So this series is just using the list of titles my beloved epicpickleninja gave me, in which the titles have absolutely nothing to do with anything what so ever.

And here's the next one!

In a better world, a world where there was a happy Jayne, he would have taken the coin he'd earned in this last job where no one had been maimed or injured or kidnapped or nearly fed to pigs (no one looked on that job kindly, and they had all vowed to never go to that Joo Fuen Chse planet ever again) and he'd be down at a whorehouse now in this city that was very nearly all whorehouses, and was famous for just how good they could be. But this wasn't that perfect, happy world, and he wasn't a happy Jayne.

He was a very upset, very angry Jayne.

Because Mal was a suspicious Wong Ba Duhn he'd decided that since nothing had gone wrong on their job something was going to, and so those who were getting off the ship should stick together to make sure everyone had each other's back. And while he was most likely right and would be proven as such before the end of the night, Jayne felt like if he was away and off with a happily paid woman, then he couldn't get into any trouble and no one would have to bother. It was a nice and reasonable point, he felt, but Mal had ignored it and told them he could either join all of them on their bar trip or stay on the ship. And, while normally he would have been more than happy to stay behind when he didn't get his way and angrily clean his extensive weapons collection, little Nathan was teething. And having spent a week trapped in the Black with a crying, in pain, furious toddler had been something no one had been happy about, and no one wanted to be around if they could help it.

Poor Zoe, though. She had to stay since the kid was hers and all, and Jayne wouldn't be surprised if her ears broke or something like that because of how loud the boy was.

So, he'd been forced to not only not go do what he wanted to, but he'd also been forced into "crew bonding", and he was as angry as he had been in a long time.

"Quit your sulking, Jayne!" Kaylee chirped, smiling her usual smile at him, so happy and cheerful and pretty annoying at the moment, though he wasn't going to take it out on her. No matter how angry he was he wasn't going to direct it towards Kaylee because she was too sweet and if he did anything he'd feel like Yi Da Tuo Da Bian and he'd probably wake up the next day missing a few parts from any other member of the crew exacting vengeance.

"Ain't sulkin'." He grumbled into his glass, glaring grumpily out over the small and slightly foggy bar.

"Okay, if you say so." She laughs, and before he can come up with something that will show her once and for all that he's not sulking and that he never sulks, Simon comes over and pulls her out to the dance floor, her laughing all the way. And well, that makes him a tad bit more upset because he could be with a girl doing something like that (not dancing, obviously), but instead he had to sit here and just get to drinking which had been only half his plan.

He was suddenly aware of a creepifying presence behind him and he didn't even have to look to know who it was because there was only one person who could get right up behind him without his notice and set him so far on edge just by being there.

"What do you want, Moony?" He asked, glaring at his drink because he couldn't snap at her either because if anyone noticed they'd have his balls and there was a chance that if this was one of her more off days she'd be the one to get them and maybe tear them off and prance away like it had been nothing.

"You enjoy the game of pocket billiards, correct?" She asks, waltzing around to sit in front of him. She looks up at him with a smile that is a bit distant and with eyes that do more looking through him than at him, and it goes along the vein of the night by annoying the hell out of him. Seeing his irritated glare and also that he had no idea what she was talking about, her eyes focused on him and then rolled. "Pool. Eight ball. It is a recreation you enjoy joining in, yes?"

"Yes." He grits out, glaring at her as hard as he can because the brat knows what the hell she's doing and she knows how much she's pissing him off because she's a damn reader and she can tell and if she keeps on…

"Then would you join her in a game? There are men who believe they will hustle her out of her newly earned credits and perhaps even her clothed, and she wishes prove them wrong." She points in the back to a pool table where a few guys were standing around, watching her like she was some frail thing they were going to break.

Jayne grins, a dark and dirty thing, and knows this will be perfect. He'll work out some of this mad on these idiots and maybe feel a bit better, and get some spare coin.

They make their way back, the girl practically skipping and looking like this innocent, gullible child, her eyes wide and her smile sweet, and when she opens her mouth and talks with a high voice more like Kaylee's and with a bit of an accent, he knows that she's playing them.

So he plays along, and plays stupid.

"What did you bring with you, Girlie?" One of them, the smallest but the one who seems to be a bit more of the leader, asks.

River flutters her lashes, and says as sweet as you please, "He said that he'd help. I've never played before, so if I found someone who had."

The group of men studies him for a moment and he slouches, slumping his shoulders and making his eyes pretty much blank. He makes himself smaller and less muscular looking, and the majority of his weapons hidden beneath his jacket so he doesn't even look dangerous, just like any other dense guy that would do anything for a pretty face.

They turned back to the girl and he had to hold back a smirk because now that they underestimated the both of them, there was no doubt they were going down.

He played it easy the first couple of times he went up to the table, getting one or two easy shots in before pretending to miss, and by the time they were cocky and condescending and gloating, he was ready to smash them like bugs and revel in the mess their pitiful squashed egos would make. But then River, who had messed up each time she'd gone up, only getting one ball in the pocket and it had actually been the other teams, touched his shoulder lightly when the men weren't looking and shook her head the tiniest bit, her eyes clearly telling him to wait, not yet.

And he got mad because he wanted to win and he wanted the money and he wanted the damn fools to be nothing but dust when he was done because while they'd done nothing but be annoying and gloating pricks, and he was the kind of mad that needed to be let out sooner rather than later or else it would get too big and come out at most likely a less than opportune time, and beating pricks at their games was an easy way to get rid of some of that.

But seeing her eyes and the promise of a plan, he couldn't quite force himself to go on and win because if she was going to do something it meant her way was going to end up probably the best, due to her reader senses or something.

So, he grit his teeth and held his anger tight to his chest, and they lost.

"Oh no." River simpered, fluttering her eyelashes in a way that made him want to roll his eyes so badly it practically hurt, "I just… Can we do it one more time? Please?"

The men, cocky and sure and greedy, grinned and nodded, eyeing her like she was the prey when really, it was them.

"Sure, Sweetheart. We'll do double the money this time, as a bit of motivation for you and you friend though. That alright with you?" River nodded, and they set up the game again, the men hurrying to break.

"There you go. You just get on up there and try your best, and remember that you're stripes." One told her, so condescending that Jayne wanted to just punch him. But, what happened next was too amusing and it distracted him from doing so.

"Thank you." River cooed, stepping up to the table and bending over, setting up her shot just like she had in the last game, sloppy and wrong. But then, in just an instant, her face lost that sweet look and shifted to blankness, her eyes going sharp and her form perfecting. Then she hit the ball, and it flew right into the pocket.

She did it again. Then again. And again and again and again, getting all sorts of weird angles and shots that should have been impossible but she managed to land every single one of them in the pockets. And then without letting the other team get a second shot, she got the eight ball in.

"We would like are money now." She said, her voice back to normal and he was glad because she might be a bit creepy, but she was downright terrifying when she was pretending to be normal.

"You hustled us!" One of them, big and fat and red faced and furious, screamed.

"Same thing you tried to do to the girl." River shrugged. That got all of them angry, and Jayne noticed a group of others, probably friends, getting up from a table nearby.

"We ain't paying! You lied!" One sputtered, and Jayne straightened to his regular height with a bright glare and a mean smile.

"You're gonna pay one way or the other." He promised.

He didn't know who threw the first punch, but within seconds it was complete mayhem with more and more people rushing over to support the other men, and then others just joining in for the fight. Jayne plowed through anyone who got in his way with hard fists and a mean grin, and every now and then he'd spot the girl, twirling through the crowd using kicks and her cue to down anyone who came near her, her flowery skirt floating around her like she was at some sort of dance or something.

The fight didn't last too long, and soon enough they were being pulled out by their irate crew and making their way back to the ship, Mal spouting off about how he'd known that something would happen, and weren't they glad they had listened to him?

Jayne would have said something about how if he'd been allowed to go where he had wanted to the entire thing never would have happened, but he was feeling quite pleased and didn't really want to ruin it just then. Looking over to his side he watched the girl for all of a minute, taking in the way she had her head tilted back to look absently up at the sky, hands behind her back as she hummed some tune he couldn't make out under her breath.

"You planned that out, didn't you?" He asked her, quiet so that the others wouldn't notice. She smiled at him, and he couldn't help but smile back. She'd started a bar fight because she'd noticed he was in a foul mood and knew that that was the best way for him to blow off some steam, and that was just about one of the nicest things anyone had done for him in a while.

The girl pulled something out of her pocket and tossed it to him, and looking down at it Jayne saw that it was a nice stack of money tied together with a hair tie. It took him a minute, but then he realized that it had to be his cut of the money they had won, and then he also realized that that meant she had gone and taken that money from those guys' pockets because he remembered knocking at least two of them out.

Tilting his head back he started to laugh, big and loud, quite a bit happy with how his night had turned out.

Tada!

Translations:

Joo Fuen Chse- Pool of pig droppings

Wong Ba Duhn- Son of a bitch

Yi Da Tuo Da Bian- A big pile of shit