Four Days Ago, Friday, April 15^th, 2011, Unexpected Universe:

Spike felt like Buzz Aldrin as they got ready to lower him down into the churning, frigid waters of the Bering Sea.  The suits they’d put him, Angel, and Bess in were like space suits. They were made to take the enormous pressure of the seawater at great depths, but they weren’t the most comfortable or maneuverable things in the world. This, among other things, worried him.

Earlier, when Spike pointed out that Angel hadn’t needed one of these contraptions back in the forties to reach the Nazi sub, Angel reminded him that that sub hadn’t been down nearly as deep as this one. It hadn’t been stuck on the bottom of the ocean – it had just been infested with demons.

“Just how much pressure can these take, then?” Spike had asked the swabbie that was helping him get into the contraption. The man was young – a boy really in Spike’s eyes, but all business in his crisp, dark-blue jumpsuit. The brunette, brown-eyed sailor was taller than Spike, well built, neither too thin nor overly muscled, and had the 'boy next door' good looks of someone from the midwestern corn-belt. The name on his lapel said ‘Brody’.

“Technically, they’re approved for 200 meters,” Brody told him matter-of-factly. “But they’ve been tested up to 900.”

Spike’s brows furrowed. “Just what is that in American, then?”

“About 3,000 feet.”

Now Spike’s brows shot up. “And how deep is the water ‘ere?" he asked, looking warily over the side of the ship.

The young man shrugged slightly, not taking his eyes off his task of securing the helmet to the suit. “About 5,000 feet.”

“Oh, that’s bloody brilliant,” Spike moaned, rolling his eyes.

“It’ll be fine,” Brody assured him, finally looking up and meeting Spike’s eyes through the helmet’s clear, front mask. “Those tests were with humans and a regular air mix … you don’t need to breathe, so we can fill the suits with pure helium.”

“Helium? Doesn’t that … float?” Spike pondered, his worry growing.

The young man shrugged again. “That’s what the extra counter-weights in your shoes are for.”

Spike tried to lift one foot. He could barely get it up off the deck. His worry grew. Then he had a new thought, “You’re telling me we’re gonna sound like the soddin’ Chipmunks down there fightin’ this thing … assuming we don’t implode?”

Brody suppressed a small smile, making him look more like a school-boy pulling a prank than a deepwater dive expert. He covered his amusement quickly, but not quickly enough to keep Spike from seeing, and then shrugged again. “You won’t implode,” he assured Spike as he snapped the last latch on the helmet and gave the thumbs-up to the crane operator.

“Bloody hell,” Spike groaned. Was it too late to change his mind about this? A compressed-air powered harpoon gun was placed in his hands and Spike gripped it through the bulky suit. The words ‘Stop! Let me go!’ echoed in his mind, but never made it through his lips. Don’t be a bloody ponce, he admonished himself. Suddenly, his feet left the deck as the crane lifted him up and swung him out over the frigid, choppy, and very deep water.  Bess and Angel were already in the waves waiting for him. He sighed. Right then, let’s kick some demon ass.

Spike spent most of the very long descent to the bottom of the ocean ‘talking’ to Buffy through the bond. He decided it best to not mention the pressure suit being tested to 2,000 feet less than the depth they were going.  He was extraordinarily glad that the helium in his suit didn’t affect what he sounded like to her; that would’ve been beyond embarrassing.  ‘Alvin the Bloody Chipmunk’ didn’t really strike terror in the hearts of anyone or anything … well, maybe acorns.

A disembodied voice from the surface announced their depth into the dive helmets every hundred meters or so. When the berks on the ship declared, ‘900 meters,’ Spike held his breath … metaphorically.  They continued to descend. Nothing happened.  1,000 meters. No change. When they passed 1,500 meters, Spike told Buffy that he had to go – they would be to the sub soon.

Be careful … both of you, she’d admonished him.

It’s our middle name, pet, Spike had assured her. It was an old and familiar custom between them. It felt good. I’ll let ya know as soon as it’s over, yeah?

Ok, baby … I love you, Buffy sent back to him.

Love you more than you know, Buffy, Spike replied, hoping that she could feel the emotion behind his words as he could feel hers.  He took a breath of the helium and closed the bond.

“Showtime,” he announced in a squeaky chipmunk voice, looking over at Bess.  She laughed. It came out as a high-pitched squeal and she laughed at her own laughter.

Spike chuckled to himself and shook his head. This was gonna sound like Alvin, Simon, and Theodore meet Captain Nemo ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’.  

After about twenty minutes more, the creature came into view.  The pressure suits had large spotlights on the helmets, but the vampires didn’t need them and didn’t turn them on. There was no need to announce their arrival unnecessarily.   The trio hit the bottom of the ocean about twenty meters away from the sub and the monster. Once they ‘landed’, Spike helped Bess unhook the heavy weights that hung from straps around her waist and then she did the same for him. Lastly, Spike helped Angel with his.

Spike thought about asking the broody vampire if he’d seen any old friends from his previous holiday under the waves; then he worried that he and Bess might actually need Angel’s help in this. Spike decided he could ask later, on the way up.

Untethered from the heavy weights that had pulled them to the bottom, they all just stood and watched the creature for a few more minutes as they waited for the AUVs to arrive. It did look very much like an overgrown octopus – very overgrown. Comparing it to a regular octopus was like comparing King Kong to Tarzan’s sidekick, Cheetah. It was undoubtedly the largest living thing any of them had ever seen. Now that they were this close to it, its size was overwhelming…staggering really. It had eight arms, properly called tentacles, as Billy had informed Spike before he left. Each arm … err, tentacle looked to be about as big around as the Blue Bomber at the widest point. Those tentacles were all wrapped securely around the submarine, which rested at a slight angle on the ocean floor.  The demon’s head looked to be the size of a hot air balloon, and was shaped about the same way.

Spike knew that head wasn’t just full of hot air, however.

**~**

“Did you know that octopi have a well developed brain and are very intelligent?” Billy had asked his father as Spike was packing for the mission. Billy had his Kindle and was reading to Spike from a book he’d downloaded from the library website just for the occasion.  Spike, Bess, and Buffy had told the children about the mission. They decided it was better to simply tell them the truth about what was going on than try to come up with some lame excuse about where Spike and Bess were going.

“That right?” Spike asked as he tossed some t-shirts into his overnight bag.

“Uh-huh,” his son assured him, nodding resolutely – all business. He was a Scooby-pup and he was helping with the mission. It was his second.

Sitting cross-legged on the bed, Billy flipped the electronic pages quickly, scanning for facts that would help. “Oh! They’re completely deaf! They comm … commun…” he struggled, looking up at Spike.

Spike leaned over and looked at the electronic book. “Communicate,” he read for Billy.

“Communicate,” Billy repeated, “by changing colors. When they’re scared they turn white!  They release ink to distract enemies while they swim away and …” Billy continued.

“Does it say how t’ keep it from swimmin’ away?” Spike wondered.

“Ummm … no, I don’t think so. It says that if you cut one of its arms off, it can grow a new one! It can re … re-gen-er-ate,” he sounded the word out. “Regenerate,” he repeated more quickly. “And it has suction cups … two hundred and forty on each arm and …” Billy paused. “Oh,” he muttered, his voice turning soft, worried.

Spike stopped tossing things into his bag and looked at the boy. “Oh?”

Billy frowned. Concern flickered in his expressive blue eyes. “They poison their prey and par… para…” he held the screen up for Spike to see.

“‘They poison their prey and paralyze it,’” Spike read. “‘It has a beak, like a bird, that’s used to eat things with shells.’ Bloody brilliant,” Spike moaned rolling his eyes. That was a bit of a tip-off however. This creature had teeth – lots of them. It definitely wasn’t an overgrown octopus, but perhaps a first cousin visiting from the ‘Texas Dimension’ … everything’s bigger in Texas, after all.

“But you’ve got the Gem, right? So …” Billy suggested hopefully, looking up at his father.

Spike gave him a reassuring smile and tousled his unruly blond curls. “Right. Got no worries, yeah?”

“But what about Bess?” Billy asked, the worry still creasing his small features.

Spike sat down next to him and looked him in the eye. “I’ll keep ‘er safe. No worries, now. We’ll be back before ya know it. I’ll bring ya some shells from the very bottom of the ocean. Shells that ain’t ever been seen by another human’s eyes. How’d that be?”

Billy’s eyes grew wide and he nodded eagerly. “That’d be way cool.”

**~**

“I’m thinkin’ spearing them wriggly bits won’t do a soddin’ thing but piss it off,” Spike observed in his helium voice.

“Yeah …” Angel agreed, his voice just as squeaky. “We need to go for the eyes or the head, at least.”

After waiting another few minutes for the AUVs – a wait that seemed an eternity to Spike, but was probably no more than ten minutes, three of the bright yellow torpedo-like, remote-controlled vehicles appeared in the water above them.

There was a large net stretched between the three unmanned vehicles and they slowly moved into position over the sea monster with it, trying not to alarm it.

Spike rolled his eyes. “Those bloody things are ‘bout as sneaky as Big Bird,” Spike moaned, sounding quite a lot like Big Bird's first cousin – Donald Duck.  “Must look like giant, yellow bananas to the Octopussy.”

“Yeah, and we look like big, yellow Tic Tacs,” Angel observed, but there wasn’t much they could do about that now. “Maybe we should move up and get ready before they wake it up,” he suggested.

“Right then,” Spike agreed, lifting his harpoon and making sure it was ready to fire.  He looked at Bess; she was doing the same. 

Spike met her eyes with his and she gave him a confident nod. “I’m ready,” she assured him in a Daisy Duck voice.

The three vampires started bouncing across the floor of the ocean. Spike again thought this was what it must be like to be on the moon – basically weightless, except for the heavy pressure suit. They covered the short distance that separated them from the monster quickly – perhaps a little too quickly.

The three warriors were within just a couple of meters of the monster when a crewman from the ship announced they were releasing the net. That would’ve been good if Spike, Angel, and Bess were near the monster’s head instead of its wriggly arms. It would’ve been even better if the edge of the heavy net didn’t fall directly on the three bright yellow Tic Tacs.

“Bloody hell!” Spike exclaimed in his squeaky Alvin voice as the net fell atop him and slid down his back. The momentum and considerable weight of the snare knocked him down and trapped him, along with Angel and Bess, within the steel webbing. They weren’t the only ones trapped, though – they had company: the octopus.

Suddenly, the sleeping giant was awakened.  The sea monster thrashed wildly at the net, sending its long arms flailing out in all directions. Its whole body turned round and round, creating a flurry of tentacles and heavy mesh netting. As it thrashed, it entangled itself, as well as the three vampires, even further in the trap. Spike, Bess, and Angel were whisked through the water violently, banging against the creature’s tentacles, the heavy webbing of the net, and each other.  They were all turned this way and that, upside down and, if not literally, then certainly figuratively, inside out. Their harpoons were wrenched from their hands and tangled in the mesh of the heavy net. There was absolutely nothing they could do to stop the wild ride – all they could do was try to hold on and hope. 

For a moment, Spike could see the other two bright yellow pressure suits flying past him. Their arms and legs were flailing, just as his were, trying to find something to hold onto to stop the dizzying spiral. Then, everything went black. The water was black. The whole world might’ve been black for all he knew. The creature had expelled a sea of black ink, blinding them.

When Bess crashed against him, Spike grabbed for the strap around her waist that had carried the heavy weights, and held onto her.  That was only fractionally better, but when they finally got to the end of ‘Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride’, at least they’d be together.

The clear sea water that had been surrounding them was now murky and full of silt from the bottom of the ocean that the monster had stirred up, as well as the black ink it had expelled. Spike could feel them being lifted up, then sailing down again as the monster swam, twisting and turning, trying to get free of the net. All of the sudden, the ride slowed: the whirling bubbles ceased, the octopus arms no longer crashed against them.

Spike tried to see what was happening but there was so much debris in the water, it was hard to tell. Then he saw the eyes, the giant red and purple eyes which were easily as tall as he was.  And those demonic eyes were looking right at him and Bess … from the other side of the net.  Spike swiveled his head around as much as he could to try and understand, but when he felt the net sinking, pulling him and Bess with it, he figured it out. The beast had gotten free of the trap; Spike and Bess had not.

“Angel, where the bloody hell are you?” Spike exclaimed as he and Bess were pulled down towards the ocean’s floor.

“I’m in this fucking net! Where do you think I am?” Angel replied. The shrillness of their voices would’ve made the whole situation sound comedic, if it weren’t so … not.

Spike rolled his eyes and clenched his jaw as he turned around and tried to see Angel in the large net, but the slit and ink that still hung in the water was making it impossible to see past the end of his arm.

“Bloody brilliant. The wankers caught us! Bra-fucking-vo,” Spike chirped shrilly, sounding like a small bird. He’d been going for a growl.

“Surface to dive team,” came on the speakers in their helmets.  “Do you have a visual on the target? Over.”

“No, we don’t have a bloody visual on a goddamned…” Spike snarled angrily, but was cut off when his feet crashed against the hull of the submarine and his knees buckled.  Bess squealed in surprise and they both tumbled down, their pressure suits clanging loudly against the damaged metal skin of the sub. The net they were entangled in slid down the side of the tall, undersea boat, pulling Spike and Bess with it. They finally came to rest on the sandy bottom of the ocean next to the sub, covered by layers and layers of the heavy netting.

“…thing,” Spike finished with a high-pitched sigh that sounded more like a whine.

“You alright, pet?” Spike asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine, but I’m not your ‘pet’,” Angel retorted angrily.

“Wasn’t bloody talkin’ to you, wanker!”

“I’m fine … just … Is that you on top of me?” Bess asked. She was pressed down face-first into the silt, surrounded by the net.

“Not rightly sure. Think I’m facing … up … not too sure, though,” Spike replied as he tried to push the mesh off. 

In the chaos, he hadn’t had a chance to really focus on the net before, but now he saw that it was made up of large, heavy chains crisscrossed with thick, steel-stranded cables. If he weren’t in this huge yellow space suit, he might actually fit between the holes in the ‘net’, but the bulky pressure suit wouldn’t make it. “Oh, bloody hell,” he squeaked as he tried to break the chains – they weren’t giving.

“This shit is vampire-proof!” Angel’s voice twittered in their ears.

“Maybe for a ponce like you!” Spike cheeped back as he groaned, trying to break the chain or find a weak spot in the netting.

“If you could get off me, maybe I can get it,” Bess suggested as she wriggled underneath Spike in her pressure suit.

“If I could get the bloody hell off you, I wouldn’t need ya t’ get it,” Spike pointed out.

“Can’t you just roll a little to the side?”

Spike groaned in effort, trying to push the netting up so he could move. “How’s that?”

“A little more,” Bess requested as she tried to turn onto her side and get her face out of the sand.

“There?”

“More.”

Spike moaned and struggled harder. “Got it?”

“More!” she demanded in her squeaky voice as she groaned and tried to push up.

“Bloody hell, girl!” Spike exclaimed grunting in effort as he tried to move further. “That got it?”

“A little more … one more hard push.”

“Fuck!” Spike squeaked, using every ounce of energy to lift the layers of chain and steel up and roll off her.

“Yes! That’s it!” Bess screeched as she was finally able to get turned completely around and free her hands and arms from beneath her.

“As much as I’m enjoying listening to Donald and Daisy Duck have sex…” Angel interrupted them.

“At least Donald has sex, unlike you, wanker.”

“I have sex! Who said I didn’t have sex?” Angel peeped back quickly. “There’s nothing wrong with my sex drive … or Cordy’s! Who told you there was?”

“The vampire doth protest too much, methinks,” Spike snickered shrilly.

Bess ignored them and began pulling at the chains. She wasn’t having any more luck than Spike had until she found a clevis that connected two lengths of chain.  “Here! There are … things here that unscrew!” Then she sighed. “If I had the manual dexterity in this outfit to actually screw anything.”

“Sounded like you were doing a pretty good job of it a minute ago, Daisy,” Angel quipped.

Spike and Bess ignored him.

“Try breakin’ it, pet. It’s probably the weakest spot,” Spike advised.

Bess pulled with all her Slayer and vampire strength and finally the clevis cracked and then came apart. “One down,” she twittered, her voice shrill in the ears of the others.

“Surface to dive team.  What’s the situation? Over.” They all heard the deep voice in their helmets. It sounded strange compared to their helium-induced warbles.

“The bloody situation is we’re buried in enough chainmail to clothe a soddin’ Renaissance fair! You berks dropped the net on us!” Spike informed them.

“Can you get those AUVs to … you know, pick it up?” Angel suggested. “Uhhh … Over.”

“The AUVs are tracking the bogey. Can you extricate yourselves? Over.”

Spike rolled his eyes and Bess squealed in ‘victory’ as she broke another clevis. “Probably, but it’ll take a while,” she answered.

“Over,” Angel added.

“As I understand it, you aren’t getting any older. Let us know when you’re ready and we’ll walk you through retrieving the reactor. Over and out,” the strangely baritone voice from the surface signed off.

“Bloody wankers,” Spike chirped under his breath just as Bess let out another high-pitched cry of victory over another link in the chain.

It took nearly two hours for them to get through the layers and layers of steel netting that covered them.  Spike thought about contacting Buffy, but decided not to. Running what he’d say over in his mind, he decided anything he told her now would only worry her more. 

‘The wankers dropped the net on us and trapped us with the beastie.  Got smashed around a bit, shined up good and proper, like rock in a tumbler. But we’re fine now – just trapped under a few tons o’ steel. Oh, by the way, the red-eyed nasty scampered off so we’ll have to go after it right after we try to not nuke the whole bloody world when we get the reactor outta the sub. No worries, luv. Ta!’

It would definitely be best to just wait until they were safe and sound back on the ship. How long had they been down here, anyway? Three hours? Longer? You’d think a fancy, yellow space suit would have a clock on the inside of the helmet that you could see … and an mp3 player loaded up with some Sex Pistols.

After Bess got herself and Spike freed from the heavy netting, they went in search of Angel.  They found him at the front of the sub still entangled in the steel mesh.  He did still have his harpoon – that was a plus. It looked like it had been chained to his hand with the netting instead of ripped out like Spike’s and Bess’ had been.

Bess started working her way down through the netting towards him. One by one, she broke the weakest links in the chain to make a path through the heavy net so Angel could get out.  After Bess broke the clevises, Spike would pull the heavy netting back; it was like peeling an onion – a very heavy onion. It was slow going, but they finally got through all the layers to Angel. 

They’d no sooner gotten the broody vamp freed than the deep voice from the surface blared in their ears again. “Surface to dive team. Bogey returning to your position. ETA forty-five seconds.  She’s coming in at five one degrees three seven decimal zero North, zero zero one degrees four niner decimal five West. Please confirm. Over.”

“What the bloody hell does that mean? Five one … what?” Spike squeaked back as he scanned the ocean above them for the red eyes of the sea monster or the lights from the AUVs that were supposed to be tracking it.

“Negative. We don’t copy, surface. Does anyone there speak English?” Angel added, remembering after a few moments to tack on, “…Over.”

“Five one degrees three seven decimal zero North, zero zero…” the disembodied voice in their helmets began to repeat.

“OI! We bloody well don’t speak ‘Cap'n Cook’. Which direction…” Spike started, as the three vampires turned around in circles looking for the ‘bogey’. “Never bloody mind,” Spike chirped as he caught sight of the glowing purple of the beast’s irises.

Angel made sure his harpoon was ready to fire.

The giant sea monster was closing in on the sub, and them, quickly. It never did turn white. So much for it being scared of the yellow Tic Tacs. Bugger.

“We need t’ get it while it’s here. Don’t fancy chasing all over the soddin’ world for this thing,” Spike instructed.

“I’ll need to get close,” Angel agreed. “Hit it in one of those big, red eyes.”

“Right then. Buttercup and I’ll distract it, grab an arm and try and hold it still while you get up to its head,” Spike offered, looking at Bess. Bess nodded her understanding and agreement.

“You do know how to fire one of those things, yeah?” Spike asked Angel in his squeaky Alvin voice, cocking a brow at the harpoon in Angel's hands.

“Yes, Spike,” Angel’s voice twittered back with what would pass for disdain if you were a chipmunk.

“You bloody well better not miss,” Spike threatened, but the shrillness of his voice made the threat sound less than intimidating.  “‘Ere we go then. You go to the right, luv, I’ll take the left,” Spike instructed Bess.

The girl nodded and began to bounce away to the right and Spike moved to the left, leaving Angel standing in the middle. Angel jumped up, kicking his legs in a scissoring motion, and landed atop the crippled sub. He backed up a bit away from the very end of the downed ship to give the demon room to settle atop it so it would hopefully be at eye-level with him. The broody vampire raised the large harpoon gun up against his shoulder like a rifle, and waited until he could see the whites of the beast’s eyes … or, actually, the red and purple.

When the octopus began wrapping back around its prize, it saw Angel standing there like a yummy lemon-flavored Tic Tac and reached an enormous arm out to grab him.  Spike grabbed one of the demon’s other arms and began punching it as hard as he could to distract it from Angel – and it worked. Too well. The octopus changed its focus and wrapped that big arm around Spike, instead. 

“NOW!” Spike screeched to Angel as the beast began to squeeze the pressure suit.  Spike could feel the frigid water leaking in around his torso as he tried to extricate himself from the monster’s hold. He had no idea what the pressure of thousands of feet of sea water would do to him or if the Gem could fix it. Would he flatten like a pancake or would his eyes pop out of his head? Maybe he’d just implode and turn into a red spot on the ocean floor.

While Spike was on one side battling the creature, Bess was on the other, trying to keep it from attacking Angel, not aware of Spike’s predicament.  She was holding onto the very end of one of its long arms. She could barely wrap one of her own arms around it. To anchor herself, she held to a section of the heavy metal net with the other arm.

“Where are its eyes?!” Angel squeaked.

“Looking right at me, you wanker! Shoot the soddin’ thing!”

“All I can see are arms!”

“Just shoot it!” Spike insisted as more water started pouring in on him. Spike pushed on the thing’s arm with both his hands, but it had giant suction cups which stuck to his pressure suit like glue … two hundred and forty per arm if his memory served. Spike banged his fists on it, wriggled, kicked, squirmed, flailed … tried everything he could to get away.  The beast was not impressed.

Spike suddenly felt a strange emptiness – as if something had ripped a part of his soul away. Buffy, he thought immediately, but had no time to focus on the feeling or contact her as he was lifted up by the demon and whipped around in a wide arc. Spike smashed into Angel, who had never gotten a clean shot and had, thus, never fired his harpoon. Angel was knocked off the sub and rolled down the steel netting that now covered it. He came to rest several yards away down on the sandy bottom of the ocean near where Bess was still struggling to hold onto another of the beast’s arms.

Angel and Bess could hear Spike screaming as the demon squeezed him tighter and continued to swing him in a wide, arcing circle, just missing Bess.  The creature stopped Spike’s trajectory with a brutal jerk and began the trek back around with him, whipping him through the water violently with its powerful tentacle.

Bess finally saw what was happening when Spike flew by. She let go of the creature’s arm and tried to reach out and grab Spike as he came by again. She got a hold of one of his feet with one hand as she held to the net with the other, but the giant demon was too strong and it easily ripped Spike out of her grasp. Bess watched in horror as the demonic octopus opened its mouth full of sharp teeth and sucked the giant yellow Tic Tac, which had a gooey center named ‘Spike’, inside.

“Spike!” she screamed over and over again as she started to move towards the thing’s head. She had to do something! She had to get him back out of there.

Angel had gotten back to his feet, the harpoon still in his hands, and he was finally able to get a shot off.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t very close and the monster was moving when he fired the harpoon. It did hit the octopus’ head, but it was closer to its ear than its eye and only served to agitate the creature.  The sea monster growled its displeasure and deep, powerful ripples formed in the water, knocking Angel and Bess back away from it. The octopus released its hold on the sub and began to swim away, apparently deciding that the sub was not worth all this trouble.

“Spike!” Bess continued to scream in her shrill, Daisy Duck voice as she tried to swim after it.  Angel followed her, but the sea monster was way too fast for them.  “It ate Spike!” Bess screamed at the top of her lungs, speaking to the men on the surface. “Don’t let it get away! Bring it back!”

The AUVs that had been tracking it turned and began to follow the monster again, but it was moving faster this time and it quickly disappeared in the dark, churning depths of the Bering Sea.

“God, Spike! No!” Bess continued to cry as she simply stared in the direction it had gone, taking her father with it.

Suddenly, she turned on Angel and began pounding against his chest and shoulders. “Why didn’t you shoot when he said to!? What’s wrong with you?!” Her shrill voice rang like a Saturday morning cartoon in her ears, frustrating her further.

“I didn’t have a shot!” Angel defended, grabbing her hands and trying to stop her.

“Buffy said you couldn’t be trusted!” Bess screamed at him, pulling free of his grasp.

“I didn’t have a shot!” Angel repeated adamantly. “It was Spike’s plan! I didn’t tell him to go over there and let it catch him!”

“You didn’t stop him either! You didn’t shoot it until it was too late! What do you think, with him gone you can get Buffy back?” Bess ranted.

“Oh, for the love of God,” Angel moaned in his Donald Duck voice, rolling his eyes. “I don’t want Buffy back. I'm happily married! On top of which,  I don't have anything against Spike … well … not that much. I'm not in collusion with the damn octopus!”

“Surface to dive team, do you read? Over,” interrupted them.

“We read,” Angel sighed shrilly in response. “…Over.”

“We’ve lost the bogey. We need to retrieve the reactor. Are you ready to proceed? Over.”

“Proceed?! Proceed?” Bess exclaimed in disbelief. “That thing just ate Spike!”

When no one said anything for a few moments, Angel added, “Over.”

“Copy that. The mission is still salvageable. Proceed to the aft of the submarine for instructions on entering and retrieving the uranium core. Over.”

“Fuck you with your uranium!” Bess replied to the voice from the surface. “Over!”

“Bess … there’s nothing we can do for Spike now. Let’s get the reactor, then we’ll go after the creature and get Spike back,” Angel reasoned with her.

“It ATE HIM,” Bess reminded Angel adamantly, her eyes wide with fear and anger and utter shock.

“It swallowed him,” Angel clarified. “It’ll probably spit him back out very soon. Spike’s kinda hard to digest. And he’s got the Gem … right?”

When Bess’ eyes bulged even wider and she started shaking her head ‘no’, Angel rolled his eyes. “I’m not that stupid, I know he does,” he continued. “He’ll be fine. We’ll find him, but we need to do this now.”

“Nooo …” Bess insisted in her squeaky voice. “We have to find Spike now. That heap of scrap metal isn’t going anywhere!” she pointed out, waving her hand at the sub.

“Bess,” Angel began through gritted teeth, his patience wearing thin. “We have a job to do. We can’t find Spike from down here – the damn thing swam off with him! Do you really want to spend another three hours each way going back up and coming back down here to get the reactor? Wouldn’t it make more sense to get it now, while we’re here, then go find Spike?” Angel reasoned in his most fatherly, chipmunk voice.

Bess sighed heavily and closed her eyes, shaking her head in disbelief. Oh God … it ate Spike! And swam off with him! She wanted desperately to rub her eyes, which were filling with frustrated tears behind her lids, but she couldn’t in this getup. What was she gonna tell Buffy? What about Annie and Dani and Billy? I'm sorry, but a giant demon ate our father. You didn't really need him around, did you?

“Bess? I could really use your help with this…”

Bess blew out a long breath and opened her eyes. “Fine,” she snarled shrilly. “Get the damned thing – but we are finding Spike and he better be alright or you’ll be the next thing that monster eats,” she threatened, poking a finger angrily against his chest.

Angel blew out an exasperated breath and started for the rear of the sub. “Like father, like daughter,” he mumbled to himself in his Donald Duck voice.

**~**