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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:

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."

From:

eversomuchfun

"I sense a slight difficulty with the latter stages of this plan," he says. "But all right, as you like."

From:

cross_and_bow

"You don't necessarily have to be on the porch, you could be a bit farther away," says Bella. "Unless that cramps your style." She pulls out a screwdriver and scratches a cross into a fire hydrant. "Do you have a bodyguarding style or are you making it up as you go?

From:

eversomuchfun

"My style is as follows: I am extremely observant and ludicrously good at killing things," he says. "I shouldn't have any trouble lurking in a nice comfortable shadow nearby."

From:

cross_and_bow

"There you go, then. How did you get to be ludicrously good at killing things? By your accounting you're six - seven? - years old. Even if you started working on it as soon as you could walk..."

From:

eversomuchfun

"I am a genius," he says matter-of-factly. "An analytical genius, specifically. And I took all the martial arts lessons I could find once I picked my name."

From:

cross_and_bow

"And you picked this one and not, like, Nick Stark or something obvious like that, because you are an analytical genius. I see," says Bella. "I've been watching aikido on the internet a little but I'm sure I'd give myself away as something supernatural if I tried to take lessons now - and before, I couldn't walk across a flat surface without tripping so I would have been taking my life into my hands. If I decide that you can be allowed within arm's reach of me I might require lessons."

From:

eversomuchfun

"I would be happy to oblige."

From:

cross_and_bow

"Very nice. By the way, if Charlie, my dad, should happen to notice you, I consider him entitled to any information he thinks to ask for, and he may also simply recognize you. He trusts me, but it's not impossible he will shoot at you before I can explain your presence. If harm comes to him - regardless of whether he starts it - that will permanently destroy your chances of... well, anything, teaching me martial arts certainly included."

From:

eversomuchfun

"I will not harm your father," says Sherlock. "Regardless of whether he shoots at me. If he manages to hit me, I may have to shake his hand."

From:

cross_and_bow

"He's a good shot and bullets go faster than bolts. Really?" asks Bella, intrigued. She paints a cross in a crosswalk and tucks one under the courthouse's drainpipe.

From:

eversomuchfun

"I did not dodge your crossbow bolts by watching you shoot them. I dodged by watching you be about to," he says. "When someone is about to shoot at me, I arrange not to be where they are aiming. I evaded a probable assassination attempt that way as a human, in fact."

From:

cross_and_bow

"Interesting," says Bella. Paint. Scratch. Tuck. Scratch. "I figured I had to be telegraphing somehow."

From:

eversomuchfun

"You were. Nearly everyone does," he says. "To me. And I say 'nearly' only because I have not seen enough examples to make me fully confident of 'everyone'."