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

[cross_and_bow]

"Are you fetching yours too?" she asks, popping the locks so they can get in.

[unmarred]

"We'll see. The goal is to retrieve Miles's; what happens to mine is totally inconsequential next to that."

[cross_and_bow]

"All right." Off she drives.

[thisvorlunatic]

The vampire twins are quiet.

[cross_and_bow]

"Arthur Mallory, Asshat, has not been whisked away from jail via Watcher bureaucratic magic or anything," she mentions, "which I had worried about a bit."

[unmarred]

"Good to know."

[cross_and_bow]

"Apparently they yoinked you because they like to find vampires who are weird in some way and lock them up with de-powered recently-eighteen Slayers as an extremely fucked up test of Slayer wits."

[unmarred]

"Oh."

Mark contemplates this.

"Familiar management style," is his conclusion. "If you want to kill them all, I'm game."

[cross_and_bow]

"If they take issue with my puzzle solution there might be a problem but I don't think I'll wind up killing them all, I mean, one of them is Giles," she says. "...You say things like 'if you want to kill them all I'm game' when you have a soul?"

[unmarred]

"Yes."

[cross_and_bow]

"Vampires who are weird in some way," she mutters.

[unmarred]

"I wasn't all that normal for a human."

[cross_and_bow]

"And that apparently does the trick!"

[unmarred]

Mark pauses.

"...I'm trying to imagine your mother as a vampire," he says to Miles.

[thisvorlunatic]

"I... genuinely have no idea how that would turn out."

[cross_and_bow]

(Snort.)

[thisvorlunatic]

"My guess is that either you'd hardly be able to tell the difference, or she'd be terrifying in some unprecedented, unpredictable way."

He looks thoughtful.

"Father, on the other hand? Galactic conqueror."

[unmarred]

"Yeah, I can see that."

[cross_and_bow]

"There aren't many vampire conquerors per se, it's mostly mayhem, destruction, etcetera."

[unmarred]

"We only have the one example to go on, you understand," says Mark, gesturing to Miles, "but if the pattern holds at least for our family, you keep your skills and interests but lose your moral center. Miles's father's moral center is probably a substantial part of the reason he doesn't already rule at least a significant chunk of the galaxy."

[cross_and_bow]

"Well, maybe that's what'd happen, then. But the standard case is that you keep your... style, superficially, but wind up hedonistic and thinking short-term, with attendant effects on skills and interests. You guys are weird vampires."

[unmarred]

"Now that's terrifying."

[cross_and_bow]

"Yeah."

[thisvorlunatic]

"If that happened to me and there was anything like enough left of me to realize what I'd lost, I'd probably kill myself," reflects Miles. "But I suppose the really scary part is that there wouldn't be enough left."

[cross_and_bow]

"Suicidal vampires are as far as I'm aware very uncommon, but there are ones who engage in possibly suspicious amounts of riskseeking behavior."