Firefly: "Fathers and Sons--Part Two"

Disclaimer: If I weren't just a poor college student and could finance the series myself, I would, but I can't. So all I can do is just play around in Joss Whedon's 'verse. Also, I don't know a lick of Chinese so I haven't bothered to put the translations because they're probably horribly wrong. If it were Japanese or Latin, well, that'd be another story...

Episode six of my second season of Firefly: The crew of Serenity scramble to get a deathly ill River to a place that can cure her, and they learn the hidden past of Kyo in the process. Part two of two.

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"How bad is it?" asked Captain Malcolm Reynolds at the door to the infirmary. In the passenger lounge just behind him, he could hear the cries of Gabriel and Regan Tam clamoring to know just what was going on. That was something Mal wanted to know himself; why five Academy children like River had woken prematurely from cryo-sleep; why River was deathly ill. But Mal knew "why" wasn't so important in a situation like this. What they were going to do, and how they were going to do it, took slight precedence.

"I suggest you let your gifted boy work his mojo," warned the rough, gravelly voice of Jonah Hex, Serenity's cook, to the distraught Tams.

"It's bad," said Simon Tam in a calm voice, but Mal'd grown used to the boy's stoicism, and knew fear when he heard it--maybe not so much when he saw it. He was still running around River's prone form on the operating chair, checking on tubes and periodically peering at the many screens against the wall. "I've managed to get her fever stabilized, and her seizures have stopped, but she's completely non-responsive."

"Well--uh--have you applied the cortical electrodes?" wondered Jayne Cobb who was standing on the inside of the infirmary, leaning against the door with his large arms crossed over his broad chest. Simon and Mal looked at the mercenary simultaneously, before returning to the conversation a