our real estate is a great investment

[cross_and_bow]

"Welcome to Sunshine," says Juliet. "And to my front porch and whatever you do don't hit the light, it'll set Sherlock on fire."

Comments

[pythbox]

"They're not likely to," he says.

[cross_and_bow]

"That's good. Can I tell you something else without it getting back to the Council?"

[pythbox]

"...Yes," he says, with some reluctance.

[cross_and_bow]

"I have acquired a friendly vampire boyfriend who has been teaching me to fight and has not tried to kill me even a little bit. I will be very annoyed if anything happens to him."

[she_sells_seashells]

"He's an alt of my girlfriend!" volunteers Shell Bell. "It's a nice template."

[pythbox]

"...I feel compelled to ask," says Giles, "even though I know the answer: are you sure he isn't plotting to kill you in some horrible way?"

[cross_and_bow]

"If he's running a con, it's a long con, that held up when we went to another world and he met an alt of his dead twin and that involves teaching me to beat the crap out of him even though I started out unable to hit him with a crossbow bolt and held up even when he got surprised by my porch lights that one time and doesn't involve trying to wheedle his way into my dad's house and is wholly compatible with him introducing me to alts of myself who'll share their magic with me and leaves him acting recognizably like the non-vampire alts of him we've met including Shell Bell's girlfriend."

[pythbox]

"All right," says Giles, "I'm convinced." Although he does feel the need to clean his glasses again.

[cross_and_bow]

"Also, he's Sherlock Holmes."

[pythbox]

"...Er," says Giles. "In what sense?"

[cross_and_bow]

"You didn't hear about this? A couple years back the heir to Stark Industries produced a twin brother out of nowhere who called himself Sherlock Holmes. Then Tony died under mysterious circumstances and Sherlock's body was never found. For the obvious reason. He had to tell me to look him up too, I never really followed corporate celebrity types."

[pythbox]

"No," he says, "I must admit I missed that one."

[cross_and_bow]

"It's all on the internet if you want to check."

[pythbox]

"I'll take your word for it," he decides.

[cross_and_bow]

"Okay. So does the Watcher's Council actually fund Slayers, because I want to buy an abandoned building and it'll be less of a waste of squares to take their money than to have Shell Bell conjure a lot of jewelry and clear out the tills in all the pawn shops in town."

[pythbox]

"...We... usually don't fund Slayers directly," he says. "What do you need the abandoned building for?"

[cross_and_bow]

"To install an AI in. Also Sherlock will probably move there," says Juliet. "The AI was also killed, when Tony was, but we brought a copy home from another world for the local Sherlock."

[pythbox]

He takes off his glasses, makes no pretense of cleaning them, and rubs his face with his free hand.

"All right," he says, "I'll see what I can do." Pause. "...You're reasonably sure he's not eating people, I hope?"

[cross_and_bow]

"He stopped eating people when he encountered me on the grounds that it would probably otherwise be hard to get me to talk to him civilly instead of trying to shoot him, yeah. After his fridge broke he started storing jars of blood - labeled from a butcher shop - in mine. Pig and cow."

[pythbox]

"That's... civilized, for a vampire," he acknowledges.

[cross_and_bow]

"Yep." She decides this is not the time to mention or defend him killing Obadiah in that other universe. He didn't eat him, anyway.

[pythbox]

"Any more surprises?" he inquires.

[cross_and_bow]

"Apart from Sherlock and the building and all the interdimensional goings-on and me being the Slayer and having a do-not-enter sign up on my brain, nope, all's dull and boring." Pause. "I killed a demon last night? One of those unpronounceable things you have to twist to take apart? Would've taken me much longer to figure out if not for the stalling homework, so thanks."

[pythbox]

"That is, very literally, what I'm here for," he says. "And your stalling homework is now your official Slayer training."

Slight pause.

"So there," he adds, with dissonant stuffiness.

[cross_and_bow]

Juliet laughs. "Well, you won't have to come up with a combat training regimen that you can implement without me having to hit you, Sherlock's got that covered and he doesn't mind if I hit him. But I do still want to learn magic. I can't count on getting minted any time soon and a finite supply of Shell Bell's squares can only do so much."