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Bella looks up Tony Stark. (There's no reason not to.)

...Okay. He looks familiar. And his death those several months ago was really very suspicious, and she doesn't think anyone has been doing her morgue trick in New York City. And his more reclusive identical twin's body was never found at all. (If there was an identical twin, and not just Tony Stark theatrically pretending to be two people with mirrors or holograms or Photoshop and cooperative witnesses giving insistent interviews and then suddenly being dead and no longer able to pretend. There was, after all no sign of a twin before a sudden debut when he - they - was or were fifteen, and... "Sherlock Holmes", really? There's not even a hint of a twin in Tony's birth announcement, which she checks because that's the obvious thing to check.)

Come to think of it, Mr. Does Not Stick To Flypaper never introduced himself.

She supposes that his cute laser trick didn't work that well, if he got got. (But she saw it burn him. It's a clever weapon, should take almost no skill to wield a continuous beam - what kind of onslaught could have gotten around that?)

Nothing about her routine changes in response to this information.

Until several days later when she's crossing another neighborhood (seventeen to go) and - he just keeps popping up, doesn't he?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

eversomuchfun

"Estimate based on current experience," he says. "Perhaps slightly exaggerated. My point being that if I wanted to destroy the world as desperately as I want to find some remotely meaningful reason to continue inhabiting it, I expect I would have managed by now. My actual goal is much more difficult."

From:

cross_and_bow

"That being 'find interesting things', or something more complicated? Because if you just want to find interesting things I would imagine you'd become the Phantom of the Library, or something."

From:

eversomuchfun

"Well, there is interesting and there is interesting," he says. "It's interesting that the male anglerfish physically dissolves into the female and remains attached to her for the rest of her life in lieu of more traditional copulation, but I wouldn't call it an inspiration to avoid dying for another few years."

From:

cross_and_bow

"You must have found something, or you'd have let me shoot you."

From:

eversomuchfun

He spreads his hands and looks at her, as though waiting for something.

From:

cross_and_bow

"You came looking for Vampire Planned Parenthood and when you found it, I was just that fascinating?" she asks skeptically. "I can be full of myself sometimes, but I've never yet managed to believe that I was anyone's reason to exist."

From:

eversomuchfun

"On a strictly temporary basis," he says. "Until one of: you become more interesting and I decide I will be staying indefinitely; you become less interesting and I leave; or you die. And I did not come here looking for Vampire Planned Parenthood; I came to have a peek at the Hellmouth. Please tell me you know what that is."

From:

cross_and_bow

"Well," says Bella. "It sounds like a portal to or possibly a very literally named orifice of a hell dimension of some kind. You do realize I'm working almost entirely out of books? I don't even have a curriculum to go by."

From:

eversomuchfun

"Do your books perchance come from the Sunnydale High school library?"

From:

cross_and_bow

"Yes. For some reason, it has a better selection on the relevant topic than the public library."

From:

eversomuchfun

"Yes," says Sherlock. "I am aware. I have been there, in fact. Because it contains the sodding Hellmouth. Do you really have no supernatural senses at all?"

From:

cross_and_bow

"Why in the world would I wish to tell you that, either way? If I have I'd like to be underestimated and if I haven't I shouldn't care to advertise the weakness."

From:

eversomuchfun

"It was a rhetorical fucking question," he says. "You lay down crosses to catch vampires flinching and you do your research on top of the mouth of fucking Hell without noticing it's there. Would you like a bodyguard? Something ferociously unpleasant is going to kill you one day, and I would be disappointed if it happened anytime soon."

From:

cross_and_bow

Bella rubs her forehead. "I can't trust you," she says, although she does not sound happy about it. "Nothing I have heard the least inkling of says that turning into a vampire deprives anyone of whatever acting skills they may have acquired."

From:

eversomuchfun

"If I were to beat you in a fight," he says, "and then not kill you, and give you my laser pointer just for good measure, would that be sufficient proof both that I would make an acceptably trustworthy and competent bodyguard and that you probably need one?"

From:

cross_and_bow

Bella considers this.

"I haven't ever been within six feet of a walking-around vampire," she says. "I have no practical experience with close combat, and I can't even shoot you in particular, which I have been practicing at. I'm pretty sure you could beat the crap out of me if I let you close. My advantages mostly involve in incentivizing you to keep your distance. If I drop that, then I already have to trust you about the not killing me part."

Pause.

"If you give me the laser pointer, I'll put you on a one-week probationary bodyguard period, and we can see how that goes."

From:

eversomuchfun

"Ah, now I get to do the dance of deciding whether or not to trust you with it," he says, pulling the laser pointer out of his pocket and tossing it to her underhand. "Luckily for me, I don't much care."

From:

cross_and_bow

Bella catches it. "What kind of batteries does it take?" she asks.

(She's going to put in brand new ones as soon as she gets home, assuming it's any standard sort.)

From:

eversomuchfun

"Triple A. It's lasted on the ones it's got for a few years, but I'd stock up if I were you."

From:

cross_and_bow

"Yes, that's the plan," she says absently. She aims it at her pinky fingertip, turns it on, and confirms that it does no immediate damage to human flesh. "Good. This is very good."

From:

eversomuchfun

"You are going to be a terror," Sherlock says happily.

From:

cross_and_bow

"Why do you say that? Just because I'm now armed with something that makes a continuous beam of fiery vampire death and won't harm a human even if I miss?" she asks, grinning.

From:

eversomuchfun

"You have named the reason precisely, yes."

From:

cross_and_bow

"I approve," says Bella. "All right. I'm going to finish crossing this neighborhood and then go home, sit very still on my porch with a book and a booklight and play 'I am bait', and I suppose you're now provisionally my escort for same."