"Point on blood banks. But what's wrong about people letting vampires feed on them?"

"Interactions between vampires and humans - even and perhaps especially seemingly peaceful ones - give those vampires a vector by which they can influence those humans.  In principle there would be nothing wrong with a vampire feeding from a consenting human if that vampire could be trusted to act in good faith, but you cannot trust a vampire to act in good faith.  They exist to - torment and vex human beings.  People who seek them out would likely be easily misled or - charmed - by them, and would be their favorite candidates for transformation into new vampires - or induction into malevolent cults, or witch's covens."

"And..." he hesitates.

"...Vampires are capable of making the experience of being fed from, ah, pleasurable.  Sometimes to the point of addiction.  And none of them would hesitate to addict a human to being bitten, at which point the relationship could not fairly be called consensual."

"Does the addiction wear off? Could I just rate-limit people?"

"And there's plenty of asshole humans. Humans aren't - sheep who're entirely weak to the first charming asshole to walk by."

"There are.  But we warn people about dangerous humans, and tell them to stay away; we don't let them hand out addictive drugs to anyone who's interested.  And I think that - the suggestion that a person has to be weak to be taken in by vampires is doing their victims a disservice."

"As for rate-limiting people - perhaps you could, yes, if you had the resources to keep careful watch on all of the vampires in your employ.  But if you plan to regularly leave vampires alive, we will rapidly become overstretched."

"I don't know! Maybe there's more blood demons who can just produce a whole bunch, maybe we can get that kind of infrastructure - playing Big Brother's evil, right? Get vampires to snitch on each other."

"And we can tell people the vampires aren't nice."

"Vampires much prefer doing evil to humans to doing evil to each other.  They would recognize what you are doing as an attempt to keep them from your purpose, and see you as a common enemy, and you could not stop them from uniting against you to subvert your institution from the inside.  All vampires must be treated as - as bad-faith actors, and just as they would cooperate with you in bad faith to gain access to vulnerable humans, they would report on their companions' bad faith actions in bad faith in order to further secure that access."

"And if there are any magical sources of palatable human blood that we could access, vampires could access them too, and almost certainly already have."

"There's lots of stuff in the world. Most people don't seem to know what kind of demon Gaara is. And maybe some vampire discovered a way to get blood without killing people, and decided it wasn't evil enough, or kept it all to himself - I'm not thinking vampires would spontaneously switch to good guy stuff, I'm thinking I can carrot and stick it enough to not have to kill people."

"Perhaps for a while, but sooner or later there will be a vampire who is smarter than us, who will outwit us, and who will be able to do so because we left it alive.  Our comparative advantage is not in being able to outthink them or outmaneuver them, it is in being able to kill them.  And - "

He rubs his forehead.

"Even if your scheme goes as well as I could possibly imagine it going, there will still be at least some vampires, or more powerful creatures, who refuse to fall in line behind you on principle.  It - is not fair, it is horrible, but any Slayer will eventually have to accustom herself to killing things.  I don't believe delaying it will make it any easier."

She frowns and looks away.

"I think you're wrong. I think you tried, maybe, and you gave up - but that doesn't mean I have to."

He doesn't say anything.  Just rubs his forehead again.

"Um," says Kaylee.  She clasps her hands behind her back to stop herself wringing them together nervously.  (Here are two terribly impressive people who are dealing with things she isn't, things she can't imagine, and she just happens to know them, and it seems ridiculous to think she could have anything to say to them.  But.)  "I think.  Maybe.  We should just - stop for a few minutes.  It kind of seems like -" well, you're in this now, Kaylee, she thinks, and plows ahead - "you're both really angry, or, like, about to be really angry, and if you keep arguing and keep getting angrier - we're not gonna be able to do this right, that way."

"I guess, yeah."

He nods, slowly.  "I think you're right."

She gets up and walks out.

Kaylee - follows.

"I can - leave you alone, if you want?"  Once they're outside.

"No. I - You're good."

"Okay."

She should be saying something to make this okay but - what could she possibly say to make this okay - and her standing there being nervous trying to think of something to say is probably making it worse -

She doesn't say anything, she just halfway puts her arm around Nausicaa's shoulder, silently offering.

She leans more fully into Kaylee, curling in a bit.

She pets Nausicaa's shoulder.

"Do you think I'm - being irrational?"

“I don’t think so,” she says softly.  “I - still don’t know exactly what I think about vampires, whether it’s possible to talk to them or what, but - listening to what you were saying to him - I didn’t hear someone who was - being silly.”

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."  Pet pet.

Snuggles!

"I want things to work for everyone, and I know that's not always possible, but..."

"But it's a good thing to want."

"I think..." she says slowly.  "I think it's really easy to think that if someone's evil enough, it doesn't matter if things work for them.  Or - to act like it doesn't really matter even if you don't say it or - explicitly think it.  And I think you're really good at not doing that, and... I admire that about you."