yeah that happens if you turn into a vampire

[cross_and_bow]

(prologue)

Bella slips into the school by a side door; she just saw a thing and she thinks she's seen it in a book before and thinks it's supposed to be mostly harmless but before she wakes Giles up over probably nothing or kills a likely neutral demon she wants to check.

And she pushes into the library.

Comments

[thisvorlunatic]

"I don't get the impression that you've had much social contact with vampires."

[cross_and_bow]

"I usually meet them while they're trying to kill people, frequently me."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I could say the same thing about Cetagandans, but I don't pretend this gives me a deep insight into their culture and psychology."

[cross_and_bow]

"I don't know what a Cetagandan is but it's probably not a soulless anthropophage heavily overrepresented in the set of people trying to literally end the world."

[thisvorlunatic]

"The Cetagandan Empire has a persistently expansionist bent and keeps trying to conquer new territory even though it hasn't worked out for them in about a century. Earlier this year, I liberated ten thousand prisoners of war from a Cetagandan facility where they were being psychologically tortured. The Cetagandans took exception and I spent the next six months dodging assassins at every turn."

[cross_and_bow]

"What an exciting adventure. You'd think you'd be better at coping with people having crossbows at you by now after six months of assassins. Or futuristic ray guns or whatever those are."

[thisvorlunatic]

"This is a stunner. It makes people unconscious. This is a nerve disruptor. It makes people dead," he says, indicating each in turn without touching either. "Do continue mocking me for my difficulty adjusting to the loss of my soul. It is in no way unpleasant or counterproductive, and fills me with feelings of joy and goodwill."

[cross_and_bow]

"I have the world's stupidest superpowers to deal with the most overwhelming odds and accordingly a life expectancy of fuckall, I cope with my lighthearted approach to conversation. The book you want is the third one down, black cover."

[thisvorlunatic]

"When I get my soul back, I'll see about solving that for you."

[cross_and_bow]

"That'd be grand. Do you have reason to believe your friend is not a person-eating type of vampire? How about you, have you gotten munchy yet?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"I've been a vampire for six hours. We broke into a butcher's shop and stole some pig's blood before we came here and I didn't get the impression this was a remarkable dietary choice."

[cross_and_bow]

"It's pretty remarkable, although it'd help explain how he's one of the last vampires left in Sunnydale."

[thisvorlunatic]

"What happened to the rest of them? You?"

[cross_and_bow]

"Yes, although not like you're thinking, most of my effect is not crossbow-based."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I'm really curious how you managed to invent a method of driving vampires extinct that promotes the survival of thieves over murderers without being more than half sure that the thieves even existed."

[cross_and_bow]

"I do also sometimes do the crossbow-based population control," she says. "Especially if someone's trying to start an apocalypse, I hate it when people do that. The only reason you woke up is that you didn't route through the morgue; the only reason I wasn't alert to your friend's existence is that nobody turned up dead of a suspicious barbecue fork wound when last he snacked."

[thisvorlunatic]

He sighs.

[cross_and_bow]

"And when I'm tediously covering the town in little crosses I prioritize areas I'm not likely to personally monitor on a regular basis where there's been high rates of barbecue fork death."

[thisvorlunatic]

"You seem to have a very efficient system going."

[cross_and_bow]

"Thanks."

[thisvorlunatic]

"The person I used to be would be trying very hard to make friends with you right now."

[cross_and_bow]

"You should have all the same memories and everything; if you want to be him..."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Turns out all of my social skills were built on a solid foundation of genuinely liking and caring about people and valuing their well-being and personal fulfillment for its own sake," he says. "That's the reason the loss of my soul is hitting me so hard. I used to be a fucking miracle worker. I could charm blood from a stone. I raised armies and won wars and regularly accomplished the impossible on the strength of my love of helping people and unshakeable personal integrity. And now I do not have those things. But I still have the intensely ambitious nature that drove me to keep throwing myself into the kind of situation where I could accomplish such incredible feats, and the memory of being able to pull it off, alongside the knowledge that if I tried the same thing today I'd fucking die. So I am trapped in my worst nightmare, and my worst nightmare is the loss of the very skills that would most advantage me in escaping it."

[cross_and_bow]

"That's an interesting problem to have. Well, there's supposedly an extremely unpopular quest you can undertake to get your soul back, I told you which book it's in. You could also try to get a witch to curse you but then it doesn't stick on very snugly, it's dumb."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Thank you for your help."