Damage


ANDREW
Spike?
(puts down his pipe)

SPIKE
(realizing who it is)
Oh, for the love of—

ANDREW
(stands)
Spike?
(runs toward Spike, touching his shoulders)
It's you. It's really you!
(hugs Spike, sobbing)
My therapist thought I was holding onto false hope, but... I knew you'd come back.
(sniffles, releases Spike from the hug to look him in the eyes)
You're like... you're like Gandalf the White, resurrected from the pit of the Balrog,
(touches his palms to Spike's face)
more beautiful than ever.
(hugs Spike tightly around the neck)
Ohh... he's alive, Frodo.
(sobbing)
He's alive.

ANGEL
(smirking)
You two know each other?
(Spike launches a glance at Angel)

ANDREW
(steps back from Spike, sniffles, straightens his lapels)
Uh, yeah. Um... We—we saved the world together. I mean, Buffy helped, but... it was mostly us. Uh, so what happened? Last I heard, you went all pillar of fire down in the hellmouth.

ANGEL
Could we save memory lane till after we contain this psychotic superpowered killing machine?
(walks around the table, takes a seat beside Wesley)

WESLEY
(standing)
We were just about to bring everyone up to speed on slayer mythology.

ANDREW
I'll take it from here, Pryce. Best they hear it from an expert.

SPIKE
Oh, right. Let the top man have a go.

WESLEY
(stifling a scoff, pauses, then sits)
Please... enlighten us.

ANDREW
Gather around and attend to a most unusual tale... a tale I like to call... The Slayer of the Vampyrs.
(rests his chin on his hands, pauses for thought, then clears throat)
(walking around the table)
Eons ago,
(looks at Gunn)
on the dark continent, 3 wise elders decided to fight evil with a taste of its own sinistro.
(touches Fred's shoulders)
They took a young girl, and they imbued her with the power of a demon.
(crooks his forefingers above Fred's head, forming makeshift horns)
Thusly, the first Slayer of the Vampyrs was born. But alas, the existence of a slayer is often brutal and short-lived. And the "primitive," as she was called, boasted no exception. But... the elders had foreseen this inevitability and...and devised a way for her power to live on.

FRED
In every generation, one is chosen.

ANDREW
Yes, attractive, slender woman.
(Fred rolls her eyes)
There are many potentials, as we experts call them.

WESLEY
Hundreds...maybe thousands per generation.

ANDREW
Each of them experiencing vivid dreams... some say nightmares... of the heroics of past slayers. But only one can be chosen.

ANGEL
That's, um...really great, but we...actually know all that.

ANDREW
You think you know, my good man. You think you know.
(lights his pipe, smokes it, coughs)

LORNE
Uh, wait. So if there's only one slayer, what is little miss whack-your-head-off doing scampering around?

SPIKE
Little Sunnydale surprise.

ANDREW
(sits)
6 months ago, Buffy, Vampyr Slayer extraordinaire, had her lesbian witch make with the beaucoup de magie. One light show later...

ANGEL
All the potentials become slayers.

WESLEY
An army of slayers. Brilliant stratagem. But with the watchers council destroyed, how will these new slayers receive their necessary—

ANDREW
Mr. Giles and a few key Sunnydale alum have been tracking down the recently chosen...
(reaches down to grab his brow-bag lunch; it's labeled with the British "Union Jack" flag and written under it is "ANDREW WC")
uh, guiding them, training them...
(takes a Zip-Loc baggie of goldfish crackers out of the bag and starts to eat them)
giving them the full X-Men, minus the crappy third act. But this Dana girl—she's an anomaly that no one could have foreseen—tortured, traumatized... driven insane by Yoda knows who.

ANGEL
And then the dreams of demons and superpowers she's always had suddenly become real.

WESLEY
The dreams of slayers are usually just that—dreams. But Dana's mental instability may be making them seem more real.

ANDREW
My hypothesis exactly, Pryce.
(takes a small red notebook out of his breast pocket)
I see Mr. Giles may have been wrong about you.
(nods, writes in his notebook

glimpsed a bat with butterfly wings