Disclaimer: I own the idea of the Beast, but his real identity is the property of his creator, as are the League.

Feedback: I would REALLY appreciate some of it.

Elenrod: Yeah, I would have liked to have included Tom and Mina as well, but it just wouldn't work with the plot. Don't worry; they'll feature more in this chapter.

Sean Malloy-1: I'll do what I can on the update front, but the 'Kill Bill' thing is something I can't do; I've never seen the movie, so I don't know anything about the characters.

LotRseer3350: Glad you liked the chapter, and here you have it; the League wake up, and they begin their plans to tackle the Beast...

Tonianne: Glad to hear that you like the story so far; I hope I don't disappoint you in the future.

Legacy

Sawyer looked up as he heard the door of the medical area open, and smiled when he saw Logan and Terry walk in.

"Hey there, guys," he smiled, trying to ignore the pain in his forehead as he sat up in his bed, looking around to see how the others were.

It could have been worse, he was relieved to see; the rest of the League were still unconscious, but, out of all of them, only Hartdegen seemed to have sustained any injuries beyond cuts and bruises, and his didn't seem to be anything more serious than a dislocated arm. A little rest and he'd be fine.

However, Sawyer doubted they would have the opportunity to have much of a rest. The Beast, whoever or whatever it was, was still at large, and there was no way Mycroft would give the League time off from a few small injuries while something that dangerous was still around. Of course, Sawyer doubted the League would take the option of rest even if Mycroft offered it to them; whatever else happened to them, the League had vowed long ago that they would never shy away from a dangerous situation if innocent lives were at stake.

Well, maybe Skinner would get cold feet a couple of times, but...

Sawyer broke off that train of thought- it wasn't getting him anywhere- and turned to face Terry and Logan.

"Care to fill me in on how we got here?" he asked, indicating the medical room. "And once that's done, be sure to tell me anything you found particularly noteworthy about the Beast."

"You mean.... besides the fact that he...took all nine of us down...without breaking a sweat?" a voice asked from behind him.

Sawyer smiled; only one man would say something like that at a time like this.

"Feeling all right, Skinner?" he asked, looking over at the bed where the invisible thief was sitting up, rubbing a bruised head. As least, Sawyer assumed it was bruised; there wasn't any blood, and Sawyer doubted Skinner had just gotten a chance headache after that fight with the Beast.

"Oh, as well as can be expected," Skinner grunted, looking up at his friends as he spoke. "Quite frankly, I don't get why you want to see if we can come up with any more information about the Beast. I mean, what's there to know? He's just some unbelievably strong guy who can turn into an even stronger monster, and that's about it."

"No," Logan said, looking over at Skinner with a criticising expression on his face. "That's not it. I caught his scent while we were fighting, and, while it wasn't anything I've ever encountered before, there was something familiar about it."

"Familiar?" Sawyer asked, looking at Logan curiously. "In what way?"

"Well..." Logan said, as he thought over his answer, "it might just be my imagination, but it seemed to me that the guy smelt like... Mina and Hyde."

"What?" Sawyer asked, curious. "Mina and Hyde?" His face suddenly paled. "Please don't tell me this thing could be their kid?!"

"Unlikely," Logan smiled. "For one thing, it wouldn't take a genius to see that you and Mina love each other like no love I've ever seen in my life; she wouldn't cheat on you with Hyde. Of course, it might have happened before you two joined the League, but that doesn't seem likely either. Besides, I smelled something else in the process; something... new."

"Which was?" Sawyer asked.

Logan sighed. "I don't know. It seemed human, but there was something about it that suggested the person has been to some interesting places in his lifetime; I could smell a vague hint of some kind of exotic animal on him, as though he's spent a lot of time after that particular animal."

"Any ideas what animal?" Sawyer asked.

"No," Logan replied. "Nothing I recognised from home, and certainly nothing from in Europe." He sighed. "Great. We haven't got any clues as to who that bastard is, and none of the others are up and about yet."

"Correct... that...." a voice said from further down the room.

Sawyer looked up in the direction of the voice. "Mina?" he asked, getting out of bed and walking down towards a bed further down the room. He was correct; it was Mina who'd spoken, although she didn't look like she was in very good condition. Her face was even paler than normal, and, underneath her bed's sheets, there was a large red stain around her thigh.

Sawyer winced a little as he saw the fragile condition of the woman he loved. However, he tried not to show it; he and Mina had made it an unspoken promise in their relationship that, if one of them was weak, the other one would try to be as strong as they could for the sake of the hurt one. And if both were injured, then a similar theme applied; the one in better shape would have to act stronger for the other.

He slipped his left hand around her cheek, and turned her head to face him.

She smiled at him briefly. "How do... I look?" she asked.

Sawyer smiled a little as he brushed a lock of loose hair away from her mouth with his thumb. "You look beautiful, Mina," he replied, trying to draw her attention away from the pain she must have been feeling in her thigh. "You always do." And you always will, a part of him thought with a touch of regret; Mina's immortality meant she'd never grow old, while he would grow old and die...

But, in the meantime, he'd just enjoy her beauty.

Mina smiled a little. "Tom, much as... I appreciate... the flattery, could you... just be honest... with me here? My thigh's... in bad shape... isn't it?"

Sawyer sighed a little. There were times when Mina's ability to get straight to the point was a good thing, and times when it was an awkward thing. This was one of the awkward things.

"Yeah," he said, sighing again as he looked down at the thigh. "You took a bullet right to the hipbone from a pistol fired by the Beast. The doctors told me they'd taken the bullet out, but even with your vampire healing, you won't be up and about for a while yet."

"Great..." Mina commented, as she lay back down in her bed. "How did things go in the fight?" she asked, looking up at Sawyer curiously.

"Not well," Logan said, answering the question for Sawyer. "The guy flattened you, Frank, Sawyer and Nemo with one blow, took down Skinner and Hartdegen shortly afterwards, and then knocked me and terry out for a while. Not sure what he did to Hyde, but based on Jekyll's appearance," he indicated the bed where Jekyll was lying, having turned back into his normal form before reaching the medical room, "it can't have been good."

Sawyer, Skinner and Mina turned to look at Jekyll's body, or, at least, they did their best to look at the body; Mina and Skinner were in so much pain they could only just about turn their heads. However, they saw what Logan was referring to easily enough; Jekyll's arms were covered in cuts, and his right fist had a large wound in it between his middle and ring finger knuckles.

"Ouch..." Skinner winced. He looked over at the rest of the conscious League members. "Is he in the worst shape of the lot, or is someone even worse off?"

"No, that would be Frank," Sawyer replied, indicated the large form of the League's most private member.

"What? How?" Logan asked. "He didn't look that bad when we got him into the car; I thought that Hyde was the one in bad shape."

"As far as the doctors can tell," Sawyer replied, "he fell on top of Nemo's sword when the Beast knocked him back. The blade must have slipped under his shirt and stuck into his side, but it didn't go all the way through. Not an immediately problematic blow; just dangerous to a human if left alone for a long time."

"I see..." Logan said, looking over at the still form of Frank, who, he saw now, had a large bandage around his waist. "Will he be OK?"

"Oh, he'll be fine," Sawyer smiled. "You guys pulled him off the sword before it could go too far in, and his extra abilities include an increased healing factor. He won't win any fights with you," he indicated Terry at this point, "but he'll be able to hold his own against a normal human pretty easily."

"Not that it does us much good..." Mina sighed, staring up at the ceiling as she spoke. "That creature took us apart like we were pieces of rotten wood, and we don't have any clue as to how it go that power. We don't even know who it originally was."

"Wait a minute...." Logan said, raising one finger as he spoke. "I totally forgot about it until now... we do have a clue."

"Namely?" Skinner asked, wincing visibly as he turned to face his teammate.

"The fact that the guy managed to shoot Mina at a range of almost four hundred yards, in the dark, with only a pistol," Logan explained, as he looked over Mina, where she lay clutching her sore thigh. "I mean, it'd be hard enough with a rifle, but with only a pistol? How many people could pull off this kind of shot with that weapon, even in daylight?"

Mina raised her head at that comment, looking over in Logan's direction as he spoke.

"You said... it smelt like... a vampire?" she asked.

"Yeah," Logan replied. "Is that relevant?"

"Yes..." Mina replied, still not sounding in the best of health, but her vampire healing appeared to be helping her even as she spoke. "Vampire vision....in the night...is just as good...as normal human vision... is in the day." She looked over at Tom. "In the daylight... could you have made this shot?"

Sawyer looked up at the ceiling for a couple of minutes, and then nodded.

"Yeah, I probably could do it," he said, looking over at Mina. "It'd be a close one with my current experience in fights and aiming, but give me a little more experience in this sort of thing and I could pull it off."

"So, we're talking someone- apparently someone who became a vampire at some point or another- who's as good with a gun as... Allan?" Skinner asked, looking over at his friends.

Terry nodded. "Agreed," he said. "It is perfectly conceivable that Allan Quartermain could have succeeded in shooting Mina Harker at the range we are talking about. However, since the Beast is not him, and it is certainly not Tom Sawyer, we have no immediate other alternative as to what his identity is."

Sawyer suddenly clicked his fingers, inspiration striking home as he looked around at the other League members.

"I've got it," he said, looking around at the other conscious League members, a gleam in his eyes. "It all adds up; the powers, the aim, his claims that he owes what he is to three of us...

"The Beast is Colonel Sebastian Moran."