Needle and Thread

American Beauty/American Psycho

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An instant after the TARDIS disappeared, Winter watched the Boss cease swatting at Ananda and Andesine just long enough to catch something tiny out of the air and hold it up to its eye. Shortly after, the Boss screamed and stumbled back, holding its eye but not letting go.

"What is that?" Lyra asked. "Jeez, my prescription is so done."

"I... don't know?" Winter said. "But I think that we'd better go and check it out."

Lyra summoned her key guy again and, before he could protest, swept Winter up into the sky towards the Boss.

"Hey, thanks again, John-o," Lyra said when they landed.

"No problem! The whole golden ship thing's been getting pretty boring," he replied, and stepped back into his glowing dimension.

"Uh oh," Winter said. "It's Benny." He pointed up to the blue box clutched in the giant's fist.

"Oh, he'll be fine, then," Lyra said. "He'll just pop off through the time vortex and stuff."

"Not if the Boss does that," Winter said, as the Boss upended the TARDIS and shook Benny and Roxy out.

"Hey!" Lyra shouted. "Stop that!"

The Boss turned towards them.

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Benny sat, panicked, on the Boss's palm as Lyra shouted at it. He looked around him. Amidst the flotsam and jetsam from the TARDIS was Roxy, lying almost peacefully on her side. Benny scrambled towards her and shook her slightly. Nothing happened.

The Boss was still directing its attention to Lyra and Winter, who looked as though he was a cat who'd just been put on the vet's examination table. While it was preoccupied, Benjamin stood up and picked Roxy up as best he could. She was a lot heavier than he'd expected. Then he looked around, uncertain of what he would do next. The TARDIS was on some roof nearby. Not that it would be much use without some of the things that Benny stood ankle-deep in now.

The Boss's hand began to curl into a fist around them. Benny felt claustrophobic. In his panic, he found his hands curling, too, around the shape of a small filet knife. He didn't know what else he was supposed to do, so he followed his gut for once. He plunged the knife into Roxy's thigh.

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Roxy woke up to a terrible pain in her leg and immediately screamed. She couldn't handle the nightmares again, she couldn't kill her friends again--

--her eyes opened, and she realized that she had Benny by the throat as giant fingers curled around the two of them. Benny looked terrified. Roxy let him go and, at the same time, channeled as much of her fear as she could into the hand of what she presumed was the Boss.

Seen from afar, it must have been an odd sight to witness. The Boss suddenly doubled over as though somebody had punched them in the stomach while wearing titanium brass knuckles. Then it screamed as the last few strands of hair fell out of its head and the spikes all over its body sharpened and stretched out, as though trying to defend the Boss from some invisible predator. Its hands fell limply to its sides.

Roxy caught Benny as they fell and flew them away from the Boss, back towards the TARDIS.

"No, wait," Benny said, when he saw where she was heading. "It won't work, a bunch of stuff got knocked out! We've gotta keep fighting."

Roxy nodded as they landed on a nearby rooftop. The wound in her leg was already gone.

They both turned towards the Boss, which was still staring blankly at the sky. Its hands had begun to move a little, but it looked as though it wouldn't prove much of a threat for a few minutes.