"Uh, Kaylee's family were talking about maybe making a report, but no one's talked to me yet."

He nods.  "Do you often - I'm sorry, am I being terribly intrusive?"

"Not really?"

He smiles briefly.  "Do you often find yourself, ah, winning fights with adults?"

"I'm kind of scrappy, so, yeah pretty much? Knew how to throw a punch even as a kid."

"Not a new talent, then?" he says, a little somber.  "I'm sorry to hear it's one you've needed."

"Eh, life." She shrugs. "Know anything about what's up with the gangs here? I keep hearing about barbecue forks, and that asshole'd tried to bite Kaylee."

" - tried to bite her?"

"Yeah. No idea what was up with that."

"It sounds, ah, quite unsettling.  And you say you frightened this person off?"

"Punched him a couple times, yeah."

"...Was his... face... at all unusual?"

(This is what subtlety looks like, right?)

"...I mean he looked like the sort of person old ladies point to and say 'if you keep frowning your face will get stuck like that'?"

 - he suppresses a snort.

"I, ah, apologize.  - Would you like to come by after school again tomorrow?  I can help you get caught up, perhaps recommend some self-defense programs you could take advantage of."

(Lord, that really is exactly what vampires look like, isn't it.)

"Sure? New school's always confusing, and I've never actually managed a formal self defense thing, might be fun."

"Very good.  Well, this, I believe, is the last of your textbooks.  I'll see you tomorrow, then."

"See you!" 

And off to find Kaylee?

She's easily findable, skimming a dusty anatomy textbook waiting for Nausicaa.  "Hey!  Get everything you need?"

"Yeah! And he offered to meet with me after school tomorrow, help me get caught up, and point me at some out of school stuff."

"He's a nice guy.  Bye Mr. Giles!" she calls as they depart.

(He permits himself a very English chuckle after the library empties.)

And Nausicaa will head home, and this time keep herself to a fairly short walk unlikely to get her lost, right in the area around her house.

She dreams, that night:

She is sitting at a table, across from a dining partner.  She cannot see their face.  It is not, exactly, in shadow - rather, in the manner of dreams, her field of vision does not seem to extend to that location in the way that it should.  She can see the table, though, candle-lit, and the checkerboard tablecloth, and the empty plate, and the glass of red wine in front of her.

"Take a drink," her dining partner says.  But she does not want to drink.  The wine is delicious, she is assured, rich and heady, but she does not want to drink.  She is thirsty, and what did she come to dinner for if she was not going to partake - but she does not want to drink.

Her companion will become stern - not angry, but merely rather impatient with her recalcitrance.  They have offered her this gift out of the goodness of their heart, to quench her thirst.  She is being so very stubborn.  But she does not want to drink -

"Don't even like wine," she's muttering as she wakes.

Ugh. Social pressure dreams. No fun.

She puts it out of her mind, and heads to school.