Casmus Docks

        The vast stretch of the Casmus Docks drives north into the
waters of the Beacon Harbor Bay. All matter of ships are at rest
here, everything from vast cargo haulers, military transports and
pleasure craft. Most of the cargo is hauled via truck down Pikeman
Circle Drive to Beacon Harbor's industrial centers. Traffic flows
rather heavily from the heart of the city to the south. Across the
bay, far to the north east, a lighthouse can be seen out on the
Point. Its light pierces the thick fog that often plagues the bay
in the early hours of the morning. A thick band of rubble, rocks
dredged up from the bottom of the bay when the docks were
constructed, forms a barrier between the shipping lanes and the
long stretch of beach to the east.
---Spike
        A welcome surprise to some, a nasty shock to others. This
man is young, by the look of him, somewhere in his early twenties.
His hair is cut short and bleached white-blonde, a striking
contrast to the darkness of his eyes. His face has something of
the aristocrat about it, bladed cheekbones lending him a haughty
air which is hardly dispelled by the slash of a scar across the
left eyebrow and his brusque, lower-class London accent. He's so
pale as to look unhealthy.
        He wears a long, black duster which looks well worn-in,
over black jeans and a red shirt which provides his only splash of
colour. On his feet are a dusty pair of sturdy combat boots.

---Pete Wisdom
        Wiry and lean, and slightly taller than average height -
somewhere around 5'10" - Pete's the personification of early- to
mid-eighties punk. No, honestly. His hair is black and longish,
spiked determinedly with rather a lot of chemicals (in both gel
and spray forms); his eyes are a bright, wickedly entertained
blue, set in a pale, thin, boyish face (which Pete hasn't been
able to coax a respectable shadow of bristle from, yet).
        The teenaged punker's clad in the uniform of the moderate
rebel: ragged black denim trousers which are tucked into the tops
of a pair of mind-bogglingly scuffed mid-calf combat boots (one
with a broken lace, the other with a lace so long it had to be
wrapped around the kid's leg several times *after* threading all
the holes, just so he wouldn't trip), a faded (to the point where
the silkscreened The Clash logo is t-shirt fuzzy) tan The Clash
t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, and a black jacket that
bristles with safetypins, glistens with graffiti, clanks with
chains (but not TOO many chains), and fills in the rest with
assorted badges and patches.
        Now for the desperately Different: the theory goes that
the scarier a guy looks, the more he can get away with wearing
makeup and not looking effeminate, just shocking. For the Scary,
in addition to his hair having got spiked all up, he's gone and
stuck a number of safety pins through his ears, and one through
his left eyebrow. Ouch. For the contrasty shocking, he's varnished
his nails black and rather heavily kohled his eyes. All this black
on a pale guy.


The rubble separating the shipping lanes and the beach is a fairly
unpopular stretch of real estate. Big rocks, little rocks,
assorted trash washed in from the sea, seagulls, broken shells,
detritus, and the kind of things you associate with a lot of birds
congregating in one place. Yeah, unpopular. But that means that if
you decide to go for a nice long sulk there, you aren't likely to
be bothered by Superman. And if you decide to go for a nice long
/drunken/ sulk there, you aren't likely to get arrested. This is
why Pete Wisdom's chosen it as his personal teenaged wasteland.
He's sitting on the beachy side, prickly and huddled and unmoving,
staring at the haze over the horizon and the stars above it.

Bottle of whiskey, check. Dark, forbidding, hostile environment,
check. Something to sulk about, check. Spike is down in the dumps.
Drusilla and Angelus are all over each other, the stupid Slayer
doesn't seem to know what she wants, and he's only killed one
person today. He plods up the beach, bottle in hand, smoking and
generally looking incredibly disreputable. Pete is scented and
heard before he's seen, the vampire pausing a moment, then
wandering on. "Bit late for you to be out, isn't it?" Stupid
American kids. He looks like me twenty years ago.

"Piss off," mumbles the kid, picking up a smallish stone and
hurling it seaward. Hey. Why are there so many Englishmen in
Beacon Harbor? "Not as young as I fucking look, all right?" Other
than the stone's throw, he continues to not move. Just sit there,
hunched over, in a royal sulk. He, on the other hand, has a
half-empty bottle of cheap scotch. Which is is not holding,
because he's Sulking.

"Me either. Funny, that." Spike isn't drunk. Yet. He wanders over
to Pete and stands there looking at the sea. "I like the punk
stuff, though. Very Eighties. You've got that angry young man act
going well."

Wisdom finally looks up and over, eyeing Spike. "Yeah. Well. If
you'd got de-aged to seventeen - and everything that comes with -
wouldn't you be angry?" He leans over slightly and picks up his
bottle. As he takes the top off, he notes with a hint of wry
self-amusement, "As far as the Eighties go, I've had practice.
Brilliant dye job, by the way." Toss back a shot. Suppress flinch.

Not when *I* was seventeen, Spike manages not to say. God, what a
wimp. "Thanks. So what I'm thinking now is, deserted place, nice
bottle of Scotch, I'll kill you and then have a drink. Sound
good?"

God help him, Pete continues to not move much. And his reply is
shockingly unimpressed, "If you think this is a /nice/ bottle of
Scotch, I'd hate to see your version of rotgut." A beat, and
Wisdom looks up, perfectly serious expression on his face. "Look,
sod off, will you? If you're not taking the piss, I might have to
hurt you. If you are, I'm not in the fucking mood, all right?"

Sigh. Spike sets his own bottle down, carefully. "Compared with
what people thought was good in the seventeen-hundreds, that's
ambrosia, mate." Calling someone 'mate' apparently doesn't mean he
won't kill them, though, shifting features and simply leaping at
the boy, eyes flaring yellow. Kill first, drink Scotch after.

The teenager's first instinct, drilled into him over years of
training and experience that he can no longer quite recall, is to
deflect; after the defense instantly comes the offense. He's
already sitting, so he merely unfolds his legs and braces himself
with his arms behind him, and kicks up at the oncoming Spike in an
effort to keep him airborne long enough that he sails overhead,
rather than landing on Pete. Silent and obviously trained in
self-defense.

Yerk. Usually kids like this don't have a clue, and Spike is
effectively tossed over Pete's head, much to his own surprise. He
manages to roll on landing, regaining his feet and spinning around
to face the boy, snarling. "Oh, right, think you're tough?"

And because he's young and limber and not yet creaky and damaged,
he can throw himself from the position of arms-behind and legs in
the air to the position of standing, and turn around to face Spike
by the time Spike's rolled and gotten up to face him. His own eyes
flare quickly from normal to red to orange-yellow, matching his
hands, which now give off a fairly damn intense heat. "Tough? No.
Deadly? Yes. Fuck *off* or calm down. Pick one. You don't, I do
very painful things to you." A beat. "On purpose."

There is a moment's incredibly tense pause. And then Spike, who is
many things but is far from stupid, straightens up, yellow eyes
blinking. "All right," he says, in mildly offended tones. "No need
to get your spooky mutant powers in a twist." Hmf.

Ooh, hey, it worked. Cool. Pete straightens, too, feeling mildly
better, and the glow fades back into the night. He reaches over
and picks up his bottle of Scotch again. "At least /my/ spooky
mutant powers don't make me look kinda...Klingon." Once more
before anything else, he takes off the top and drinks enough to
either start or numb a shooting pain in the temple, then holds the
bottle out. "Drink anyway?"

Totally NOT in response to Pete's Klingon comment, because Spike
doesn't care what Pete thinks, and anyway it doesn't, so there,
the vampire's features shift back to normal. He looks for a moment
as if he's considering saying something rebellious and sulky, then
shrugs and takes the three steps needed to accept the bottle.
"Ta." Swig. Gulp. Yuck. Mm. He offers the bottle back. "So you set
things on fire, do you?"

"Can," affirms Pete, taking the bottle back. "Smashing things is
louder, though. Lovely crash sound." He stares through the neck of
the bottle for a second, then hesitates some more. Let the first
wave hit, /then/ have another. His gaze fixes back on Spike. "What
d'you do?"

The hell with standing around. Spike finds a rock and sits on it,
careless of the duster. It stands up to almost anything, he's
found. "Kill people, mostly," is the honest response.

Hey yeah, he was sitting to begin with, wasn't he? Taking his seat
again, careful of his bottle, Pete looks unsurprised. "You'd've
killed me pretty easily were I normal. Good at it?" Now that he's
sitting, he can drink again - holds up a finger while he takes
another swig, then lowers the bottle and makes a face, shaking his
head. "I used to kill a lot. Don't remember why, really. Remember
why I stopped, though. Fell for a girl. A hero."

"Bloody fantastic at it." Spike leans way over to rescue his own
bottle, knocking the end of the neck off against the rock. Little
smash. Hee. "You don't want a girl like that, mate. Get one who
enjoys it. Something you can do together."

"She was good, though," says Pete distantly, "everything about her
was good. And she thought I was, for some reason. So I was. For
her." Even now he underestimates himself. With a light shrug, he
swishes his bottle around some. "She's been dead a couple years
now, though." Tossing Spike a huge grin, he raises his eyebrows.
"Found me a fucking cute little violent pink-haired girl a bit
ago, though. Never knew it was possible to screw someone six ways
to Sunday in a bloody filing cabinet."

"Oh, yeah." Spike grins in return. Mm. Sex. Then he gets moody,
because Angelus is probably having sex with Drusilla right now.
Hmf. "Want to go and break something?" Because I do!

"Yeah, all right," agrees the teenager quickly enough, starting
the process of standing while tipsy. "Got anything in mind?" A
slight pause as Pete evens out, and then a *really* big grin. "How
far can you throw a propane tank?"

"A fucking long way, mate." Spike pushes to his feet, takes a long
drink from the dangerously jagged-edged bottle, and looks around,
bouncing on his toes. "Over there." He points in the generally
south-western direction of the docks. "Let's blow up ships."

Peering through the darkness, Wisdom ponders this for a moment.
Remarkably, his common sense comes staggering blindly over in the
fog his mind's trying to surrender to. "Too big. Can't get far
enough away to send a hotknife without getting caught in the
blast."

"Chicken," says Spike, without rancour. He considers a moment.
"Cars? Let's nick a car and drive it into some people and then
explode it."

"Did that last night. Let's nick a car and brick the accelerator
and send it into a building," suggests Pete. "Bigger smash. Nice
cars up Tidal Lane, I got a BMW yesterday." He takes one more swig
of his bottle, then tosses it up and out, toward the ocean - oh,
then, then. It's like shooting clay. His eyes flare up and and he
points a finger at the arcing bottle, and he fires a hotknife at
it. Brilliant little explosion.

All ready to scoff because apparently the widdle mutant doesn't
want to kill people, does he? -- Spike is entirely stalled by the
coolness of that. "Wow," he says, honestly, turning a broad grin
on Pete. "That was brilliant. Can you do that with heads?"

Hey, a grin. "Liked that, did you?" grins Pete right back. "Heads?
Eh, they don't explode. Sizzle a bit, smell acrid...might work if
you put it in liquid nitrogen first. Or in petrol."

Ooh. Spike's eyes light up. Literally, a yellow glow flickering.
"Fantastic idea. Let's go." He clambers over the rock he was just
sitting on and all-but bounces up the beach. Burning people to
death, yeah!

Slippery slope. Following Spike carefully, so as not to break his
head open on the rocks, Pete only starts running once he's down
there on the beach, too. "I think I used to kill dangerous
bastards. Either that or people pissing me off," he calls. "No fun
killing a bloke in a coma, though. Anyone particular in mind?"

"Nah. Randomize, randomize." Spike doesn't need to breath to run,
of course, so he can call out perfectly easily while breaking into
a swift trot. "There's probably people in that house." He points
to a distant light. "Set it on fire, they run outside, I'll rip
their heads off, yeah?"

Pete, on the other hand, needs to breathe. So he gets gradually
more gaspy as he goes. "What if there're pretty girls in there?
Neh - one thing I'm not is...is random. How about the shite pub
over there what didn't take my ID?"

A moment's consideration. Spike slows, then shrugs. "Yeah, all
right." As long as he gets to kill someone brutally, he doesn't
care, altering course slightly and hopping up onto the boardwalk.

Clambering up top, as well, Pete takes a moment to fish for his
pack of cigarettes. Fish, fish, pat, pat. Aha! Pulling them out of
an inside pocket, he taps one out and holds them out in a silent
offer, not looking; he's watching the end of his own, as he lights
it with his finger. Such a useful power.

"Ta," says Spike again, naturally, accepting the cigarette and
lighting it with - his lighter. He has enough of the vampire's
natural wariness of open flame to resist tempting fate by getting
Pete to do it. He strolls towards the pub in question. "Right, you
set the building on fire, I'll lob a brick through the bedroom
window."

"All right," agrees Pete, taking a drag off his cigarette, eyeing
the building critically. Which part makes the best? Oho. Look. The
ubiquitous propane tanks around the side, by the kitchen. He
grins, his eyes beginning to glow - clamps down on his cigarette
with his lips so he doesn't incinerate it, and kneels down to hook
a hand underneath the building's siding, just above the
foundation. It starts burning almost immediately, and he holds a
hand up to Spike - not yet, okay? Let this get started first. He's
muttering around his cigarette, "Well I did you no wrong, did you
no wrong, going out of your head, I ain't seen you off the
screen..."

Having located a brick - for people like Spike, a brick is never
far away - the vampire waits with about-to-commit-murder patience,
watching Pete with some interest and being careful to stay back.
Come on, little punk kid. Let's eat people.

I don't eat. I stir-fry. He straightens, stepping back, and takes
the cigarette out of his mouth. Exhaling, he watches it begin to
spread, and stops when he's even with Spike. "Oh can't you see I'm
a little insane, oh can't you see I'm really dead, going down down
out of my head, did you no wrong, did you--" A pause in the quiet,
seething singing. "We forgot the petrol for the heads. Here, get
away from this side of the building before you throw - I'm gonna
burst those tanks in a minute."

"All right." This is fantastic. Spike should have come to America
years ago. He could have brought Dru. Wistful thoughts are
dismissed and he makes a dismissive gesture. "Sod the petrol, I'll
do it the old-fashioned way." He's getting hungry again anyway,
jogging around the house. The brick could go through any window,
really.

"Right. Go on, then, it's set." Pete drops into a stance that's
really good for bolting from, and holds the cigarette in one hand,
and starts the other - and his eyes again - glowing once more.
"Take that side," he calls quietly, indicating that opposite the
tanks, "and they'll come out the front."

Heh heh heh. Spike backs up from the house, and hurls the brick
with scary accuracy through an upper window. The smashing sound is
fantastic. Wake up! Your house is about to explode!

There's a set expression on Wisdom's young face, incredibly angry
and incredibly chilly. Letting go does that when you're in his
shoes. "Be cool under heat, be cool on the street. I'm givin' you
a warning, gonna burn those blue suede shoes, swagger in the
morning, prints up front page news," he sings under the sound of
glass breaking and the slowly building crackle of the fire. And
then he looses a volley of hotknives at the propane on the side of
the pub, and *sprints* toward the front.

There's that moment of silence when nothing happens, the whole
world holding its breath. Then the tanks let go with a ripping,
snarling roar, fire leaping up to engulf the side of the building.
From within, there are shouts, screams, terror. Spike is actually
taking a moment to finish his cigarette. "Take em a minute to get
out. If anyone gets out." He grins at Pete. "That was fucking
fantastic."

Coming to a stop a couple of feet from Spike, Pete ashes and
responds with a silent, quirky grin. Then he coolly takes a drag
of his cigarette and watches the fire, slowly relaxing. Something
mesmerising about open flames. There's a chance he could take
Spike out and get the people outside, but - the overwhelming
uncaring that's taken over is stepping all over the screamy little
voice in the back of Pete's mind, and he can't bring himself to
give a shit either way. "I love fire," he finally says,
appreciatively. "I really, really, really do." Besides. He didn't
look at the back. There might be another door. And if they were
too cheap to put a back door in, they deserve getting hoist by
their own petard. Yeah.

There is a back door. It's on fire. Gotta love propane explosions.
"I hate fire," says Spike, thoughtfully, "but I love it when
things burn." And that's all the philosophy that's happening
tonight, as someone manages to scramble out of the upstairs window
that was already brick-damaged. Someone is the man of the house,
coughing and wild-eyed, and he makes the landing effectively and
is just turning around to go back inside and rescue his family
when Spike seizes him from behind and rips his throat out. Party.

Taking a few steps back to watch, Pete leans against a car parked
on the street. He flicks the cigarette butt into the grassy yard,
looking into the back seat idly and taking out another, which he
lights absently. Hey. There might be a gun or something in the
dashboard. Glancing up to see how Spike's faring, he blinks. Oh.
That's why the killing thing, then. "You're a vampire?" he says
quietly, to himself. "Aversion to fire. Conjob was right." He
raises his voice even as he's trying the car door. "Oi, Sid
Vicious, mind the front door - fat bastard huffing out."

Ooh, goody! All vamped out, eyes blazing and frankly, scary as all
hell, Spike drops the corpse of Unfortunate Victim Number One and
goes for Number Two, once again disregarding the
play-with-your-food tactic and just going right for the guy in a
full-on tackle before sinking fangs into his throat. Blood. Yeah.
He's in a frenzy of delight. This is so cool.

Scary if it's aimed at you. Kind of
cross-between-monster-movie-and-Klingon if it's not aimed at you,
really. The door is locked, and Pete turns away from the carnage,
looking annoyed. Fine, then. He sticks his cigarette back in his
mouth and presses fingers against the passenger's side window,
heating them up enough to make faults in the glass, then elbows it
- and it shatters with love. Fuck the glove compartment. "Whenever
you're ready," he calls, climbing under the dashboard to do a
little rewiring, "we've got a car!"

Car! Which can explode! Only not while we're in it, perhaps. Spike
brings himself somewhat back to rational thought, kicks the corpse
of the fat guy for no reason other than that it's there, and
sprints back to the car, features shifting back to human, absently
scrubbing blood off his face with one hand. "That was fucking
amazing. What's your name?" He hops into the car on the passenger
side.

The car starts with a rumble, and Pete slides back up, ripping the
vinyl seat a little with his prickly jacket. He rolls down his
window and pauses for a second, looking past Spike at the fire,
and the bodies on the lawn, then completely loses the hesitation.
It's gone now. There's something dreadfully bad happened inside
the nice kid who apologized to Father Mulcahy. He grins back at
Spike. "Pete Wisdom. You?" *ACCELERATE*. Vroom.

"Spike." And there better be no jokes about that. Or actually, go
ahead, one for free. The vampire is in *that* good of a mood.
"Here, let's ditch this in the harbour. It's fun."

"All right," replies the kid cheerfully, accelerating again.
"What, off the dock?" We can play chicken. I can't swim. "Whoever
jumps out last listens to Simon & Garfunkel."

Hey, suits me, it's not like I can drown. "All right," says Spike
cheerfully. The bastard.

Hey, yeah, he is. That's all right, he's entitled to it. The car's
approaching the dock now, vroom vroom. "So, the one-name thing.
Working out for you? I was considering dropping my given." Pete's
staring straight ahead.

"Seems to suit all right." Spike leans back, so utterly sated and
comfortable, alternately watching Pete and the approaching edge of
the dock. "I like you. Want to live forever?"

There's no answer - just, after a second, Pete's gaze flickers
over to Spike. There's a definite uncertainty in his eyes. He
drowned most of his conscience yesterday, and muffled the last of
it today. But all the same... "I don't know," he says honestly.
Almost there. And then they're off, and sailing through the air.
"I don't know if I want to live at all. Don't know much of
anything anymore." They're skidding over the water; there's a
wrenching thud; Pete takes a deep breath.

Cold. The water is really, really cold. Spike, naturally, doesn't
care, kicking his way out of the rapidly-sinking car and twisting
to reach back inside in order to haul Pete out by the collar. He
was telling the truth. He likes the kid. He isn't about to let him
drown.

Well. That's...different. Pete's not in the habit of having his
life saved by the kind of people who glory in brutal killing. He
doesn't struggle, but slowly lets the air out of his lungs as
Spike drags him up, so he doesn't let it all out at once and
inhale a lungful of water. It's dark everywhere, underwater at
night.

Surfacing, Spike utterly fails to gasp for air, instead hooking
one arm around Pete's chest and swimming powerfully back towards
the dock. "Brilliant," he says again, on reaching the dockside.
"Fucking amazing. Remind me to introduce you to the family
sometime. You'll love it." And unless Pete does something drastic
to avoid it, Spike's going to bodily toss him up onto the wooden
deck.

Pete Wisdom doesn't do anything to avoid it - he's still
completely passive. Cold does, see, very bad things to him. And
that was very, very cold. All at once. About the only thing he can
make himself do is breathe, and as soon as his head's out of the
water, he's hyperventilating. And as soon as he's bodily tossed on
the wooden deck, he's...lying there and hyperventilating, with
blue lips. That was fast. Give him a couple seconds and he'll
start shivering.

Moments later, Spike clambers over the side of the dock and eyes
Pete. "You're not gonna freeze to death or anything, are you?"
Stupid living people. Better put him somewhere he'll be found. The
vampire bends to grab Pete and sling him over his shoulder.
"Right, let's put you somewhere warm. Back in the pub, eh?" He
sniggers and starts jogging back towards town.

Okay, now there's chattering and the start of weak voluntary
motion. "N-no, just-s-stupid p-p-powers." Ngh, shiver. The weak
motion turns into weak resistance. "Lemme walk. 'M okay." Spike
got Pete out fast, so it didn't have a chance to really permeate
the mutant. Plus it's relatively fair out. Walking -will- warm him
up. Shiver. "Fffucking cold..."

Whatever. Spike doesn't really care. He lowers the kid back to the
boardwalk. "All right. Look, I'm off, right? Been fantastic. I'll
look you up. Cheers." He flips Pete a salute and starts rapidly
off towards the city. What a good night.

"Yeah, cheers," says Pete, taking off his sodden jacket and tying
it around his waist. He starts walking, rapidly rubbing at his
arms, hoping for heat from friction and exertion, if nothing else.
Arms, hands, and leave the brain shut off. Leave it shut off or
you'll start to wonder why the hell you said maybe - and why the
hell a vampire saved your life.