"Honestly hanging around dark alleys might not be bad. If vampires are real - decent chance I'm the Slayer. If they aren't - I'm pretty good at handling myself. Would give me someone on the 'other side' so to speak to talk to."

"Yeah."  She nods.  "Okay, yes, the hypothesis space is expanding, in my head."  She giggles, weakly.

Tighter hug. "We'll figure this out."

Gosh they've been hugging a while.  But it's nice.  "Yeah."

"Do you need anything?  I think I am enough not-having-a-panic-attack now that if you need to talk any of this out with somebody I can try being a sounding board."

She shifts the hug into a sort of sideways lean.

"Dunno. I think - biggest thing bothering me is he insisted vampires and a lot of demons are always hostile? And I'd like - to try and change that, even if it's true now."

"Always hostile?  Like - orcs?"

"Sounded like it. Like... Stereotypical media sociopath kind of - good liars, charming, inherently evil, will play at good and then turn on you but most don't bother playing..."

"Yeah, that sounds... if he were talking about any subset of ordinary humans, I wouldn't even consider it, honestly.  But, if we're already granting that vampires are real, I don't..."

"Yeah, we don't know if - they have free will, or they're really clever, like, monster robots. But... The one I punched seemed to have - emotional reactions to being punched that were human-typical?"

She nods.  "I think - I was too freaked out to remember stuff like that.  ...I think it's worth distinguishing between, are they ordinary people Mr. Giles is prejudiced against, or are they monster-robots, or are they... non-robot people, who are still inevitably evil for some reason.  If I were going to - solve the problem of vampires, whatever the exact details of it are - I think I'd do slightly different things in each case."

"Definitely." Lean. "Glad to have you. Probably would've gone raring off fists raised for a fight-talk by now if left to my own devices."

"I'm still a bit worried about you, but.  You are kind of a - a bad-ass."

"Aw, thanks. I think I'm more scrappy than a badass, honestly..."

"Well, it looks pretty similar from over here."

"I think the difference is whether you get knocked down first. You haven't seen me kissing the pavement yet."

Kaylee rubs her shoulder.  "You seem like you've had - a really rough time of it," she says.

"I mean I guess? Plenty of people've had worse."

"Maybe.  Just - I really can't overstate how serious my parents are about the doors-always-open thing, if you ever need - anything."

"Thanks, Kaylee. It means a lot."

"If I can't pledge to protect you from vampires, I can at least do this for you."

"Bet you'd be the healer in an rpg type thing."

"I do want to be a doctor!"

"I don't know I entirely believe him about magic, either - did I mention that? He said it was addictive and stuff. Maybe you could look into that?"

"I don't think you mentioned that.  I'd have to figure out where to get stuff not filtered by him, but if I can figure that out - I'm good at research.  Honestly, though, my thing with vampires being evil... it sounds so much like something people would be wrong about, you know what I mean?  Given that we believe him about magic existing, I'm more prepared to believe him that it's dangerous."

"Yeah. Magic's dangerous feels more - like obviously?"