Anaheed and Tumble are sat on their couch. On the table in front of them are two folded slips of paper. Tumble asks Anaheed what happens if they tie. Anaheed says that Buffy can tie-break. Tumble scoffs. “Like she’d ever vote herself out of her own apartment.” They pick up the papers, take one each and look at each other. They breathe in and Anaheed says they’ll unfold them at the same time, to which Tumble nods. As the papers are unfolded, each piece has the same two words, written in each of their handwriting, in different colours: “Buffy stays.”

The two both throw their heads back in delight, cheering at their mutual decision. They each stop and look at each other. At the same time, the words come out: “I thought you wanted her out.” Anaheed is the first to admit that she overreacted. She now feels safer with a Slayer as a roommate, especially as, according to the nightly news, zompire attacks are up. And her work can’t really follow her home unless she invites them. She asks Tumble why he changed his mind. “She’s cute. And she has a crossbow, which I’m hoping she’ll teach me to use in exchange for my vote of roommate clemency.” Anaheed smiles. “Plus,” Tumble adds, “I think she’s cool.” Anaheed agrees and they both rush to Buffy’s bedroom door, excited to share their news.

They find her room empty, boxes all that’s left.

On the roof, Buffy watches the sunset. Spike comes up from a hole behind her and asks if she’s alright. She’s sitting on the circular top of Spike’s dimensional craft. She’s thinking. Spike tells her that he’s put her stuff in a cabin and if she has any more luggage, he can have the bugs grab it whenever she wants, but Buffy insists it would be best to wait until her roommates have gone out before the cockroaches freak them even more.

Spike asks her if she really wants to do this, and Buffy responds, telling him that her scared roommates currently look at her like a human would look at a vampire. “Just one more reminder of how I fail at all things ordinary.” She is seriously depressed. Spike warns her: “Living in a giant cockroach isn’t going to help you there.” His tone changes, one more serious, but still gentle. “Besides, that’s not what I was asking.” Buffy looks down, placing her hands on her stomach. “Oh. Right,” she sighs.

Buffy has asked him to call the doctor, which Spike has done – she has an appointment the next day, although it’s moveable, he says. She stops him and shakes her head. “No, I need to do this.” She turns back, looks down from her vantage point. “It’ll be one thing I don’t mess up.”

The ship continues, moving slowly on it’s trajectory, just outside of San Francisco, overlooking the bay. The sun has gone down.

On the streets below, the echo of a police radio bounces off the walls of an alleyway. In the car are Detectives Robert Dowling and Miranda Cheung, on a stake-out. The report that comes over the mike talks of possible vampire involvement, which is cue for Miranda to ask Dowling what he learnt from Spike the other night. “Enough,” Dowling says, reaching over her and opening the glove box. A couple of stakes roll out, tied together and the car starts heading to the site of the disturbance.

In her cabin aboard Spike’s craft, Buffy asks if this is all the closet space he has. Spike is watching her unpack, and responds that the closet is fine: “Fits all my clothes,” he says. Buffy throws him a look over her shoulder: “You have like one jacket.”

Spike smiles back. “What makes you think I don’t have doubles?”

As Buffy turns back, desperate to wring more room from the tiny space, Spike brings up their conversation from before. “Did you really mean what you said the other night? If you were going to go through with having a little Slayer, was I really first on the deck to run away with?” Buffy says they would have ended up in an apartment just like this: cramped, dingy, but slightly less steam-punk. And definitely without the shed bug legs, she cringes, removing one from the closet. Buffy sits on the bed as Spike hurriedly removes the offending husk. Who else would be better than Spike? She realises now, that it was a stupid idea and would never have worked.

Spike moves closer to her. “Why not? You ever see me with the kidlets? Didn’t do such a bad job with Dawn when you were two metres down.” Buffy looks up at him, reaching out for his arm. “But Spike, if I were trying to have a normal life, you’d be exactly what I’d be running away from.”

Spike doesn’t say anything for a second. He just looks at her. “Right,” he says, after a brief pause. “I’m just the bloke you go to when you need help out of a jam.” He turns and walks away, leaving Buffy cursing her bad mouth.

As Spike heads off down the corridors of his ship, one of his bugs stops to ask if he’s seen a limb. Spike doesn’t even look at him as he storms past, asking the creature if he wants to lose another. A beep from his phone stops him dead. He looks down and checks the display. “Oh bloody hell,” he says aloud in annoyance. He answers the phone. “I don’t have time for the Keystone Cops,” he shouts, only slightly sarcastically. It’s Detective Dowling. The detective reminds Spike that he told him he wasn’t ready for a nest. Spike asks him where he is, as Dowling replies that now he understands what Spike meant.

In front of Dowling and Cheung are two of their squad cars, overturned and on fire. The officers are seemingly all dead, their insignia smeared with blood. Miranda says they should wait for back up, but Dowling tells her that this was their back-up.

As he’s wondering where the officers are, a zompire comes from nowhere and tackles Miranda to the ground. Spike hears the commotion across the open phone line and commands his bugs to head for the park, the one with the fire nozzle sticking out of it!

In her cabin, Buffy is wondering why the ship has European electrical sockets. Spike enters, hurriedly, telling her that the real question should be why European sockets are alien. He tells her that they need to go and help Dowling and she grabs a stake, but he grabs her by the arm. “Not like that, you’re not.”

Buffy says that she’s not going through with the pregnancy, so it doesn’t matter, but Spike is adamant: until she goes through with it, or not, she’s Persona Non Slayer. And he won’t have his mind changed.

In the park, Dowling hides behind the wreckage of one of the squad cars. Miranda is a few feet away, surrounded by zompires. As he gets up to help her, he comes face to face with a dozen more, all converging on him. He runs in the only direction available to him, into the nearest structure and bolts the door. Outside, Spike drops from the sky – and is immediately knocked off stride by a zompire, teeth snarling in his face. Spike tells the zombie that two can play at that game and his vampire features unfurl and a deep growl comes from the back of his throat. He wastes no time in raising his stake and killing the vamp.

Spike races towards Dowling, inside, trying desperately to fight off the vampires: there’s more of them now, at least twenty, maybe more, and Dowling is petrified, shaking like a leave and reciting the rules: pointy end out, aim for the heart. He’s surrounded by more and one comes from behind him, pulling him away.

On the ship, Buffy asks the cockroaches to move the craft, just as Spike appears to be losing, yelling at the zompires that he’s already dead!

Suddenly, Dowling feels a hand grab his ankle! “A little help here Detective,” says Buffy as she swings him by his legs! As he moves, Dowling stakes the vampire and Buffy lets him fall, Dowling rolling with the dust. “That was my first slay,” he says with a wide grin on his face. Buffy doesn’t return the grin. She rearms herself and takes position in front of him. “Won’t be your last,” she says as more zompires close in.

A short few minutes later and Buffy and Dowling are heading out, Spike’s ship opening a hatch before them. Dowling questions whether she’s now living on the ship, to which Buffy tells him that it’s a new arrangement. She stakes another zompire, as Dowling asks her when she decided to live with her boyfriend on a spaceship, clearly jealous. Buffy, still slaying, denies that Spike is her boyfriend. “Did he say that?” Dowling tells her that he didn’t have to: Spike is clearly still completely in love with her. Buffy looks at him. She doesn’t respond. She tells the detective to get on the ship and not to touch anything – he wouldn’t want to anyway, she adds, because it’s full of bugs.

With Dowling secure, Buffy leaps down again to aid Spike, almost overwhelmed by the zompires. She joins the fray and cuts through the enemy with ease; before too long, she’s patting the dust away from her clothing. As the dust swirls away on the breeze, Buffy wastes no time in asking her questions: “Is it true, Spike? Are you still in love with me?”

Spike looks her in the eyes. “You’re really going to make me say what everyone else already worked out?” Buffy looks at him and then looks away. “You know I’m terrible at everything that doesn’t end with slaying,” she reminds him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Spike moves closer to her, gently cupping her belly. “You had bigger problems and you needed my help.” He turns away. “But I get how things work between us. I was a twit to think they might have changed.” He tells her that as soon as he knows she’s okay, he’ll be leaving again, on the ship. “Because I don’t want to be the dark place you run to when things aren’t working. That’s not why I fought to get my soul back. That’s not why I’ve been sticking up for you about the Seed. And that’s certainly not why I’ve stuck around this bloody city.”

Buffy looks at him. “You stayed for me?” she asks for clarification. “I didn’t stay for cable-cars and Rice-A-Roni,” he jokes. “I can give you what you need,” he says, cupping her chin with his fingers, bringing their faces closer together.

“I want normal too,” he says, their lips about to meet. “And I want it with you.”

Buffy is about to respond when there’s a pervading crunch that fills the air, her mouth opening in a gasp. Then she realises what’s happened and she screams! Spike looks at a zompire who is on the ground next to them – chewing on Buffy’s arm, which he has just removed from her torso! Spike leaps at the zompire in a rage, staking the vamp before he can react. He picks up Buffy’s arm.

It’s sparking. No blood. No flesh. Just circuitry and wires and electric surges. Buffy approaches from behind. “Is that my arm?” Spike turns to her. He looks at where her arm has been removed: her shoulder is also sparking, the same as the removed limb. “Your arm is the least of my concerns,” Spike says, looking at the plastic limb, still smoking and sparking. “Hate to be hopelessly opaque Slayer, but I think you’ve gone mechanical.” He sends a pick-up signal to the ship.

Buffy is now holding her own arm in shock. “I don’t understand. I’m me. I’m Buffy. I’m not a robot.” One of the cockroaches calls out, asking if she would like her amputated limb incinerated. Spike tells him that now is not the time and turns to ‘Buffy’. “I know my way around a BuffyBot. And you are definitely one.”

‘Buffy’ looks down sadly. “This means I’m not pregnant.” Then a lightbulb moment as she realises what’s happened, the shock now catching up with her. “Spike!” she yells at him, clutching his coat. “I’m a robot!” she yells, as he looks at her, dumbfounded!