Nothing In The 'Verse
One-Shot: Kickstart My Heart
NOTE: Takes place just before Episode 24 of Nothing In The 'Verse.
Fortune's Favour. Eavesdown Docks. Persephone.
Captain Danielle Grant sat on the bridge of her beloved Firefly transport, Fortune's Favour, her feet up on the console. Night had fallen on Persephone, and they didn't need to be in the air again until the next morning. All was quiet.
Quite frankly, she was bored out of her gorram mind.
"Hey, Dani!" a cheery voice called from behind. She put her feet down and swiveled her chair to see her girlfriend enter the bridge.
Lori was a perky redhead who, besides having swept the lanky captain off of her feet, was an excellent sniper, and the newest addition to their guns. Following her lover onto the bridge were two other members of the ground crew, her brother and First Mate, Keith, and his wife Jess.
"So," Lori said, plopping down in the pilot's seat. "We got a proposition for you."
Dani looked between the three of them. "This can't be good," she murmured.
"No, it is! I swear! Tell 'er, guys!"
Keith rumbled a quiet chuckle. "Hey, I just said I'd drive."
Giving her husband a playful swat on the arm, Jess turned to Dani, eyes twinkling. "We want to go on a date. The four of us."
"Oh!" Dani said, surprised. Then a slow grin spread across her face. "You think Persephone can handle all of us at once?"
Streets of Tangrenjie. Persephone.
The four crew from the Favour parked the Mule down the street, and walked the streets arm-in-arm. They presented a rather imposing sight.
Dani was dressed in her usual casual clothes, tan cargoes and a black long-sleeved tee shirt, with her brown flight jacket and low spacer boots. The lanky ex-Browncoat captain had her medium-length hair back in a ponytail, revealing several scars, the deepest being one on her forehead and another at the corner of her right eye. Her worn Ares pistol was in her low-slung holster.
Next to her, Lori was in one of her usual short dresses, falling just to the knee and contrasting with the clunky combat boots she sometimes liked to wear. This one was a deep green, a shade darker than emerald. Her short bob of red hair bounced when she walked. She also had a short brown jacket on, coming just to her waist and leaving her old service revolver accessible in its holster. The former Browncoat sniper wasn't a great shot with it, but could hold her own.
Dani's sister-in-law Jess was dressed elegantly as always. She had delicate Asian features, but was anything but fragile; Dani had often noted that the slim woman was freaky-athletic and could run circles around any of them. Her long black hair was tied up in an intricate bun, with silver chopsticks through it to keep things in place. She wore a deep blue pants suit with a cream-colored blouse underneath, and her little Beretta pistol was snug inside her shoulder holster, barely peeking out from under her jacket. A pair of sensible yet fashionable pumps completed the former Alliance supply officer's outfit.
In contrast to his wife, the shaven-headed Keith wore simple clothes out. His fatigue pants were likely the same as he used to wear when he was an Alliance Special Forces trooper, and the same could be said for his boots. He preferred a tight black tee shirt, showing off the many tattoos on his arms, and eschewed a jacket. His heavy Ares machine pistol, the big brother to Dani's, rode on his hip in a combat holster.
One might be forgiven for the presumption that the four were here to occupy the quaint shopping district's streets by force, but in truth, they were just out looking for some fun.
"Hey," Jess said suddenly as they walked along. "How about that tea house?"
Keith grunted. "Not a fan of tea."
"Seriously?" Dani asked. "All you can drink is coffee? What's wrong with you?"
"Don't make fun of you for not drinking coffee," he stated pleasantly.
"That's good, because coffee is nasty," Dani snarked back.
"Hey now, I drink coffee," Lori protested, as they moved past the tea shop.
"Yes, sweetie, and I can't kiss you after your morning cup," Dani said softly.
"Oh," Lori said thoughtfully. "Never noticed that. Huh."
"Alright, fine, no tea shop!" Jess cut in, exasperated. "What about up there? An old vidhouse. Maybe we can see a vid together."
"Hmm," Keith grunted again. "What do they have?"
The four stopped at the old vidhouse. They were a rarity nowadays except on the Rim. Place like Persephone, being so close to the Core, most such houses had upgraded their screens to large Cortex units.
"Okaaaayyy..." Dani drawled, looking over the selections. "Mostly old stuff. Got a comedy, a romance, a romantic comedy... action... what the diyu (hell) is this one?"
"Horror?" Lori guessed. "Poster over here looks like some kinda alien monster thing."
Keith barked out a laugh. "Why do they even bother? Nothing out there like that. Most we got to worry about are the Reavers."
"You say that with such nonchalance," Lori shuddered.
Dani smirked. "They're not so bad when you face them, just gotta make head shots and don' get overwhelmed."
"Didn't look that way when you were on your back with thee hun dans (bastards) closing in," Keith smirked back. Dani gave him a punch on the arm.
"Bi zui (shut up). You actually went up against Reavers?" Lori said, her voice hushed.
"Look, guys, can we pick a vid here?" Jess said impatiently. "We can swap stories while we're in our seating waiting for it to start."
"Okay then, which one?" Dani mused.
Keith made a growling noise from deep in his chest as he interrupted the conversation. "Trouble."
Behind them, a group of teenaged toughs had started moving in a loose semicircle around the four crewmembers. Dani rolled her eyes in exasperation, and turned to face them.
"Really? We're just tryin' to have a date here. Qu nide (fuck off)." Then she turned back to the movie listings.
The street toughs, perhaps a little perplexed, paused for a moment before their leader stepped forward. "Hand over your wallets."
"Gao yang jong duh goo yang (motherless goats of all motherless goats)," Dani grumbled, turning back around again. Keith was just leaning against the wall, his arms crossed and smirking, while Jess leaned against him shaking her head. Lori kept her hand on her sidearm, and stayed by Dani's side, which she actually thought was kinda sweet.
"Look, how feng li (crazy) are you? Do you not see how heavily armed we are? Seriously, just nigeiwogun (get out of my sight), and nobody gets hurt. Dong ma (understand)?"
The leader looked around at his gang of twenty toughs, and back at the four incredulously. "Yeah, and give us your guns, too."
"Qiang bao hou-zi de, qing wa kao de liu mang (monkey raping, frog humping son of a bitch)!" Dani exclaimed. She turned to the others. "Right then. Looks like we have our date night activity, eh?"
Keith pushed himself up from the wall, and cracked his knuckles. "May I?"
Dani gestured grandly. "Please, do."
The gang leader wasn't quite sure what was happening. He wasn't used to being denied, he was leader of a Tong-sanctioned gang and when he said give, people gave. All twenty of his friends were tough, they were armed with a variety of street weapons, and they were used to the dirty tactics of street fighting.
What he failed to realize was that against a man like Keith Grant, none of it mattered a gorram bit.
Keith walked nonchalantly up to the leader, and with snakelike speed whipped his arm out, grabbing him by the lapel as he swung his body around and tossed him over the heads of his gang. He straightened, brushed his hands together, and asked, very calmly, "Next?"
And, next, all hell broke loose.
Two of the youths rushed at Dani, one swinging a bat wildly and the other pulling out a knife. Dani smoothly sidestepped the bat swing and let it carry past until it hit his knife-wielding friend in the face. He was momentarily shocked by his action, and so did not see the spinning kick Dani delivered to his own face, snapping his head back and dropping him to the ground.
Lori wasn't much a brawler, really, though she had grown up as a barmaid working in her family-owned pub and so knew how to subdue unruly toughs effectively enough. She drew her revolver, flipping it around in her hand until she was grasping it by the barrel, and clubbed the one gang member rushing her. He took the hit right to the forehead and stumbled a few steps past before collapsing on his face.
Jess just danced on the outskirts of Keith's whirlwind of terror. When he would send a tough flying in her direction, she'd boot him back into play, either with a firm kick to the pigu (ass) or a spinning kick to the face. Either way, it was amusing to see some of the gang members bounce between the two like ping-pong balls before they hit the ground, unmoving.
By the time the leader regained his feet, he was the only one of his gang still standing. Not a shot had been fired, and all four of his presumed victims were standing there, arms crossed and with identical smirks on their faces.
"Still wanna play, piyan (asshole)?" Dani asked conversationally.
Perhaps understandably, the young (maybe not-so) tough decided to turn tail and run.
The four looked around at the groaning bodies. "No broken bones, you're losing yer touch didi (little brother)," Dani commented.
"And no dismemberment," Jess giggled.
"Or blood, for that matter," Lori mused. "Hardly even seems like we were in a decent fight."
Keith just grunted. "Night's still young. And we should move before Feds show up."
"True enough," Dani sighed as they started moving on. "So where to then?"
"Hey, there's a bar down the street here!" Lori exclaimed happily. "Maybe we can get into a real brawl there!"
Dani linked her arm with her freckled girlfriend and grinned. "Sounds like a date."
NOTES: Thanks for reading, and please review! Make sure you check out my ongoing series, Nothing In The 'Verse!