?
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It has the finest collected-from-the-side-of-the-road random assembly of furniture, questionable stacks of magazines, and only a few months' worth of arthropod infestation!

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"It'll do," he judges. "Thanks for the lift."

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"You're welcome. Let me know if you have any trouble getting fed without killing people, okay?"

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"Will do."

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"Or if you feel like stomping on demons. Or sparring! You know what else is crap about the Slayer powerset, I can't practice with anybody in my weight class who doesn't want me dead!"

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"Ooh, sign me up."

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"Fun. I have no idea what sleep schedule you are on right now but maybe I will swing by tomorrow evening, because it's really about time I went to bed. Thank you for not killing me and helping me find Mallory."

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"Anytime. Goodnight."

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"Night, Sherlock." She strolls out of the mausoleum.