Karen wasn't super expecting her night to get even weirder, given that it's already escalated from 'parent teacher night' to 'parent teacher night that I have to attend' to 'single combat with a super vampire' to 'getting her ass handed to her by a super vampire' to 'researching an additional super vampire who was driven to insanity and who gets visions of the future' to 'realizing that Alex was deeply and seriously afraid for her life tonight'. But that was an error, see, because things are always going to get weirder, forever and always. Case in point, she and Alex are now standing in an alley looking out at a bunch of people who look like they just stepped out of a Sherlock Holmes adventure.

Because I guess that wasn't anywhere close to enough excitement for one night, she sends, without thinking too hard about the fact that Alex is wearing different clothes. It's not like this is actually the weirdest thing going on right now.

He's been wandering this continent. It has people, but not many of them; they're easy to avoid, if you try, and you don't even have to try very hard. He hasn't run into one in centuries. They haven't changed, Pityo says. They still die all the time.

Suddenly he is somewhere else. 

It's ugly, because it's a human city. It smells, because it's a human city. The air is going to kill them all - maybe not, something else will get them first, but he for one can feel it trying to settle in his lungs. They've lit absolutely everything on fire, or something. This fucking species.

He'll just leave, then.

....she'll follow?

Hey! Hey, what's the plan here?

...nearby human contemplating how badly her week was going was thinking at him, then. 

He turns around to look at her.

That's not how he thought humans looked but whatever. 

What do you want?

I - mostly want to figure out why we're suddenly on the set of a movie adaptation of Oliver Twist, that seems like a bad thing?

Oh, did you randomly appear here too? I agree it's hideous, I'm leaving, I guess I can't stop you from following me.

He turns back around and looks up at the stars. (They're unfamiliar). 

Actually I could. Won't, though.

Do you not remember who I am?

I have never met you. He walks faster.

Well that's just great. 

She is not actually going to have any trouble keeping up with him, though some people are maybe gonna start looking at them funny. 

Listen, uh - my name's Karen Teller, and I'm the vampire slayer, and uh - you're Tyelcormo and you're Quendi and you can't read English and you have a brother who looks like this - image of Michael - and, uh, I don't actually super know how to convince you that we've met before but I really really think we should be sticking together, given all of the - everything.

Also she's pretty scared and she has no idea what's happening and she's all bruised up right now and she's really trying pretty hard not to just, like, panic.

Yeah, being a human would really suck, 'cause of how they live places like this and die constantly. He's focused on getting out of the city. What's a vampire slayer? What's English? 

Teenage girl with a magical destiny to - oh man, do you not know English, either? You must be - OK, I guess if we're in the - eighteenth or nineteenth century, I can't tell for sure, maybe you didn't know English at this point in your life - it's the language I speak and the language the people around us are speaking. I guess I can translate for you when we need to talk to people. Um, right, but the vampire slayer is a teenage girl with supernaturally gifted strength and speed and combat prowess who, uh, fights vampires and other evil stuff, and it's really dangerous so mostly they all die really fast, but I was kind of hoping that I'd make it at least a few years because you were - kind of helping me not die and stuff.

Okay. Well, I don't really do that these days.

OK, well - OK. 

She's crying, because she's kind of out of ability to cope with this particular night, but she's crying in that really lowkey way where a bunch of tears stream down her face and nothing else happens, at least as long as she doesn't have to use her voice. This is better than most other ways that this could be shaking out.

I still think we should stick together. Whatever brought us here is probably - we could still be in serious danger, it's not a good idea to be going off alone. Also you apparently don't speak English.

I'm not going to interact with the humans. I can barely even walk through this place. I'm going out to where they haven't fucked anything up yet and there's air. Already said I wouldn't stop you following.

Fine.

She's not really sure if she's gonna be able to live, out wherever it is that they're going, or whether she'd even be able to live here - she has no idea what people are willing to hire Korean women to do in - London, this seems like it's maybe London, from the accents and the stench. But she doesn't have a whole lot of better options and isn't confident that she can find Alex again if she doesn't follow, so she cradles her worse injuries and wipes her tears on the back of her sleeve and keeps following. 

Where were you before?

Lovely mountain range without any humans. He sends it. It's not familiar; it is pretty.

S'nice. Can't have been anywhere around here, I think we're in London. Wouldn't be shocked by a weird part of New York, I guess. No mountains, though.

I'll find them eventually. The world's round these days.

Isn't it usually?

No.

- I mean I feel like there was that whole thing with Columbus sailing the ocean blue, going from Europe to the new world and stuff? Pretty sure it's been round for - well, I mean, I kinda think it's been round forever, but even if it hasn't, it's not like this happened yesterday.

I haven't really been keeping track but I think it was a lot of human lives ago.

This Alex is way less comforting to have around than 1997 Alex.

I guess you did say you didn't like humans.

I sure did.

Well, fine. S'not important anyway. 

It is devastatingly important. But she's not gonna go off on her own - that would not be trying her very best to stay alive - and she's not gonna let Alex get killed by whatever's targeting them, either. So that's that.

She follows him out of the city. It's a big city, but eventually they do hit something that starts to look a little more like countryside.