"I'm technically dead, and you have the fortune or misfortune to have inherited my job slash mystical destiny. You'll find that you're now many times stronger and faster and instinctively better at fighting than you were -" Bella glances at the clock. "An hour and a half ago. And you might also get bad prophetic dreams and, if you go out at night, notice that certain people seem off, although I was lucky enough to avoid those symptoms. This office is called being the 'Slayer'; the things you are supposed to slay are vampires and demons. I am not technically meant to be telling you about this. I am technically not meant to coexist with you at all, because of how the title passes. But the people who are supposed to find you and tell you what's what are not as friendly as me. They're why I died."

"Sure. In the course of my coming to be conscious-and-capable-of-affecting-the-world in spite of technical death, I have also acquired significant magical powers. Er, they're not native to this world, I've been warned off the native sort of magic by people with my best interests at heart and should probably pass that on as long as I'm spilling the beans. If you want me to make it so the Watchers can't find you - by their traditional methods - and you'd rather go on doing whatever you were doing, I can arrange that. If you want to be equipped to do more than punch things but you're otherwise on board with helping to neaten up the edges of this overpopulated-by-things-that-eat-humans world we live in, I can get to know you a bit and maybe we can do that instead. I am Helpful Technically Dead Visitor. My name's Bella, what's yours?"

Blink. "Pleased to meet you, James. So, are the circumstances of this household such that I should be invisible and we should have the rest of our conversation telepathically?"

"Nope," she says. "Actually, we should probably get my aunt in on this."

"All right then, lead the way."

Bella stands open for inspection.

"Previous Slayer?" she guesses.

"Yep. Technically dead now."

"Guess so," says Chris.

"So can I keep her?"

"I beg your pardon? I have every intention of going home," laughs Bella.

"It's not polite to bait the guests," says Chris.

"Do let's. My nifty magical powers are from another world. I got them in an interdimensional hub place thing from another version of me," says Bella. "I can share, in reasonable quantities. This world: rather subpar compared to some I've heard of. I give it a D-minus, and it's only not an F because none of the people who've tried to destroy it so far have managed the trick. I'm gonna fix it so I can go to parties with other versions of me and not be so embarrassed."

"Do you have any more concrete plans there? What do your nifty magical powers do?"

"Basic story is, they grant wishes," says Bella. "But I've already made a nice stack of wishes regarding stable X-men style superpowers. I can teleport and fly and turn invisible and so on."

"But let me guess, they don't grant wishes like 'make the world a better place'?"

"Oh no. I have to be more specific than that. They can cover for small omissions and they're not actively malicious genies about it, but 'make the world a better place' is definitely out. So, I'm probably going to have to take over the world. I have not decided on an action plan yet because those of me who have already had this sort of magic for a while were looking at different initial conditions - we've got the one who usurped the shadow government and the one who colonized Mars and the one who stowed the dictatorial capital city on the moon to step into the power vacuum and the one who's going to convince her deity to name her Archangel and the one who's starting by uniting all the various clans of her witch species with revolutionized local magic and an artifact that dispenses objective truth. We're quite a cohort and I can't directly copy any previous strategy. The one with Mars is closest, but that alt's Earth wasn't infested with a few thousand kinds of demons and I don't want to go with her relatively hands-off style for that reason. Also not thrilled about just casually rendering all several thousand species of hostile demon extinct. Vampires come in 'nice', however rarely, so the others may too. While all this is going on, the interdimensional collection of mes is also planning to conquer and revamp the afterlife, which turns out to, (a) exist and (b) suck. I'm going to be a very busy person."

From inside her office, Chris calls, "Yes, please don't make demons extinct, that would be tragic."

"I might just give most of them their own planets or something," Bella tells Chris, "that seems likely simplest." And she turns back to James. "Do you think so? Because I'm rather looking forward to all this."