Simon rent a line of blood across the Beasts arm, drawing the fluid that had gotten him into this whole mess. The Lord roared in rage, not realizing that pain was a two way street. Simon danced back from its lumbering counterstrike.

He rolled to dodge a swing of the Beasts massive tail, careful to keep it away from the caged Kaylee. Lord knows, she was the only thing of import on this whole rock.

"YOU CAN'T WIN, BOY," said the Lord of Blood.

Simon dodged another strike of its tail before answering. "Oh, yeah? How so?"

The Lord started laughing at him. "BECAUSE, I HAVE NO FEAR. AND YOU DO."

Simon danced forward, always careful to keep away from those rending claws. He slashed again, drawing another line of blood, this time on the Beasts chest. "I don't see how that will stop me."

The Beast continued to laugh, even though it was bleeding from half a dozen wounds all over its massive body. "BECAUSE, I CANNOT BE BOWED BY ANYTHING YOU CAN DO TO OTHERS. BUT YOU CAN BE."

Simon realized too late what this monster intended to do. It swung a giant fist at him, and knocked him to the side. There was a flash, that blinded Simon momentairly. When he looked up, he looked at the scariest site he had ever seen.

He fell to his bloodied knees, and the knife he held fell out of his grasp. He saw himself. And he held a knife to Kaylees throat. [i/]

***

River led them through the dusky halls of the Hospital. It was the one that they had gone through when Simon had scanned her brain...or close enough as to make no nevermind. Alliance stuff was uniform in use and function, so it was all basically the same.

Kaylee and Zoe half carried, half dragged Simon between them, him muttering incoherent battlecrys. Finally, River stopped before a rather large set of double doors, which usually required a code to get into. Fortunately, since the power was off, the door wasn't locked.

Unfortuneately, this meant that Zoe and River had to pry about a ton of metal and plas