Realizing his own flammability, Spike curled in on himself in the sludge covered floor of the employee restroom as his attackers punted him back and forth, going limp even as he held himself together so that he didn't antagonize them into anything genuinely whimsical like play jump rope with his loose intestines.
Around them The Grand Rialto groaned like the Titanic going down, water from broken pipes sluicing across the buckling floor so that it steamed, hissing and bubbling like ice tossed on a short order grill.
Kick – ribs caved in one one side, he was sent skidding through a patch of sharp, broken porcelain.
Kick – he bounced off of a wall, a sink landing beside him, more broken porcelain, collarbone breaking.
Kick – hurled through the door and out into the hallway, landing in a huddle, ears ringing. The heat swirled around him in the darkness of his own head as The Grand Rialto groaned, in a rattle of broken plaster and smoking lathe.
And then… it …stopped…
Spike played dead, curled in upon himself, one arm over his head for what felt like forever, the death throes of a dying dream thumping through his bones.
They'd… gone… away…
Cautiously Spike raised himself to one elbow, ruined face blindly turning from side to side to side, trying to sense if this was just a new game on their part or if he was finally alone.
No more kicks came to send him flying down the hall.
He rolled over on his back and started to pull himself back to the lounge and the back door, fighting the current as the floor buckled beneath him in a cascade of water and raw sewage, only to halt when the doorway to the lounge collapsed, blocking his escape.
The only other way out was the workshop and the loading dock.
Spike changed his course. If he could get out through the loading dock, he could grope his way to the nearby manhole and safety.
The yellow rabbit watched the man with white hair drag himself across the steaming, heaving floor in search of another way out.
The yellow rabbit was furious.
How could the boy disappoint him when all of this was for him? For his little brother and sister?
How could the Day be rebuilt if the boy didn't finish what he'd started?
How could it all be made right without the cause of the problem eliminated?
How?
Simon, glutted, could care less.
Still, the gangrenous animating spirit, schadenfreude satiated to the point of deliciously indifferent indigestion, could be obliging to one who had been so very useful.
As Foxy the Pirate and the Mangle silently threaded their way hand in hook through the holocaust towards the workshop, Simon released the yellow rabbit.
There was always room for one more cookie.
The stench of rotting meat drowning out the hot, dry reek of the dying building, Spike felt himself suddenly picked up off the floor, to be hurled through the air.
Snarling, "I don't have soddin' time for this!" as he landed face-down in the sludge, love's bitch waited for whatever it was to come close enough for him to grapple with, maybe even kill so he could continue making his escape through the workshop.
It walked around him, grabbing him by the back of his cheap polyester work shirt, yanking him upright.
Leg grinding, one good arm trying to keep his private contents from spilling all over the place, Spike bonelessly bided his time as he felt himself turned this way and that until…
…he pulled his new attacker toward him in a nasty mass of dirty fake fur. Trapping his innards against this newest enemy so that the two of them went down flailing, Spike wrapped himself around the yellow rabbit with a snarl so that the two of them writhed across the slowly collapsing floor of the old small town movie palace, tumbling them downwards in a cascade of hot bricks and dirty water as the Mayor's intricate puzzle of plumbing joined the dance, erupting through the floor, hastening the theater's collapse into a burning wet maelstrom.
The yellow rabbit, suddenly abandoned by Simon who was in need of a long nap, screeched, writhing in Spike's grip as they tumbled into the main sewer beneath, blue-white sparks flying out in all directions as the force holding him together dissipated, the dream forgotten.
Pushing the rapidly disintagrating remains of Mr. Afton from him Spike surfaced, rolling over on his back in the darkness, allowing the current to carry him downstream through Sunnydale's complex bowels before flushing him out into the desert that a rogue Jesuit originally shaped Sunnydale from in his quest for eternity.
"Bloody hell!" was Spike's last thought as he passed out on a sandbar, "If this is work, I would have soddin' applied a long time ago!"