Spike rolled over with a whoop sometime around 5:30— burst aorta aside, damn, what a rush! He hadn't had this much fun since taking on that whatever-it-was down in the sewers so that Dawn could steal its eggs for a spell to bring Joyce back. If he could get this thing to do what it did to him to Riley and Mrs. Riley, well… damn!
Expecting to be attacked again, he pulled himself to his feet in the dark by the edge of the workbench in the soft false dawn pouring down from the grimy overhead skylight, but the titanium steel alloy beastie lay inert on the floor, endoskeleton gleaming dully through the remains of its tattered fursuit, remaining eye darkly blank. The torso was still on the workbench. With one eye on the heap on the floor, Spike gave it a cautious poke with the half-melted remains of the screwdriver that had started it all.
Nothing happened. There must be some sort of half-charged power unit in the frame on the floor that, like the plate and the condenser that had restarted his heart, wasn't in the manual.
Well, he'd soon sort that out and have the thing ready to dance – only, as exhilarating as his tussle with it had been, he'd have it programmed NOT to attack him but to spring out of a shipping crate like a relentlessly homicidal Jack-In-The-Box at someone he so very dearly hated with every bone in his body.
"Sorry, Maggie's not a morning person."
Spike turned around. Framed in the doorway with their arms over each other's shoulders was the boy with the old coin eyes and a much smaller… girl? Spike couldn't tell. Whatever it was wore glasses and had shaggy hair dyed in sunset candy colors and was dressed in a black leather jacket over a gray turtleneck, a black tutu skirt, and very small Doc Martins.
He/she scowled at him before resting its head on the taller boy's chest. Was that a hint of ragged fox ears in the half-light? And an equally shabby fox tail?
"What the…" Gripping the remains of the screwdriver, Spike bore down on the pair, only to have them fade away as the hidden clock struck six to the sounds of a distant party and a drift of faded confetti which landed unheeded in his scorched hair.