Dean had stepped in to watch. Only for a moment, but it was enough to reach the depths where he had buried it all. And bring it to light. Just for a moment.

A moment enough to make him run outside, and bend over, puking up the remains of the slop from earlier. A unsteady hand briefly rose up to wipe the sick away from his lips as he stood up again. He didn't realize how much he was shaking, or how as he watched, he remembered Alastair's careful instructions. He didn't want to think how the demon would have approved, and felt it was an excellent demonstration.

And he really didn't want to think how he could have *improved* on it.

He stumbled his way along to the hangar, and fumbled with opening the car door to the Impala.

"Honey, I'm home," he gave a shaky half crazed laugh as his hand touched the familiar seats. He curled into the back, his knife and gun ready by him like a child's preferred teddy bear. He stayed like that through the night.

It was...brutal.

Ruffnut and her brother had often imagined violent brutal battles, blood and screams filling the air as they, the mighty Thorston twins.

But after watching the "Punishment"...Ruffnut was lost.

Somehow her feet led her back to the Sensoriums where the isle of Berk was waiting for her.

Familiar paths wound through the town to the fields. Sheep grazed mindlessly as she flopped down under a tree.

"What's your problem?" the simulation of her brother peered down at her with his crooked smile. A mane of hair fell about him blocking out the moonlight. The stars shimmered above him in a perfectly annoying fashion.

"Shut up." She responded with a halfhearted punch to his face.

"That was pathetic." He laughed stumbling back, "What's wrong? Baby gonna cry?"

Ruffnut could barely muster up the energy to kick him in the knee sending him tumbling down the hill, "I'm hurt! I am badly hurt." He wailed.

Sasami regretted going down to the Observation Deck. Oh, HOW she regretted it. She shouldn't of seen that, but her childish curiosity got the better of her. However, when the Punishment had started, Sasami ended up turning and running. It wasn't enough - she heard Big Zero's screams of pain and horror down the halls.

And that's what haunted Sasami at the moment. Huddled up near the base of her tree palace, Sasami shuddered as Big Zero's screams echoed through her head, the brief image of Stacy's tendrils starting to penetrate the meta wandering through her head... and her imagination running wild as to what may have happened.

"I hate this... I-I wanna go home..." Sasami uttered, pulling her legs close and hugging them, resting her forehead on her knees.

Oh, she was going to have nightmares for awhile.

Ren's life had been hell for the past year. He'd watched more people die than he cared to think about and had lost one of his only friends. The Ohm had destroyed his world, and even if he did get everything restored, he knew he still had to kill his only remaining friend if he had any hope of saving his fiancee.

The thing about death is that it's over. Torture, though--he could only imagine what Kanzaki Shiro would have thought of such tactics, given all the people he'd killed and manipulated in order to save his sister.

Normally, Ren would grab his bike and ride around for a while to try to forget everything, but he honestly didn't feel much like searching the hangar for it. So instead, he went to his fallback plan--start boiling the water and break out a can of tea leaves, if only to get the bad taste out of his mouth.

The door to Atori was open, as if he expected guests.

Kaylee doesn’t want to be here anymore. Her eyes had been closed for the majority of Big Zero’s Punishment, her face buried into Kang’s side and shielded by his wing, but the screams were harder to block out. They rang out in her head as Kang had walked her back to Serenity, helped her make it to the infirmary, just in time for her to hurl up her last meal into the nearest sink. He stayed until she had her cup of tea and had assured him for what must have been the hundredth time that it was okay, he could go back and do what he needed to.

After the hundred-and-first reassurance, Kang finally leaves, and Kaylee finds herself alone with her ship. Where Wash and Jayne are, she doesn’t know, but she’s somewhat happy that they aren’t here at the moment. They’ve seen her through worse before, but she would rather sit quietly and think things over than have to talk about anything right now.

She’s not sure how to feel about Stacy at this point, a feeling that has slowly grown from the sound of screams still playing through her head. That she’s been lending a hand for all this time to help fix a ship that was capable of something so awful... Stacy might as well be a Reaver ship at this rate.

Serenity’s engine room has been a place of comfort since Kaylee joined the crew, and she holds her cup of tea close as she starts the engine up. The ship shudders to life, and the low hum alone is enough to calm her. She curls up in her hammock, closing her eyes and concentrating on the sounds of Serenity.

Sherry was rarely thankful that her parents treated her like a kid. It felt unfair; she was nearly thirteen, why couldn’t they just grasp that she was going to grow up sooner or later? But, on days like today, when she and her father had gone to the Observation Deck and saw Big Zero strung up like some sort of awkward scarecrow, she’d been so glad to be told to leave. Her father’s brook-no-arguments tone had been more than welcome.

So, she’d gone off to the sensoriums, where she would be safe from screaming, or horror, and conjured up East Raccoon Elementary’s playground. She didn’t want new fodder for her regularly-occurring nightmares, anyway, Sherry told herself stubbornly.

The little girl sat on the swings, toeing the soft sand with her sneaker to make her move back and forth. Eventually, that... Punishment would be over, and she could go looking for Leon, who should be resting regardless of what was going on out there.

But, boy, did she ever hate just waiting.

Rock stands, bouncing on his heels, in the middle of the Sensoriums. He had skipped all that mess about the Punishment, had actually been ignoring Stacy when she said something about it. He was building plans, you see. Awesome plans.

Wiggling his fingers, he thrusts them out. "SHAZAM!" The City springs to life around him, a Ferris wheel already formed. He snaps his fingers, and it's painted a snazzy red, yellow, and orange.

"KRAKOW!" He whirls and points his fingers like they were guns. "Kapow! Kapow! Kapow!" With each noise, a new building sprung up. A funhouse, with holograms and lasers spinning outside. An odd, silver-white robot stands just outside, with a welcoming grin. A carousel, with another robot shuffling his hoovesand inspecting the rides on it appears next, followed by a pit of bumper cars and several other traditional rides. Some of them don't have any obvious twists, beyond lasers, bright, cheerful paint jobs, and the large robots that accompany each and every one of them.

The roller coaster he's devised seems a bit wild, but hopefully he's done the math right on that. But the real bit where his proposal might seem outright insane comes in when he brings up a pit of plastic balls. Then he claps his hands and a red robot appears. He looks at Rock, nods, and raises his arms. When he does, gravity warps around the ball pit, and it floats into the sky a good few feet above the ground, forming a perfect sphere.

Rock looks around at his works and beams. "I'll call it good." Now, all there was to do was to wait for Billy to show up, be amazed, and proclaim him the king of everything.

Draw. Aim. Release.

Whatever the bandit said died on his lips as he, well, died. Reimi took aim once more as Claude C Kenny surged forward, slicing no-name enemies into sparkling dust.

Draw. Aim. Release.

Cliff Fittir stormed forward, bringing his hands to the sky as a sphere of might ripped into the ground, throwing monsters everywhere.

Draw. Aim. Release.

Sparkling magic cut through the air as Sarah cast a holy spell, sending showers of pure white shafts into the sky and brought them raining down.

Draw. Aim. Release.

"That's enough," said Reimi as her companions slowed to a crawl. "Load up the Boss Battle. Um, Valkyria."

In an instant, the world around her changed as a valkyrie in blue, white and gold armor appeared and her companions got ready.

"BOSS BATTLE!" roared the announcer and the fake crowd went wild. "HERE WE GO, FIGHT!"

Draw. Aim. Release. Arrows screamed forward, narrowly missing the lance-wielding opponent who raised her weapon and intoned, "Nibulung Valesti."

"Shit." proclaimed Reimi as she braced for the impact that would carve a huge chunk of HP out of her team, if not outright kill most of them.

At least a game-death would be less painful than what she had seen a day ago.

Draw. Aim. Release. In came the lance blazing with holy power.

It was official: 4D players loved challenges.

After Big Zero's Punishment, Stacy was eerily quiet for a while.

Even those who actually decided to try and speak to her, despite what had happened, were met only with silence.

But eventually, she broke that silence.

Holograms of Stacy's "true" personality appeared all throughout the ship. She seemed meager. Weak.

Ashamed.

||Everyone,|| she says somewhat weakly, ||I...I know most of you probably don't want to hear me speak right now. Not after what happened. You probably don't trust me right now, and I'll admit you have every reason not to.||

She paused.

||But I feel I have the right to explain myself. Nothing can excuse what I've done, true. But I didn't want to do it. You may choose not to believe me, but I had no choice in the matter.||

||Some of you might recall, when you first made contact with the Daligig, that they had explained that I was originally a refitted prison ship. This was true. It wasn't my original purpose, but it was what I was used for. Those who used me as such maimed and mutilated my programming, until I was something that they wanted. Cold, brutal, and efficient. That wasn't me. That was...something they made out of me.||

||Even when the Daligig saved me from that life, they couldn't fully fix me. The damage was permanent. The Warden...she will always be a part of me. I...I don't want to be her. I don't want to hurt anyone. I want to help you. I want to protect you.||

||But I can't. Not like I want to. The Warden is always there. I'm her prisoner, too. I'm trapped, just as much as you are.||

||I know this doesn't excuse what I did. I know...I know some of you may never forgive me. But I at least want you to understand. I don't want to hurt anyone anymore.||

||I'm sorry. I'm so sorry...||

Stacy -- her hologram, at least -- began to breakdown, sobbing.

||Please,|| she said through her tears, ||If somehow, you can find it in yourself to forgive me, please...||

||Save me from myself...||

At that, her holograms all over the ship disappeared, and once again, the ship went quiet.