In the corridor of Spike’s ship, the shark demon and his henchmen have gathered. The ship is once again in orbit around Earth’s moon, commandeered by the aquatic-type demons.

The shark demon sneers, showing it’s charmless smile with pointy teeth. “Glad you’re awake, sunshine,” he snarls at Spike, who’s still wrapped up by tongue. “What’s the fun of tossing your sorry ass out of the airlock if you’re just going to sleep through it?”

Spike, to his credit, does not look that phased. He shrugs, considers it his usual bad luck and asks if he can smoke a final cigarette before he’s flushed out into vacuum!

The shark actually looks surprised and shrugs. Why not, he reasons. He’s in a good mood after all.

He places the cigarette in Spike’s mouth and lights it. Spike asks him if crushing little bugs that are smaller than him makes him feel good. The shark’s mood changes instantly, and he warns Spike that if he has any last words, now would be the time to say them.

Spike blows his smoke straight into the demon’s face.

“He’s officially not amusing anymore,” he sighs, before ordering his men to throw Spike out. They take to their task with gusto, talking as they untangle the vampire from the sticky appendage of the moon frog. “Right boss,” one yells in the affirmative. “Then we get back to Sunnydale and grab the shards of the Seed and head home!”

He sounds joyful at the prospect. Spike immediately perks up. “The Seed? You mean the glowy egg thing the Slayer smacked into itty bits? I was on the front line for that one. And I don’t remember seeing you there, mate.” He peers up at the shark demon, who turns to point back at Spike.

“Oh, I was there, mister,” he says. He sounds almost upset. “When the Slayer shattered that thing, all Hell broke loose. We thought we saw a chance for escape and we took it,” he tells Spike, with regret in his voice. His people were on the battlefield and latched onto a passing demon, heading away from the surface.

“Our mistake. The beast was headed for deep space with no sign of slowing down. We weren’t interested in that. Sure, we kept the thing from hauling us to the end of nowhere, but we still had a long way back.” He finishes his story, calmly.

“So you went all Captain Ahab on the animal and stranded yourself,” Spike concludes for him. “Until now,” the shark tells him. “Now we have your ship and are headed for the doorway home.”

Spike tells his captor that he knows the crater very well. He’s prepared to guide them to the shards that are left under Sunnydale. One of the cockroaches tries to interrupt him, but Spike shoos him away.

“So, you can either opt for the very short-lived pleasure of shooting me into space,” Spike reasons, still smoking his cigarette despite his hands not being free. “Or, I can save you time tromping about blindly in a maze of tunnels under that crater.”

The shark raises his fin to his mouth, thinking the offer through. Spike knows he has him, grin on his face.

It’s not long before the craft hovers once again above the crater that is all that’s left of Sunnydale, California. Spike didn’t think he’d ever be back here again so soon.

All roads in Sunnydale lead to trouble and heartache. He’s surprised to find however that he feels comfortable at the edge of the crater, the Sunnydale welcome sign still smashed nearby. At least his hands are free now, as he lights another cigarette. He looks down into the dark: he can feel a tingle on the back of his neck – unfinished business.

He’s shaken out of his reverie by the shark. He insists that Spike has to earn his way loose of the tongue that still wraps itself steadfast around his waist. Spike looks at the shark, unimpressed, telling him that one day it will just be the two of them. “No entourage, no froggy bodyguard.”

The shark isn’t phased and mocks Spike. He can co-operate or he can get stomped. They just want to go home. The demon suggests that maybe Spike doesn’t understand that feeling.

Spike thinks about it as he walks. Don’t I? Maybe fish-face has a point. But I don’t like it.

Onboard the interdimensional craft, Sebastian and another cockroach, this one called Frisky, are spying on the one remaining guard left aboard on watch. Frisky is not sure they should move or do anything: he believes Seb simply won’t be happy until they’re all dead! Seb tells Frisky that if he has nothing to live for, then he isn’t alive. “Spike is our master and we must help him.”

Frisky has a counterpoint to Seb’s argument: they must look after their own! Sebastian turns to them and tells them that their worth is measured by how much they are needed, not by how much they need – “And Master Spike needs us.”

Now that he has his fellows onside, Sebastian has a plan. Subterfuge, he whispers. He suddenly, very loudly screams at the top of his shrill voice!

“Oh no! Don’t do that! The explosive chain reaction will kill us all!” As the guard notices him, Seb quickly downs some whiskey from Spike’s bottle, for courage.

As the guard charges in their direction, Seb spits out and, using a lighter, Frisky sets the spray ablaze, creating an impromptu flame thrower that flambés the guard!

With the guard now crispy, Seb rallies them forward to Spike. Frisky hangs back slightly. “Sometimes I wonder if Master Spike feels the same about us,” he says, quietly.

Spike is still being escorted through the caverns. He’s thinking about what the shark demon said, so much so that he’s ignoring the demons and just continuing the walk, still leashed to the frog.

Family. Home. Those words mean something different when you’re walking around with a soul buzzing in your chest. Same world. Same people. But nothing’s the same.

Home. When’s the last time I had one? Hideouts, sure. Lairs, dark places. He looks around him at the ruined wreckage of Sunnydale all around him. All this debris used to be a town, people, lives. Home?

I thought having a soul would free a fellow, but it doesn’t. It ties you to a place, to people, in a way chains never could. He remembers leaving Buffy in San Francisco again, his words once again coming back to him:

“I don’t want to go back to lurking around the edge of your life. Watching from this far above it until you’re desperate for someone you can count on.”

Right. Easier said than done. The dark side of the moon, or crawling through the remains of dear old Sunnydale. You’re still lurking around the edge, boyo.

He directs them further, deeper into the crater. The shark thinks Spike is trying to trick them and prepares to attack the vampire until Spike points with his arm. “Relax gentlemen,” he smiles. “Behold the Seed Chamber.”

As the group walk into the chamber, Spike immediately asks to be unleashed from the frog. The shark is not so quick to release Spike, however. He looks around the chamber, scanning the floor repeatedly. “I don’t see any shards!” he shrieks. He roars at Spike, pointing at him in rage. “You said they’d be here!”

Spike disagrees. “I said I could take you to the place and here we are.” Rather than stay silent, Spike berates the shark, telling him that surely he didn’t think he’d be the only one to come for the shards? Someone else has clearly beaten him here first!

The shark demon calls Spike a liar, but a voice from deeper within the chamber tells the demon that Spike is, indeed, not lying. The shark turns, pulls his sword toward the voice and demands that the intruder identify themselves.

From out of the shadows, a tall, dark haired woman emerges, wearing a black cat suit. “The shards were gone when I arrived. So it looks like we’ve all made the trip for nothing.”

Spike is surprised at the newcomer. Hello.

The shark asks the woman what she wants with the shards, to which she says she simply wants to go home. Spike, smoking yet again, tells the newcomer that that requires magic and they’re in a world that’s empty. “You’re scrounging for leftovers,” he tells them.

The three look between each other’s gazes, trying to size each other up. The shark demon loses his temper and Spike unfurls his fangs. As the shark demon leaps towards Spike and the woman, he screams that he’ll kill them both. As he approaches the woman however, her eyes glow golden and suddenly she transforms into a harpy of some kind, winged and tailed and sweeping the shark demon into her claws.

As another demon heads for Spike he finally finds a way out of his leash as he manoeuvres the frog’s tongue into position and watches as a sword slices through it.

Untangling himself, Spike kicks the demon and slices it to shreds, just as the cockroaches, led by Sebastian, charge into the tunnels, weapons armed, racing for Spike. The vampire sighs. “Great, now I have to fight demons and watch out for you lot,” he grins, but Sebastian looks back at him. “No master. We are here to watch out for you.”

As the woman goes down, the shark can’t help but gloat. “Nice try, succubus. But I am the battle chief of the fighting demon sturgeons. And now I finally get to kill something.”

Before he can strike his killing blow, a sword goes squelching through his chest and he looks down as the blade exits his front. Spike is behind him and whispers in his ear: “You’re right about what you said earlier, mate. I would have regretted passing up this little pleasure.” He grins and then uses the sword to decapitate his captor.

He extends his hand for the woman, who tells him her name is Morgan. She thanks him for saving her, although he’s not sure that’s what he did. He’s pretty sure she can handle herself from what he saw. He tells her his name is Spike.

As Morgan gets up and walks towards the altar at the centre of the chamber, she believes Spike was right. “Somebody beat us here. Lots of somebodies.”

She turns to Spike. “I’ve been here a while and I’ve seen a lot of potential scavengers come and go. This world will never see another drop of magic and people will be fighting for every leftover crumb. The shards could be anywhere.”

Spike is about to say something when the ceiling suddenly caves in on them. As Morgan picks herself up, she jokes the place is Grand Central Station, but Spike isn’t laughing.

Two figures are now in the centre of the room, having dropped in from above. They’re both pale skinned and white haired, with tipped ears.

“We do apologise for the dramatic entrance,” Pearl purrs in her southern drawl.

“Do we?” replies Nash. “Not really,” Pearl grins.

Spike looks up at them, lights yet another cigarette and sighs.

“Well… if it isn’t Flowers in the Attic.“