"So here's what I'm putting together," Bella the Vampire Slayer says. "You are some kind of demon-or-something from another dimension, which is why you are stunningly ignorant of supernatural staples; your friend back there apparently turned you, which means you were at least loosely human to start, although I can't rule out 'extradimensional human population raised as cultist sacrifices to insert Old God here' or something fucked up like that; and now you have broken into a library to correct your admittedly woeful education and think this is the correct situation in which to insist on some sort of respectful rules-of-engagement rigmarole that made sense in your original world while the Slayer has a crossbow and you are ash waiting to happen. That about right?"

"Will you stop flippantly threatening to kill me," he says in a tight voice, "please."

"Will you loosen up if I unload the crossbow?"

"You're missing a few important details," he says. "From my perspective, it looks like this. Four days ago, it was the year 2997 ECE, humans were the only sapient species in the fairly widely colonized galaxy, and I was on my way out of the star system where I'd just successfully rescued a shipload of hostages from space pirates. I had a broken shoulder and a shattered hand from the fight. Then I woke up in an alley not far from here, looking up at Earth's extremely recognizable moon, and it was inexplicably 2005 and there were inexplicably vampires. My shy friend was the first person who found me, and he recommended vampirism as a cure for my injuries, which would otherwise have cost me the hand given the state of local medicine. I accepted the offer as described. And then it turned out I should've inquired more closely about the exact function of a soul. Now I'm - suffering a temporary impairment to my moral compass, which I hope to correct as soon as possible. Hence the research."

"I am a very eloquent person and I truly cannot adequately describe just how utterly insufferable this state of being is," he says.

"That's not a common review of the process."

"I'm an outlier. It's hardly the first time. My fleet surgeon keeps a tally of all the classes of drugs he can't give me because I turn up unheard-of debilitating side effects."

"So you're debilitatingly allergic to the loss of your soul and you came here to research it. You even actually have one of the right books in the pile, well done. Why's your friend here, he want a soul too?"

"He's helping because he feels bad for putting me in this situation."

"...Vampires feeling bad about things is also outlying."

"I don't get the impression that you've had much social contact with vampires."

"I usually meet them while they're trying to kill people, frequently me."

"I could say the same thing about Cetagandans, but I don't pretend this gives me a deep insight into their culture and psychology."

"I don't know what a Cetagandan is but it's probably not a soulless anthropophage heavily overrepresented in the set of people trying to literally end the world."

"The Cetagandan Empire has a persistently expansionist bent and keeps trying to conquer new territory even though it hasn't worked out for them in about a century. Earlier this year, I liberated ten thousand prisoners of war from a Cetagandan facility where they were being psychologically tortured. The Cetagandans took exception and I spent the next six months dodging assassins at every turn."

"What an exciting adventure. You'd think you'd be better at coping with people having crossbows at you by now after six months of assassins. Or futuristic ray guns or whatever those are."

"This is a stunner. It makes people unconscious. This is a nerve disruptor. It makes people dead," he says, indicating each in turn without touching either. "Do continue mocking me for my difficulty adjusting to the loss of my soul. It is in no way unpleasant or counterproductive, and fills me with feelings of joy and goodwill."

"I have the world's stupidest superpowers to deal with the most overwhelming odds and accordingly a life expectancy of fuckall, I cope with my lighthearted approach to conversation. The book you want is the third one down, black cover."

"When I get my soul back, I'll see about solving that for you."

"That'd be grand. Do you have reason to believe your friend is not a person-eating type of vampire? How about you, have you gotten munchy yet?"

"I've been a vampire for six hours. We broke into a butcher's shop and stole some pig's blood before we came here and I didn't get the impression this was a remarkable dietary choice."

"It's pretty remarkable, although it'd help explain how he's one of the last vampires left in Sunnydale."