OOC: Application for meridian_rpg
PLAYER INFO
Name: Shurimon
Main Journal: shurimon
Contact Info: Email: spdbridge03 at gmail dot com
AIM: Shuripus
Plurk: shurimon
Played Characters: Richard Castle (OU) bloody_pens
AC Reminders: Yes- AIM or Plurk
CHARACTER INFO
Name: Dr. Simon Tam
Age: 28
Species: Human
Series: Firefly
OU/AU: OU
Canon Point: Post-movie
History: It is the year 2517. Earth as we know it has long ago been abandoned, and is simply called "Earth-that-was", all of its history now confined to school lessons and textbooks. Humans have been colonizing other planets and making them suitable for habitation for centuries, and a central government, the Alliance, rules over them all.
Simon Tam seemed to have it all. Born to wealthy high-society parents and blessed with a high amount of intelligence, he had a happy childhood and a close relationship with his younger sister, River. As he grew, Simon wished to study medicine, and by the time the series takes place is a successful trauma surgeon on his home planet of Osiris, having graduated in the top three percent of his class. However, he soon chooses to give up his cushy existence for a life on the run from the law.
Around three years before the series began, River was chosen to attend a special school run by the Alliance, known simply as "the Academy". After a few months, though, she stopped communicating with her family except for a series of cryptic, mistake-riddled and sometimes nonsensical letters. Simon and River's parents dismissed these as her playing a childish game; Simon, however, was suspicious, as River was even smarter than he was, and was convinced that the letters were code and she was really crying out for their help. His parents told him to drop it, worried that he'd ruin his career by making accusations with no solid proof, but he wasn't dissuaded. He made several attempts to get information about River, only to end up getting thrown in jail. His angry father paid for his release and accused him of trying to ruin the family, telling him he would not bail him out again; Simon chose to press on, effectively estranging himself from his parents. He finally allied himself with some men in an underground movement who had contacted him and confirmed his fears, posing as an Alliance official wanting to inspect the academy. There, he saw the terrifying truth firsthand- that River had been subjected to a series of intense physical and mental tortures and experiments to try and enhance her psychic abilities and turn her into a human weapon. He thereafter broke her out of the facility, earning both of them the status of fugitives, as the Alliance feared that River knew valuable secrets and wanted her back.
Soon after, Simon was taken to the planet Persephone, with River frozen in suspended animation in a large box he toted with him. He gained passage on the smuggling ship Serenity after being charmed by its mechanic, Kaylee Frye. However, the Captain, Mal Reynolds, became suspicious of him when someone onboard paged a nearby Alliance cruiser after they'd gotten out in space, and he caught Simon in the cargo bay (which the civilian passengers had been forbidden to enter, as Serenity was also smuggling some stolen goods), believing him to be a mole. However, in reality the traitor was Dobson, one of the other passengers picked up from Persephone, who shot Kaylee before being knocked unconscious and restrained. Simon told Mal that they needed to run away from the looming Alliance cruiser, threatening to let Kaylee die from her injury if they didn't. Mal reluctantly agreed, and so Simon treated Kaylee before Mal had him dragged back to the cargo bay and forced open the crate containing River. Simon explained his plight after being accused of transporting her to be a sex slave, and the other passengers and crew were torn over what should be done with the two. After a tense brush with a ship full of Reavers (a group of horrific, cannibalistic and murderous men driven insane with bloodlust) and with Dobson when he escaped and tried to persuade Simon to give his sister up, he secured a place on the ship's crew on the condition that he keep River under control. Mal needed his skills as a doctor, and it was safer for them to be constantly on the move rather than staying in one spot.
Simon had an uneven and sometimes tense relationship with the crew thereafter, as River's ordeal had left her broken- she wandered the ship in a daze, suffered hallucinations and often went into screaming fits of paranoia. Of course, Serenity harboring fugitives was a huge risk as well, a risk that almost got Simon and River caught when the ship was brought in for Alliance inspection after it raided supplies from a transport whose passengers had all been killed by Reavers (fortunately, the two were able to hide by putting on space suits and clinging to the outside of the ship). Nevertheless, Simon was able to develop a good rapport with the Christian preacher Shepherd Book and with Inara Serra, a Companion (professional courtesan), both of whom had a great deal of sympathy for him and assisted in caring for River; gain the sometimes-grudging respect of Mal, his first mate Zoe, and the pilot Wash because of his caring for their injuries; and started to navigate a complicated, budding romance with Kaylee, who was star-struck from their first meeting. By the fifth episode, Mal considered Simon to be part of his "family", and proved his devotion by going out of his way to rescue him and River from a planet where they'd been kidnapped by a group of locals who needed a doctor (and who subsequently tried to burn River as a witch when she read peoples' minds with her powers). The one crewmember Simon had trouble developing a positive relationship with was mercenary Jayne Cobb. Jayne didn't understand why Mal bothered keeping the problematic River on board when they could get rich by turning her in and claiming the reward instead, and wasn't above bullying and playing mean-spirited jokes on Simon.
Jayne's distrust and greed for the hefty bounty on the Tam siblings' heads nearly proved to be their undoing when Simon came up with a plan for the crew to infiltrate a hospital and steal medicine that would fetch a high price on the black market while he used the hospital's brain scanning equipment to get more details on what was done to his sister. Jayne secretly contacted an Alliance official beforehand and arranged for some soldiers to meet the two outside the hospital and arrest them. Simon discovered that River's skull and brain tissue had been cut into multiple times and her amygdala had been taken out, stripping her of the ability to suppress emotions, making her literally feel everything. On the way out, the Alliance troops swarmed- and Jayne got his comeuppance when he, too, was arrested on the charge of aiding and abetting fugitives. They managed to escape and get back to the ship, where Jayne was nearly thrown out the airlock by a livid Mal for his actions. After the crew's next heist, Simon treated Jayne, who had sustained a minor spinal injury, then injected him with a drug that paralyzed him and furiously asked how much he'd been offered to sell him and his sister out. He then swore to never hurt Jayne while he was his patient in spite of their mutual dislike of each other, and told him that for everyone else's sake, they had to get along.
During these events, Simon and Kaylee's romance kept bumping into walls. Simon was very vocal about his dislike of the conditions on Serenity and the life of danger and adventure he'd been thrust into. Kaylee was, in turn, insulted by his disparaging remarks about the ship and crew and was alternately frustrated and confounded by his overly polite nature, assuming this meant he was being snotty and looked down on her for having chosen such a life. However, he explained to her that his manners were his way of showing that he liked and respected her.
River's condition also continued to deteriorate, in spite of the fact that Simon was using various drug treatments to try and restore her to some semblance of normalcy. She became violent at turns, slashing Jayne with a knife to deface the logo on his shirt and pointing a loaded gun, which she had hallucinated was a tree branch, at the others. The others began to correctly speculate about River's conditioning as a human weapon, and nobody seemed to know what to do with her. The crew were then ambushed one night by a bounty hunter named Early, who had been hired to bring River back alive, and Simon alive if reasonable. He first knocked Mal and Shepherd Book unconscious, then threatened Kaylee with rape and left her bound in the engine room before locking the rest of the crew into their quarters and rousing the sleeping Simon, using Kaylee as a hostage to force his cooperation in finding River. However, she was nowhere to be found on the ship... and soon, her voice could be heard over the loudspeakers, taunting Early and making him lose his cool, as well as calming the frightened Kaylee and encouraging her to break loose from her bonds and free the rest of the crew. River was then revealed to have snuck onto Early's ship sometime during the search, and Early himself was pushed out to drift free in space until he died.
Over the next few months, Simon started to butt heads with Mal more and more often and still had trouble being content where he was- trouble made worse when two of the crew's more supportive members, Shepherd Book and Inara, left to stay elsewhere, and when Mal pointedly reminded Simon that the siblings' presence was costing him work and he could just as easily kick them off the ship and leave them to fend for themselves. Things finally came to a head when Mal insisted on taking River along to a bank heist, as she could sense danger coming with her powers, and she, Mal, Zoe and Jayne were very nearly killed by Reavers. Simon got into a fistfight with Mal and agreed to take his sister and leave at their next stop. However, Mal took them back in when River saw an advertisement for, of all things, Fruity Oaty snack bars on television and started attacking patrons in the middle of a bar, knocking almost all of them out before Simon appeared and spoke a Russian phrase that made her immediately fall unconscious. He admitted that he knew more about River than he had first let on, and that she had been conditioned to bring out her psychic powers and turn into an emotionless, completely driven assassin when seeing a certain coded phrase, which had been subliminally embedded in the Fruity Oaty commercial. The Russian phrase he'd spoken was a "safeword" to make her fall asleep and take her out of her killer state of mind. River also whispered the word "Miranda", and seemed to become fixated on it, though she couldn't articulate what it meant, just that it upset her to the point where she begged Simon to shoot her and put her out of her misery.
Mal, when going to visit Inara (who had contacted Serenity under obvious duress), found out that he and his crew were being trailed by an Alliance Operative, a nameless individual that worked in extreme anonymity, who wanted River and was working behind the scenes to try and get her. Mal tried to kill the Operative, but failed against his opponent's body armor and martial arts skills, and he and Inara barely escaped with their lives. Back on Serenity, the crew discovered that Miranda was a planet that had been slated for terraforming at one point, but was now supposedly a dead rock, surrounded by Reavers. They tried seeking asylum with Shepherd Book while making a plan of what to do, only to find that the preacher had been murdered by the Operative's men- along with all of the others who had ever given them shelter in the past.
The crew were forced to flee to Miranda and managed to get unharmed through the massive group of Reavers surrounding it, to discover that not only had the planet been successfully terraformed, it had apparently been home to numerous bustling cities- but all of the inhabitants lay dead of an unknown force. River went into a nearly-catatonic state at this point, screaming that she could hear all of the people, and that they were saying nothing. The gang followed a beacon deep into one of the cities and discovered a crashed ship, containing a recorded message revealing the horrifying truth- the Alliance had been testing a gas called Pax on Miranda, which was supposed to pacify the population and remove peoples' anger, but instead made almost all of the world's inhabitants simply stop doing ANYTHING, including feeding themselves, so they wasted away. The others' anger went out of control, so they became Reavers.
Mal knew that the truth had to be told, so the crew took off to the planet inhabited by Mr. Universe, one of their contacts who had been helping them keep tabs on the Alliance (and who turned out to be a traitor and then was killed by the Operative), intending to use his equipment to broadcast the message to dozens of planets. They took a risky gambit and allowed themselves to be pursued into atmosphere by Reavers, who immediately set upon the small army the Operative had brought with him to intercept them. Wash was killed in a crash landing on the planet when he was speared through the chest, and the remaining crew had to press on without him. Simon, Kaylee, Inara, Jayne, River and Zoe stayed back to cover for Mal while he used Mr. Universe's equipment. While waiting for the inevitable Reaver attack, Simon lamented that he'd spent so much time worrying about River, everything else- including his own wants- had taken a back seat, and told Kaylee his one regret was never advancing their relationship. In the ensuing firefight against the Reavers, things seemed hopeless when they ran short on ammo, Kaylee was taken down by poisonous darts, and Simon received a seemingly-fatal shot to the stomach. River then told Simon that he'd taken care of her for so long, now it was her turn to take care of him- and she unleashed her full human weapon potential, slaughtering every Reaver that came at her with barely any injuries of her own. Mal, meanwhile, successfully subdued the Operative and broadcast the message of the Reavers' origin.
Thereafter, the Operative realized that he had been mistaken and helped the battered crew bury their friends, repair their destroyed ship and take off again, with the Alliance's pursuit of River and Simon seemingly being scaled-back, as the Operative said they were no longer a threat. River took up Wash's position as pilot along with Mal, while Simon stayed on as the ship's medic- and let his attraction to Kaylee finally spill over into physical passion.
Personality: Simon is very smart and totally devoted to two roles in his life- being a doctor and being a brother. He loves River, his mentally-damaged sister, so much that he gave up his entire life as he knew it for her. He risked his life, his freedom, and a lucrative career in medicine, as well as estranged himself from his parents, in order to break her out of a facility where she was being held against her will and experimented on. As a result of this, the two of them share a very strong bond. He is always the first to come to her defense when others criticize or misunderstand her, hides what he knows of the true nature of her conditioning as a human weapon in order to give them a chance of staying at one of the few places they can be safe, and supports her no matter what happens to them. Simon is more than willing to give his life in exchange for hers or die alongside her rather than live without her.
However, his strong attachment to his sister is not without its bad points. Simon constantly shoves aside his own wants and desires for River's sake, to the point where it becomes detrimental to his ability to form relationships with others. This is most evident in his developing romance with ship mechanic Kaylee- while it is obvious that he reciprocates her feelings for him, his focus on River prevents them from going very far as a couple until the end of the movie. He also doesn't take much time to try and form bonds with the rest of the crew, aside from the ones who support him and help care for his sister the most (Inara, Kaylee, and Shepherd Book), which leads to a lot of tension between himself and the ship's Captain, Mal. In addition, he is willing to kill, or at least let someone die from their injuries, rather than risk his sister being handed back to the Alliance.
As much as he tries to hide it, the burden of caring for his sister does take its toll on him after a while, and there are signs in the last episode that he is starting to crack under the pressure. For example, when taken captive by a bounty hunter who forces him to help find River, the bounty hunter remarks that River is becoming a problem, and Simon replies that he feels for him.
Due to his upbringing, Simon tries to be well-mannered, clean-cut and well-dressed at all times. This makes some, including his newfound crewmates, perceive him to be a snob, and makes him stand out on the less-civilized border planets. However, he explains in one episode that his manners are all he has left out in the far reaches of space, and being polite to people is how he shows that he respects them. Despite this, he has trouble fitting in with the others. He is not shy about complaining about his lot in life, being a fugitive on the run from the law, when he's used to being respected and having a lot of money. In addition, he often lacks tact when dealing with people on a personal level, having a tendency to speak before he thinks, and believing that the social graces he learned as an upper-class Alliance citizen apply everywhere. He often seems nervous and high-strung when outside the confines of the ship, as well, likely due to a very realistic fear that he and his sister will be found and arrested at any moment.
Simon takes his role as a doctor very seriously. He tries to treat everybody equally when they are his patient, regardless of his personal feelings toward them, and will go out of his way to help someone who is sick or injured, disregarding his own personal safety. He is even willing to move outside his usual duties and comfort zone as a surgeon, including helping deliver a child, to offer his services to those who need them the most.
Powers: Nothing supernatural, though Simon is an extremely gifted doctor. He has an extensive knowledge of the human body and how to repair it, as well as of various drugs and their effects. Though ostensibly a trauma surgeon, he was also shown to be performing tasks like delivering a baby and starting to perform an autopsy.
Weaknesses: Simon is not a fighter by any stretch of the imagination. Though he will willingly take up arms or try and fight to defend his sister and the other crewmembers when necessary, he is unskilled with and seems uncomfortable handling weapons. Though a careful planner, Simon has trouble thinking on his feet and improvising when plans go awry, except when it involves his surgeon's skills.
Possessions: None except for the clothes on his back.
Marking Location: Face
Miscellaneous: N/A
First Person: [Citizens of Meridian may have seen the well-dressed man frantically searching around the city. However, he never stopped to chat with anybody, moved with purpose, occasionally calling out names.]
River? Meimei, where are you?
[He finally stops in a quiet corner to gather his breath and his thoughts.]
If she's not here... but she has to be. Her and Kaylee and everyone else. Even if we don't remember how we got here...
[He tries to puzzle this out before a dreadful thought then occurs to him.]
... Did we crash? But if that's the case... where's the ship? Where is everyone else? And why don't I appear to be injured or harmed by it at all?
[He examines and touches his body all over. No signs of injuries, as he suspected. Nothing unusual in any way, as far as he can tell, in fact. He takes another breath, deciding that the best course of action now would be to seek out someone- ANYONE- to try and find out where he is. And so, he sets off again.]
Third Person: Simon was most in his element when this happened- when there was a patient to treat, when he could be a doctor and do what he did best.
Even though he had limited supplies in this place called Meridian, and he was separated from those he trusted and relied on most, he could still feel that familiar mindset he went into when treating someone, feel all of his fears and trepidation slipping away, being tucked into boxes and shoved into the back of his mind until such time as he could afford to deal with them.
There was a patient, and he was a doctor. If he let this person down, they could die from their injury, or worse. And so he deftly threaded a needle and began stitching the awful wound in the man's side, while another person stood by and dulled the pain of the procedure with their powers- powers Simon couldn't begin to comprehend but was willing to utilize anyway. Making do with the resources at hand was nothing new to him, after all.
It seemed like it was no time at all before the task was finished, the patient's wound properly dressed, and the man laid up to rest. As Simon cleaned up, that was when he took the time to breathe out and sag a little with relief that nothing had happened. Treating people was much more difficult- but not impossible- this way, and one slip-up could cost a life.
But it didn't happen. Not this time, he reminded himself. Remember your purpose. Until you can find your sister again, this is what you're meant to be doing. And with that, he nodded firmly, discarded the rubber gloves he had been wearing and went to thank his assistant.
Name: Shurimon
Main Journal: shurimon
Contact Info: Email: spdbridge03 at gmail dot com
AIM: Shuripus
Plurk: shurimon
Played Characters: Richard Castle (OU) bloody_pens
AC Reminders: Yes- AIM or Plurk
CHARACTER INFO
Name: Dr. Simon Tam
Age: 28
Species: Human
Series: Firefly
OU/AU: OU
Canon Point: Post-movie
History: It is the year 2517. Earth as we know it has long ago been abandoned, and is simply called "Earth-that-was", all of its history now confined to school lessons and textbooks. Humans have been colonizing other planets and making them suitable for habitation for centuries, and a central government, the Alliance, rules over them all.
Simon Tam seemed to have it all. Born to wealthy high-society parents and blessed with a high amount of intelligence, he had a happy childhood and a close relationship with his younger sister, River. As he grew, Simon wished to study medicine, and by the time the series takes place is a successful trauma surgeon on his home planet of Osiris, having graduated in the top three percent of his class. However, he soon chooses to give up his cushy existence for a life on the run from the law.
Around three years before the series began, River was chosen to attend a special school run by the Alliance, known simply as "the Academy". After a few months, though, she stopped communicating with her family except for a series of cryptic, mistake-riddled and sometimes nonsensical letters. Simon and River's parents dismissed these as her playing a childish game; Simon, however, was suspicious, as River was even smarter than he was, and was convinced that the letters were code and she was really crying out for their help. His parents told him to drop it, worried that he'd ruin his career by making accusations with no solid proof, but he wasn't dissuaded. He made several attempts to get information about River, only to end up getting thrown in jail. His angry father paid for his release and accused him of trying to ruin the family, telling him he would not bail him out again; Simon chose to press on, effectively estranging himself from his parents. He finally allied himself with some men in an underground movement who had contacted him and confirmed his fears, posing as an Alliance official wanting to inspect the academy. There, he saw the terrifying truth firsthand- that River had been subjected to a series of intense physical and mental tortures and experiments to try and enhance her psychic abilities and turn her into a human weapon. He thereafter broke her out of the facility, earning both of them the status of fugitives, as the Alliance feared that River knew valuable secrets and wanted her back.
Soon after, Simon was taken to the planet Persephone, with River frozen in suspended animation in a large box he toted with him. He gained passage on the smuggling ship Serenity after being charmed by its mechanic, Kaylee Frye. However, the Captain, Mal Reynolds, became suspicious of him when someone onboard paged a nearby Alliance cruiser after they'd gotten out in space, and he caught Simon in the cargo bay (which the civilian passengers had been forbidden to enter, as Serenity was also smuggling some stolen goods), believing him to be a mole. However, in reality the traitor was Dobson, one of the other passengers picked up from Persephone, who shot Kaylee before being knocked unconscious and restrained. Simon told Mal that they needed to run away from the looming Alliance cruiser, threatening to let Kaylee die from her injury if they didn't. Mal reluctantly agreed, and so Simon treated Kaylee before Mal had him dragged back to the cargo bay and forced open the crate containing River. Simon explained his plight after being accused of transporting her to be a sex slave, and the other passengers and crew were torn over what should be done with the two. After a tense brush with a ship full of Reavers (a group of horrific, cannibalistic and murderous men driven insane with bloodlust) and with Dobson when he escaped and tried to persuade Simon to give his sister up, he secured a place on the ship's crew on the condition that he keep River under control. Mal needed his skills as a doctor, and it was safer for them to be constantly on the move rather than staying in one spot.
Simon had an uneven and sometimes tense relationship with the crew thereafter, as River's ordeal had left her broken- she wandered the ship in a daze, suffered hallucinations and often went into screaming fits of paranoia. Of course, Serenity harboring fugitives was a huge risk as well, a risk that almost got Simon and River caught when the ship was brought in for Alliance inspection after it raided supplies from a transport whose passengers had all been killed by Reavers (fortunately, the two were able to hide by putting on space suits and clinging to the outside of the ship). Nevertheless, Simon was able to develop a good rapport with the Christian preacher Shepherd Book and with Inara Serra, a Companion (professional courtesan), both of whom had a great deal of sympathy for him and assisted in caring for River; gain the sometimes-grudging respect of Mal, his first mate Zoe, and the pilot Wash because of his caring for their injuries; and started to navigate a complicated, budding romance with Kaylee, who was star-struck from their first meeting. By the fifth episode, Mal considered Simon to be part of his "family", and proved his devotion by going out of his way to rescue him and River from a planet where they'd been kidnapped by a group of locals who needed a doctor (and who subsequently tried to burn River as a witch when she read peoples' minds with her powers). The one crewmember Simon had trouble developing a positive relationship with was mercenary Jayne Cobb. Jayne didn't understand why Mal bothered keeping the problematic River on board when they could get rich by turning her in and claiming the reward instead, and wasn't above bullying and playing mean-spirited jokes on Simon.
Jayne's distrust and greed for the hefty bounty on the Tam siblings' heads nearly proved to be their undoing when Simon came up with a plan for the crew to infiltrate a hospital and steal medicine that would fetch a high price on the black market while he used the hospital's brain scanning equipment to get more details on what was done to his sister. Jayne secretly contacted an Alliance official beforehand and arranged for some soldiers to meet the two outside the hospital and arrest them. Simon discovered that River's skull and brain tissue had been cut into multiple times and her amygdala had been taken out, stripping her of the ability to suppress emotions, making her literally feel everything. On the way out, the Alliance troops swarmed- and Jayne got his comeuppance when he, too, was arrested on the charge of aiding and abetting fugitives. They managed to escape and get back to the ship, where Jayne was nearly thrown out the airlock by a livid Mal for his actions. After the crew's next heist, Simon treated Jayne, who had sustained a minor spinal injury, then injected him with a drug that paralyzed him and furiously asked how much he'd been offered to sell him and his sister out. He then swore to never hurt Jayne while he was his patient in spite of their mutual dislike of each other, and told him that for everyone else's sake, they had to get along.
During these events, Simon and Kaylee's romance kept bumping into walls. Simon was very vocal about his dislike of the conditions on Serenity and the life of danger and adventure he'd been thrust into. Kaylee was, in turn, insulted by his disparaging remarks about the ship and crew and was alternately frustrated and confounded by his overly polite nature, assuming this meant he was being snotty and looked down on her for having chosen such a life. However, he explained to her that his manners were his way of showing that he liked and respected her.
River's condition also continued to deteriorate, in spite of the fact that Simon was using various drug treatments to try and restore her to some semblance of normalcy. She became violent at turns, slashing Jayne with a knife to deface the logo on his shirt and pointing a loaded gun, which she had hallucinated was a tree branch, at the others. The others began to correctly speculate about River's conditioning as a human weapon, and nobody seemed to know what to do with her. The crew were then ambushed one night by a bounty hunter named Early, who had been hired to bring River back alive, and Simon alive if reasonable. He first knocked Mal and Shepherd Book unconscious, then threatened Kaylee with rape and left her bound in the engine room before locking the rest of the crew into their quarters and rousing the sleeping Simon, using Kaylee as a hostage to force his cooperation in finding River. However, she was nowhere to be found on the ship... and soon, her voice could be heard over the loudspeakers, taunting Early and making him lose his cool, as well as calming the frightened Kaylee and encouraging her to break loose from her bonds and free the rest of the crew. River was then revealed to have snuck onto Early's ship sometime during the search, and Early himself was pushed out to drift free in space until he died.
Over the next few months, Simon started to butt heads with Mal more and more often and still had trouble being content where he was- trouble made worse when two of the crew's more supportive members, Shepherd Book and Inara, left to stay elsewhere, and when Mal pointedly reminded Simon that the siblings' presence was costing him work and he could just as easily kick them off the ship and leave them to fend for themselves. Things finally came to a head when Mal insisted on taking River along to a bank heist, as she could sense danger coming with her powers, and she, Mal, Zoe and Jayne were very nearly killed by Reavers. Simon got into a fistfight with Mal and agreed to take his sister and leave at their next stop. However, Mal took them back in when River saw an advertisement for, of all things, Fruity Oaty snack bars on television and started attacking patrons in the middle of a bar, knocking almost all of them out before Simon appeared and spoke a Russian phrase that made her immediately fall unconscious. He admitted that he knew more about River than he had first let on, and that she had been conditioned to bring out her psychic powers and turn into an emotionless, completely driven assassin when seeing a certain coded phrase, which had been subliminally embedded in the Fruity Oaty commercial. The Russian phrase he'd spoken was a "safeword" to make her fall asleep and take her out of her killer state of mind. River also whispered the word "Miranda", and seemed to become fixated on it, though she couldn't articulate what it meant, just that it upset her to the point where she begged Simon to shoot her and put her out of her misery.
Mal, when going to visit Inara (who had contacted Serenity under obvious duress), found out that he and his crew were being trailed by an Alliance Operative, a nameless individual that worked in extreme anonymity, who wanted River and was working behind the scenes to try and get her. Mal tried to kill the Operative, but failed against his opponent's body armor and martial arts skills, and he and Inara barely escaped with their lives. Back on Serenity, the crew discovered that Miranda was a planet that had been slated for terraforming at one point, but was now supposedly a dead rock, surrounded by Reavers. They tried seeking asylum with Shepherd Book while making a plan of what to do, only to find that the preacher had been murdered by the Operative's men- along with all of the others who had ever given them shelter in the past.
The crew were forced to flee to Miranda and managed to get unharmed through the massive group of Reavers surrounding it, to discover that not only had the planet been successfully terraformed, it had apparently been home to numerous bustling cities- but all of the inhabitants lay dead of an unknown force. River went into a nearly-catatonic state at this point, screaming that she could hear all of the people, and that they were saying nothing. The gang followed a beacon deep into one of the cities and discovered a crashed ship, containing a recorded message revealing the horrifying truth- the Alliance had been testing a gas called Pax on Miranda, which was supposed to pacify the population and remove peoples' anger, but instead made almost all of the world's inhabitants simply stop doing ANYTHING, including feeding themselves, so they wasted away. The others' anger went out of control, so they became Reavers.
Mal knew that the truth had to be told, so the crew took off to the planet inhabited by Mr. Universe, one of their contacts who had been helping them keep tabs on the Alliance (and who turned out to be a traitor and then was killed by the Operative), intending to use his equipment to broadcast the message to dozens of planets. They took a risky gambit and allowed themselves to be pursued into atmosphere by Reavers, who immediately set upon the small army the Operative had brought with him to intercept them. Wash was killed in a crash landing on the planet when he was speared through the chest, and the remaining crew had to press on without him. Simon, Kaylee, Inara, Jayne, River and Zoe stayed back to cover for Mal while he used Mr. Universe's equipment. While waiting for the inevitable Reaver attack, Simon lamented that he'd spent so much time worrying about River, everything else- including his own wants- had taken a back seat, and told Kaylee his one regret was never advancing their relationship. In the ensuing firefight against the Reavers, things seemed hopeless when they ran short on ammo, Kaylee was taken down by poisonous darts, and Simon received a seemingly-fatal shot to the stomach. River then told Simon that he'd taken care of her for so long, now it was her turn to take care of him- and she unleashed her full human weapon potential, slaughtering every Reaver that came at her with barely any injuries of her own. Mal, meanwhile, successfully subdued the Operative and broadcast the message of the Reavers' origin.
Thereafter, the Operative realized that he had been mistaken and helped the battered crew bury their friends, repair their destroyed ship and take off again, with the Alliance's pursuit of River and Simon seemingly being scaled-back, as the Operative said they were no longer a threat. River took up Wash's position as pilot along with Mal, while Simon stayed on as the ship's medic- and let his attraction to Kaylee finally spill over into physical passion.
Personality: Simon is very smart and totally devoted to two roles in his life- being a doctor and being a brother. He loves River, his mentally-damaged sister, so much that he gave up his entire life as he knew it for her. He risked his life, his freedom, and a lucrative career in medicine, as well as estranged himself from his parents, in order to break her out of a facility where she was being held against her will and experimented on. As a result of this, the two of them share a very strong bond. He is always the first to come to her defense when others criticize or misunderstand her, hides what he knows of the true nature of her conditioning as a human weapon in order to give them a chance of staying at one of the few places they can be safe, and supports her no matter what happens to them. Simon is more than willing to give his life in exchange for hers or die alongside her rather than live without her.
However, his strong attachment to his sister is not without its bad points. Simon constantly shoves aside his own wants and desires for River's sake, to the point where it becomes detrimental to his ability to form relationships with others. This is most evident in his developing romance with ship mechanic Kaylee- while it is obvious that he reciprocates her feelings for him, his focus on River prevents them from going very far as a couple until the end of the movie. He also doesn't take much time to try and form bonds with the rest of the crew, aside from the ones who support him and help care for his sister the most (Inara, Kaylee, and Shepherd Book), which leads to a lot of tension between himself and the ship's Captain, Mal. In addition, he is willing to kill, or at least let someone die from their injuries, rather than risk his sister being handed back to the Alliance.
As much as he tries to hide it, the burden of caring for his sister does take its toll on him after a while, and there are signs in the last episode that he is starting to crack under the pressure. For example, when taken captive by a bounty hunter who forces him to help find River, the bounty hunter remarks that River is becoming a problem, and Simon replies that he feels for him.
Due to his upbringing, Simon tries to be well-mannered, clean-cut and well-dressed at all times. This makes some, including his newfound crewmates, perceive him to be a snob, and makes him stand out on the less-civilized border planets. However, he explains in one episode that his manners are all he has left out in the far reaches of space, and being polite to people is how he shows that he respects them. Despite this, he has trouble fitting in with the others. He is not shy about complaining about his lot in life, being a fugitive on the run from the law, when he's used to being respected and having a lot of money. In addition, he often lacks tact when dealing with people on a personal level, having a tendency to speak before he thinks, and believing that the social graces he learned as an upper-class Alliance citizen apply everywhere. He often seems nervous and high-strung when outside the confines of the ship, as well, likely due to a very realistic fear that he and his sister will be found and arrested at any moment.
Simon takes his role as a doctor very seriously. He tries to treat everybody equally when they are his patient, regardless of his personal feelings toward them, and will go out of his way to help someone who is sick or injured, disregarding his own personal safety. He is even willing to move outside his usual duties and comfort zone as a surgeon, including helping deliver a child, to offer his services to those who need them the most.
Powers: Nothing supernatural, though Simon is an extremely gifted doctor. He has an extensive knowledge of the human body and how to repair it, as well as of various drugs and their effects. Though ostensibly a trauma surgeon, he was also shown to be performing tasks like delivering a baby and starting to perform an autopsy.
Weaknesses: Simon is not a fighter by any stretch of the imagination. Though he will willingly take up arms or try and fight to defend his sister and the other crewmembers when necessary, he is unskilled with and seems uncomfortable handling weapons. Though a careful planner, Simon has trouble thinking on his feet and improvising when plans go awry, except when it involves his surgeon's skills.
Possessions: None except for the clothes on his back.
Marking Location: Face
Miscellaneous: N/A
First Person: [Citizens of Meridian may have seen the well-dressed man frantically searching around the city. However, he never stopped to chat with anybody, moved with purpose, occasionally calling out names.]
River? Meimei, where are you?
[He finally stops in a quiet corner to gather his breath and his thoughts.]
If she's not here... but she has to be. Her and Kaylee and everyone else. Even if we don't remember how we got here...
[He tries to puzzle this out before a dreadful thought then occurs to him.]
... Did we crash? But if that's the case... where's the ship? Where is everyone else? And why don't I appear to be injured or harmed by it at all?
[He examines and touches his body all over. No signs of injuries, as he suspected. Nothing unusual in any way, as far as he can tell, in fact. He takes another breath, deciding that the best course of action now would be to seek out someone- ANYONE- to try and find out where he is. And so, he sets off again.]
Third Person: Simon was most in his element when this happened- when there was a patient to treat, when he could be a doctor and do what he did best.
Even though he had limited supplies in this place called Meridian, and he was separated from those he trusted and relied on most, he could still feel that familiar mindset he went into when treating someone, feel all of his fears and trepidation slipping away, being tucked into boxes and shoved into the back of his mind until such time as he could afford to deal with them.
There was a patient, and he was a doctor. If he let this person down, they could die from their injury, or worse. And so he deftly threaded a needle and began stitching the awful wound in the man's side, while another person stood by and dulled the pain of the procedure with their powers- powers Simon couldn't begin to comprehend but was willing to utilize anyway. Making do with the resources at hand was nothing new to him, after all.
It seemed like it was no time at all before the task was finished, the patient's wound properly dressed, and the man laid up to rest. As Simon cleaned up, that was when he took the time to breathe out and sag a little with relief that nothing had happened. Treating people was much more difficult- but not impossible- this way, and one slip-up could cost a life.
But it didn't happen. Not this time, he reminded himself. Remember your purpose. Until you can find your sister again, this is what you're meant to be doing. And with that, he nodded firmly, discarded the rubber gloves he had been wearing and went to thank his assistant.