"Hey, you," he says amicably back.

"Juliet," supplies Juliet. "How goes? How's your Bell?"

"Kidnapped," he shrugs. "Good before that, though. We negotiated peace with the buggers the other day."

"Kidnapped? Shit, I'm sorry. You gonna be able to fix that?"

He grins. "Hope so."

"You got here by dreaming, right? Otherwise I'd be all over going to your world and breaking some shit to help you guys out."

"Aww, that's nice," he says. "Yeah, I'm dreaming."

"Pity. Helpfully breaking shit is front and center of my official destined job description."

Sue laughs. "Nice. What's the job?"

"I'm the Slayer. It's this fucked-up system where one teenage girl at any given time has super-strength and super-speed and the like and is supposed to use it to fight nasty bitey critters, a surprising fraction of whom find humans tasty."

"Cool job," says Sue.

"I'm making it work. Pity it's not voluntary. A lot of my predecessors had a very unpleasant time of it, and none of them has lived past age twenty-six. Which I plan to fix, but I haven't run into a mint yet except Shell Bell, who was all out of big coins at the time and didn't have access to her helper."

"Want me to come to your world and break some shit?" he offers half-jokingly.

"You good at breaking shit? I don't have any candidates lined up right now - usually I go to L.A. on weekends and make some demons very unhappy that my boyfriend found out where they live - but if you need a change of pace from being kidnapped and you can handle yourself on my level, we could wander the neighborhood and see if anything tries to eat us."

"Sounds like fun," he says brightly.

"Okay, but since you are not a The Slayer, let's go spar in the back a bit, see how you are, I wouldn't wanna explain to your Bell why her Whistle's been folded, spindled, or mutilated and all three are unfortunately likely where I live." Juliet leads him to the backdoor. "Unless you have some form of super-strength," she adds, "you don't need to worry about hurting me. Anything breaks I can nap it off in the Belltower, and you probably can't even bruise me."

...Sue laughs.

"What? I know I don't look it, but I'm totally very-gently-possessed by a demon that gives me superpowers, plus Amariah visited once and decked me out with all kinds of witchy blessings."

"Yeah," he says, "it's not that, it's just you're reminding me of my personal combat instructor."

"Yeah? How so?"

"He's a mutant. Heals really fast."

"Oh. Well, I'm hard to hurt in the first place - not least because I don't plan to just stand here like a punching bag once we get started - and I heal fast, too. I haven't picked up any injuries that weren't gone overnight so far and I tangle with stuff bigger and toothier and more venomous and scalier and whatnot than you all the time."

Sue grins. "Okay!"

She finds a nice clear spot in the Milliways backyard, and drops into a ready position. "It won't stick if I wind up hurting you - Shell Bell shot a dreaming alt of yours once, he woke up fine - but I'll pull my punches anyway. Surprise me."