"You are clever, I bet you will come up with something neat," says Bella as she pulls onto the highway.

"I can only hope."

"I should tell Giles, too. I bet he gets me a book," says Bella.

"Sucker's bet."

"Oh, I don't know, he might come up with something else." [Hey Giles! D'you know it's almost my birthday?]

[I did not!] he says. [For your birthday, I will get you... more stalling homework.]

[Of my very own?] exclaims Bella in mock glee. [Oh, it's just what I always wanted!]

He laughs.

[But I think it might be a good occasion to stop stalling, if we can do that. We are down to one solitary square. There were way more vampires than we were expecting at the first nest for the night. We're not even going to hit the others, we're just on our way home now.]

[I... yes,] he says. [That's reasonable.]

[I'm cutting out L.A. trips until Milliways yields results or I have local magic backing me up. I nearly died back when it was Defenders and probably would be dead now if it weren't for Amariah's stuff; Sherlock might have died tonight if it weren't for the square I used. I'm increasingly unclear on how Slayers without extradimensional help manage to live as long as twenty-six years.]

[What's more typical?]

[Between eighteen and twenty.]

[Yeah. I can see that. Well. The next time anything on the order of a couple thousand Defenders is after me, I hope you won't take it amiss if I grab Sherlock and make a run for Jarvis and beg a door out and don't come back unless I can find somebody who'll help me. I realize that sticking around to die would have some benefit in the form of giving the next girl in line a shot, but I really, really don't want to die.]

[I wouldn't blame you at all,] he sighs.

[I'd get you and Charlie too if you were close enough,] she volunteers.

[...Thank you.]

[Hey, I don't want you to die. I don't want anybody to die, it's just that Sherlock's the only person - besides Jarvis, who's sadly not portable - who I'd expect to be right with me in this situation, and you and Charlie are the only ones who might be in remotely plausible radii and also listen if I said "quick, through this magic door into the interdimensional bar!".]

[Sometimes,] he says, [you're a very surprising person.]

[What did I say that was surprising?] asks Bella. [Everything I said sounds perfectly reasonable to me, except that if I were slightly more altruistic and significantly more comfortable with enlisting non-volunteer teenage girls in the fight against demonic stuff I might agree to conveniently die here to allow the Slayer line to continue.]

[You're... more logical than I'm used to people being,] he says. [Myself included.]

[I'm not exactly doing Aristotelian syllogisms over here. I just - did I ever tell you my favorite three questions?]

[I don't think you did, no.]

[They're: what do I want?, what do I have?, and how do I use the latter to get the former?. They crop up in all instances of the Bell template we know of, actually, but my point is - I want to live. If I have to weigh this against other wants, then I'll do that, because that's the only way I'm going to be able to decisively reach for whatever it is that I most want. I have access to Jarvis and therefore Milliways. Jarvis is not portable, but Sherlock and you and Charlie are. I want you all to live, too. The results of my questions are pretty clear.]