"Definitely learn martial arts," he says. "I expect that to be reasonably engaging."

"I expect so too. I dreaded anything resembling exercise before I activated, but it's definitely on this side of fun now that it comes easier and less... well. Clumsily."

"I was a killing machine even before I became a soulless bloodsucking fiend, so I have no comparable experience."

"...I am uncertain whether to congratulate you or pity you," muses Bella. "Say. Is there anyone in town you talk to besides me? ...Kitten poker buddies?" she asks, recalling something along those lines, as they pass the alley he identified as leading to the demon bar.

He snorts. "Not really."

"That sounds lonesome." Bella hasn't exactly made friends at school, but she's made people-she-can-sit-with-at-lunch.

"People frequently bore me, and then I am usually tempted to eat them, and I have been refraining," he says with a shrug.

"And now I feel like I ought to ask for a public service announcement of some kind on what bores you."

"Unlikely to help. 'Dull', in my experience, is a personality trait rather than a set of behaviours."

"And one that people stably do or do not have?"

"Stably do, more often than any kind of don't."

"I think you will take my meaning when I say that's not quite the information I was fishing for."

"If you would like me to tell you whether or not you will one day suddenly become boring, believe me, so would I. I don't expect it, at any rate."

"Well. If I do suddenly become boring, can I have a head start?"

"If you suddenly become boring," he says, "I will not eat you, I will leave. Which probably still works out to killing you, but at least not actively."

"I do appreciate the distinction," Bella says dryly. "Maybe I can manage to take long enough about it that I'll know how to handle myself in close quarters by then. And then I can aspire to live to the ripe old age of twenty-six. Or I suppose I can move to Renée's and pretend not to be the Slayer and let somewhat more people die."

"As you please," he says cheerfully. "In this hypothetical scenario I won't care a bit."

"Understood. Just thinking aloud. I do that, especially when I'm driving and can't think into a notebook instead," Bella snorts.

"In the likelier event that you retain your natural tendency to be interesting, I expect we can set a new record for Slayer lifespan. Thirty, perhaps," he jokes.

"I want to live forever," says Bella, hands tightening on the wheel.

"Slightly more troublesome. I know of only one method, and apart from its many other problems it only prevents you from dying of some things. True immortality is beyond my means."

"Yeah, and it has that inconvenient personality revision problem. I want me to live forever, I don't want some superficially similar creature to live forever."

"I consider myself to have continuity with the person I was, but I know not all vampires do. The objection is fair."

"What exactly do souls... do? I mean, I know what usually happens when the soul is removed. But it's apparently not consistent, I don't know the psychological mechanisms involved, and I'm wondering what function precisely they tend to serve."

"Interesting question," he says. "I could tell you what mine did for me, I suppose. Or try to. I've never exactly thought of it in those terms."