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Maxwell Wax leaves The Grotto. Not a bad coffee shop by any means, but it's not a fun environment late at night. The students at UC*D start showing up to down buckets of caffeine, cover the tables in textbooks, and study silently until they fall asleep. Nobody talking, nothing interesting to eavesdrop on. People get antsy about that old guy from the philosophy department staring at them, when they're not sufficiently distracted by their peers.
The University of California at Sunnydale is a quiet place at night. Rumors of violent crime going around the student body keep them from causing a ruckus on campus after sundown. Max couldn't be happier about this- his apartment has thin walls. It's good to be able to get some sleep. Not like back at UCLA, no sir.
Oh, wait. There's someone out here, actually. Approaching quickly. Approaching very quickly. Someone with a reALLY MESSED UP FACE GOOD LORD SLOW DOWN WHAT ARE YOU WHAM.
Max is on the ground, and a bodybuilder with a freakish, wrinkled face is crouched over him, growling. Max is not pleased by this situatioCHRIST OW OH GOD WHY WOULD SOMEONE BITE HIM WHAT THE
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unblinkered
cross_and_bow
"Oh, I wasn't counting that," she says. "I don't have anything to impressively bend in half, do you?"
cross_and_bow
"I don't know you that well, dude. Here -" She does a neat little backflip, and lands on one hand, then gradually transfers all her weight to one thumb. "I get super-strength, super-speed, a nice martial arts instincts package, and enough gymnastics to be accused of doping at the Olympics."
unblinkered
That is impressive. Not magic impressive, if she'd done it prior to the vampire attack, but the probabilities add up.
"...and that's enough to handle vampires? I mean... the one I met, for a few seconds there, looked pretty big, pretty mean. You mentioned a deceased predecessor...?"
The current worry is that the vampire situation is not under control. Second to the worry about whether physics is a lie, but that's background radiation to this entire thing.
"...and that's enough to handle vampires? I mean... the one I met, for a few seconds there, looked pretty big, pretty mean. You mentioned a deceased predecessor...?"
The current worry is that the vampire situation is not under control. Second to the worry about whether physics is a lie, but that's background radiation to this entire thing.
cross_and_bow
"I try not to do close combat. I mean, I could probably beat most vampires in close combat, but I have a crossbow, and they usually don't rise from the grave equipped with ranged weapons, so why pick a fair fight? And even if I could beat most vamps in close combat... well, there's most and then there's all. Adds up over long enough, I guess, and you wind up with dead predecessors."
unblinkered
"Rise from the grave? What... I assumed it was the bite thing, and you mentioned they needed to feed someone blood- is there more than one source-of-vampires?"
Asking about vampire mechanics. There has to be something more important to ask about. She doesn't know magic- she doesn't know why magic, even. Her expertise is the nasty bitey things, it seems, but... hrm.
He decides there isn't really a better way to get information at the moment, besides leaving and checking those books at the high school.
Asking about vampire mechanics. There has to be something more important to ask about. She doesn't know magic- she doesn't know why magic, even. Her expertise is the nasty bitey things, it seems, but... hrm.
He decides there isn't really a better way to get information at the moment, besides leaving and checking those books at the high school.
cross_and_bow
"The traditional deal is, vampire feeds you some of their blood, then they drink enough of yours to kill you, then you stay dead for three days which is plenty of time to get six feet under, then you find that you are a vampire and claw your way to the surface and begin preying on drunk teenagers and homeless people and so on."
unblinkered
"So... they're all, like, unilaterally evil man-eating monsters, then. Not... people. How smart are they? Is there some reason we haven't given the cops wooden bullets and wiped them all out?"
cross_and_bow
"They wake up with complete memories of their lives but without what all the books refer to as a 'soul', which seems here to mean - ability to care if things are wrong, possibly impulse control, possibly other things, I haven't had any long conversations with vampires personally. They appear to be as smart as humans and can still care if things are dangerous, inconvenient, etcetera, and it might be that if you worked really hard on setting up a system designed to include them from the start you could get them to be tolerably decent citizens, but that's not the world we live in. I have no idea if wooden bullets work ballistically and the cops are generally not fast enough to hit a vampire in the heart anyway."
unblinkered
"How many of them are there, though? Are they a big problem? Organized at all? It seems like if this were common knowledge, removing them would be a comparatively cheap fix. Put bodies out in the sun for a while after they die, or- possibly stick stakes in all the corpses, or- we've already got coffins with crosses on them, even though you said you probably couldn't kill them that way. Why is it up to... your mystical vigilante thing?"
cross_and_bow
"I'm doing the stakes in corpses thing, actually, I have a key to the morgue. The mystical vigilante business is a stupid way to go about it, but nobody asked me before it got slapped on me."
unblinkered
"I feel like... someone needs to tell the government about this. This shouldn't have to be left up to you and your mystical yada yada yada- this- there should be anti-vampire SWAT teams, magic power plants... this should be taught in schools! Secrets like this don't just happen! HOW is this a thing?!"
A "shhhh" comes from somewhere behind the counter. He'd forgotten he was in a shop, whose proprietor probably doesn't like loud disturbances.
A "shhhh" comes from somewhere behind the counter. He'd forgotten he was in a shop, whose proprietor probably doesn't like loud disturbances.
cross_and_bow
"Are you sure," inquires the girl, "that you don't want vampires and the like to continue to be motivated by secrecy? I will concede that it's weird that they are, but... they are."
unblinkered
"They... that depends. I asked- how many of them are there? If an attack was launched against them with no subtlety at all, an announcement of open war- would that be a major disaster? How many more people would die than are being killed right now? Can society not "bite" the bullet- you see what- god, pretend I didn't just say that..."
cross_and_bow
"I don't know how many of them there are. Sunnydale used to be worse than most places, at least per capita, but I've been making a dent... They don't form political units that you can declare war on. And they currently fight each other quite a lot and only make new vampires under occasional apparently whimsical circumstances, which I think might be put on hold if they had humans to fight and recognized the double advantages of turning their attackers into new vampires. And the vampires are the least of our worries. They're common, here, compared to other demon types. They're also relatively easy to handle compared to other demon types. Vampires would be maybe handleable, if humanity suddenly demonstrated way more coordination power than it has ever historically done. Suddenly uninhibited demons of thousands of other types, not so much."
unblinkered
He can tell he's not going to like the direction this goes in.
"Thousands of other types?"
"Thousands of other types?"
cross_and_bow
"Oh yeah." She makes a wave in the direction of the demonology section of the books. "They're harder to kill, they almost never have the sunlight problem or the crosses allergy or the entering human dwellings uninvited limitation, they often don't have even vaguely human psychology or speak English at all."
unblinkered
"You- vampires are one thing, magic is another, but this... all these different species of monster that are completely different from... where do demons come from?"
This is starting to seem like an upsettingly big deal.
This is starting to seem like an upsettingly big deal.
cross_and_bow
"Some of them have populations here but I think most of them are originally from demon dimensions."
unblinkered
Demon... dimensions.
"Demon dimensions. Demonsions. Other... alternate worlds with... different intelligent species of..."
Max puts the big book- the demon book- back on the shelf.
Other worlds- connected how? Magic? Magic, of course, the big I Don't Know, the- worlds with, if there's demon dimensions then the origin of magic, if there's a single origin... it's probably not on Earth with humans, it's probably disconnected from human society and history, it's... and it's all kept a secret, they're all motivated by secrecy? All of them hostile, all of them needing some resource they can get more easily from a place whose population is ignorant of their existence, worlds- the mechanics of parallel worlds, can't be the quantum model, probably a magic model, but how could it have gone unnoticed by... wouldn't online conspiracy boards pick up on these things, at least, not on things like faked moon landings, or- is there magic that suppresses...
He's ended up sitting on the floor somehow. He squeaks out something like "...universe?", his face buried in his hands.
"Demon dimensions. Demonsions. Other... alternate worlds with... different intelligent species of..."
Max puts the big book- the demon book- back on the shelf.
Other worlds- connected how? Magic? Magic, of course, the big I Don't Know, the- worlds with, if there's demon dimensions then the origin of magic, if there's a single origin... it's probably not on Earth with humans, it's probably disconnected from human society and history, it's... and it's all kept a secret, they're all motivated by secrecy? All of them hostile, all of them needing some resource they can get more easily from a place whose population is ignorant of their existence, worlds- the mechanics of parallel worlds, can't be the quantum model, probably a magic model, but how could it have gone unnoticed by... wouldn't online conspiracy boards pick up on these things, at least, not on things like faked moon landings, or- is there magic that suppresses...
He's ended up sitting on the floor somehow. He squeaks out something like "...universe?", his face buried in his hands.
unblinkered
"I- I'll be fine. I'll be fine," he replies. "I'll be... will the universe be fine? How many... is... are we safe?"
He observes, moments after asking the question, that she is the only person he knows about who's trying to make it safe, and assuming she's actively doing her job, the answer can only be "not yet".
Max doesn't whimper. That was a- that was a yawn, probably.
He observes, moments after asking the question, that she is the only person he knows about who's trying to make it safe, and assuming she's actively doing her job, the answer can only be "not yet".
Max doesn't whimper. That was a- that was a yawn, probably.
cross_and_bow
"Well, technically you aren't any less safe than you were last week except insofar as you seem inclined to poke around scary things? I have a target painted on me, which is why I haven't given you my name, no offense. I don't know how many demon dimensions there are. Lots. Most of the demons in them don't bother with our dimension most of the time, though."
unblinkered
He pulls himself off the floor.
"I meant- I meant- are we- people- most of the time, sure, but... are there demons about who might decide someday to... are they powerful enough to just, attack or enslave or destroy... every... how badly could things go wrong?"
"I meant- I meant- are we- people- most of the time, sure, but... are there demons about who might decide someday to... are they powerful enough to just, attack or enslave or destroy... every... how badly could things go wrong?"
cross_and_bow
"Apocalyptically. I haven't had any apocalypses try to happen on my watch, but they're in my job description. Why way back when someone thought conscripting random teenage girls and giving them physical-combat-oriented superpowers to handle often magically-based apocalypses was a good plan, I do not know."