FIREFLY: SOFT TOUCH
PROLOGUE
"What the hell you doin' down there, boy?" came a voice booming through the darkened boy, and all within turned their peepers to face up at him, his massive bulk framed in the door by dusty, hazy, brilliantly white light. "What the hell you doin'?"
No one was quite sure who he was referring to, so no one made a move, nor a sound. Except for one. The bartender. He ducked beneath the counter.
The man made his long, slow descent, while the entire bar remained eerily silent. Finally, he reached the bottom of the tall stair case that lead up to the bar's entrance, and swaggered over to the counter. He leant over to the other side, and growled down at the cowering barman "What the ruttin' hell you doin' down there? Get me a drink. Matter a fact, get everyone a drink! On me! Yee-haw!"
The ice had been broken, and the bar erupted into cheers and applause.
As the crowd pushed their way to the bar to get their free drink, the man turned to the person sitting at the bar closest to him. "I asked, what the hell you doin' down here. I expect you, to answer me, boy!"
The teen turned to him, and, despite dirt-covered face, said through almost incandescent white teeth. "Whatever I want."
"Oh, no, you did not just say that to me." The giant growled. "You little tzao gao!"
"Listen to me, you hwoon dahn, I will do whatever the hell I want!"
The giant threw a punch, and smacked the boy across the dirt-smeared face, sending him sprawling out of his chair.
Still, no one seemed to notice.
Or they were just too intimidated by the giant, and the sight of the boy sprawled on the dirty, rocky ground, to speak up. Either way, the giant sneered. He had once again asserted his dominance over his errant step-son.
"Don't bother getting' up, you go tsao de son of a whore!" the giant growled threateningly. It would be the last thing he would ever say.
There was a sharp crack, the unmistakable pop of a gunshot, an the giant roared. He clasped the small of his back, and, all of a sudden, the bar that had once been rowdy was, for the briefest of moments, as silent as a long abandoned grave. Then every last man, plus the dog tethered in the corner, saw the blood spattered giant rear up, a hole the size of an orange in his back.
Then the brief serenity was shattered by screams, and shouts, and the bar was total pandemonium, as the patrons bolted for the exit, or over the bar, to get away from the shooter…
But there was no trace of whoever did it.
And the giant's step-son was gone.
The giant collapsed onto the dirty floor, and when it was clear that the shooter would not fire again, the bartender leapt over the counter, and scurried to the giant's side. He knelt beside the man's body, clad in furs and leather. The barman's dirty fingers found the giant's pulse. Or lack there of.
"Some one's killed the Lawman! Get the Deputy! Stop any o' those gorram space ships from flyin' away. Hurry, hurry!"
A small woman slipped away from the crowd huddled into the corners of the room, up the staircase and out the door, to go and find the second-in-command of the Soft Touch Colony.
And, among the cowering crowd, still sitting in his chair with his feet irreverently placed on the table, Malcolm Reynolds inwardly groaned. "Motherrutter."
Author's note: so you have the basic premise of this story; Mal and Serenity are trapped on a tiny little colony following a murder.
The real chapters will be longer.
Chinese translations:
tzao gao: crap
hwoon dahn: jerk
go tsao de: dog-humping