Light flickered on the grimy stone walls as blue sparks arced across the machine, a monstrosity of metal and glass dominating the center of the once great hall. Heavily muscled men in grey did their work in silence, either tending to the man-made beast or patrolling the once proud and ancient structure they'd desecrated in order to house the thing. Their expressions were grave, positively reeking of professionalism and superior training. The best of the best.
They ought to be, at those prices.
Then again, that old adage "you get what you pay for" was just as true for super villains as it was for anyone else. It was the reason why he tried to hold back his maniacal laughter as he felt his shoulders start to shake. Now was not the time to gloat, not when his plans were so close to fruition.
Aw, what the hell.
"MuaAHAHAHAHAHA!" he cackled, his face awash in sinister red light. "Zoon, mien minions! Zoon ze vorld vill kneel before mein greatness! Zose fools in Stockholm vill rue ze day zey dared to mock mein perfect solution to ze gobal warming!"
Another sign of the "minions'" professionalism was their ability to keep those grave expressions in the presence of a speech like that, especially considering the source. Their current employer sported a black metal helmet/mask and uniform not too dissimilar from their own, though it was red. That much was easily forgivable, tame even, if you compared his outfit to some of the more… festive clients they'd had,
Still, they people the worked for always tended to have their own eccentricities. The "Professor" was no exception.
Exhibit A: For reasons that he refused to discuss, his skin had a somewhat jaundiced yellow tint to it.
Exhibit B: Standing at a hair under 4'2", it was safe to say that his obsession with ruling the world stemmed from an unhealthy Napoleonic complex.
And, finally, Exhibit C: That sinister red light accenting his features came from a small handheld flashlight that he was holding under his own chin.
"Usingk ze Mega-Freonotron Projector, I have ze power to lower ze Earth's temperature to sub-freezing vith just the push of ein button!" the ranting madman continued to rant… madly. "Zey vill accept me, Professor Dementor, as zeir unqvestioned ruler, or zey shall feel ze icy grip of zeir DOOM!"
"Sorry to thaw out your winter wonderland, Dementor," a confident, dulcet-toned voice spoke from the shadows, drawing every eye in the room. "But don't worry. Where you're going, you'll have plenty of time to cool off. Say, about twenty-five to life?"
A flash of light and a miniature explosion was the only warning as a line of cable shot straight out of the darkness and latched onto one of the vaulted arches on the ceiling, followed closely by a blur of red, black, and forest green.
Releasing the line with acrobatic grace a competitive gymnast would have killed for, the intruder soared through the air before landing flawlessly in front of the stunned super villain. Slowly, dramatically, the lithe female form rose up to her full height, her curtain of flowing red hair parting to reveal a triumphant smirk.
"I'm still a little iffy on the whole thing, KP," another, more masculine if slightly whinier, voice from the same shadowy corner the girl had just swung out from. "I mean, permanent snow days off from school? Are we sure this is the kind of evil plot we need to be foiling?"
"Ron…" said the redhead in a warning tone, not bothering to turn around. "This goes way past snow days. Think new Ice Age."
"Oh, yeah," a skinny blond walked out into open, sheepishly rubbing the nape of his neck. "Definitely wouldn't want that. I've never had mammoth before, but I bet it's stringy."
"GRAAHHH! GET ZEM!" Dementor snarled, gripping his helmeted head in frustration. "DESTROY KIM POSSIBLE!"
"I'll handle the goon squad," she called out as a double handspring dropped her in the midst of her attackers. "You disable the Projector."
"On it, KP!" Ron shouted back eagerly.
Reaching into one of the pockets of his grey cargo pants, he pulled out a device similar to what his partner had used to swing out into the room. Grinning, he pulled the trigger, sending out a cable of his own, metal claws sinking into the stone roof. With a running leap, he swung over the mayhem Kim was busy creating and headed straight for the machine.
Crrrrunchk
The somewhat pleasant feeling of flying was quickly replaced by the decidedly unpleasant sensation of falling as the clawed end of the grapple line was pulled loose from the ceiling. Ron was still screaming and waving his arms when he realized that he wasn't falling anymore. His leather belt had caught on the very tip of the Projector, leaving him dangling in mid-air.
"Whew," he said, wiping the sweat from his brow. "That could've been a lot worse."
No sooner had those terrible words left his mouth when the Mega-Freonotron's tip started glowing an icy blue, sending a wave of intense cold into the black cowhide around his waist, freezing it solid. He barely had time react to the drop in temperature before the belt shattered, giving him an entirely different drop to worry about. Landing on the stone floor five feet below with a dull thud, he groaned as he heard the pieces of his ruined belt clattering down beside him. Standing up quickly, or as quick as he could manage, he realized he'd landed directly in front of the machine's controls.
"Booyah!" he threw up both arms in celebration.
The sudden draft told him that, without anything to hold them up, his pant had made one final addition to the list of embarrassing drops associated with this particular mission.
Across the room, Kim ducked another wide punch to her head that threw her assailant just off balance enough for her to counter by grabbing his wrist and flipping him head over feet into three of his cronies behind her. Using the few seconds break she'd just earned, she yelled over her shoulder.
"How's it coming, Ron?"
"Not good!" he answered in near panic, frantically pressing buttons with both hands now that he was sure his pants wouldn't drop again. "It's not turning off! I'm trying everything, but it's still doing the menacing glowy thing."
"DUMKOPF!" screamed the mad Professor, who both teen heroes sheepishly realized they'd completely forgotten. "Ze Buffoon has initiated ze auto-firing seqvence! Ze countdown has begun!"
"Then shut it off!" Ron shouted back. "Unless you wanted to rule a giant snowball."
"Vell, I would love to enter ze abort code," Dementor began calmly, "but I doubt it vould do us very much good considering ze fact zat I DIDN'T HAVE ZE TIME TO PROGRAM ANY ABORT PROTOCOLS INTO ZE MACHINE BEFORE YOU BROKE INTO MEIN LABORATORY!!!"
"Oh," the boy and girl said simultaneously.
"Ze vorld is DOOMED," the stunted scientist continued. "But, at least I shall have ze pleasure of knowing zat I shall finally be rid of…"
Flussssssh
All eyes in the room turned to see a door opening on the other side of the room, out of which stepped a Henchman© with a newspaper under one arm. The jaunty tune he was whistling slowed to a stop as he noticed the attention he was getting.
"Uh… Did I miss something important?"
When no one answered, he simply shrugged and started whistling again as he headed towards the break room. His shift didn't start for another hour, anyway.
"Indoor plumbing in a medieval castle?" wondered Kim, arching an eyebrow in confusion.
"Union rules," a grey-shirted thug beside her answered casually. "This is eastern Europe, after all. Don't want anybody coming down with dysentery."
A sudden rush of cold air reminded everyone of the situation. Turning, they watched as the Mega-Freonotron Projector seemed to be in its final stages before firing, the blue light coming off it in swirling waves.
"Indoor plumbing…" Ron murmured before his face brightened. "Kim, I got an idea! Remember what happened last winter when we stayed over at my uncle's cabin? When I left the hot water running too long to keep my bath warm?"
The girl in question just looked at him strangely, much like everyone else in the room was doing, before a look of understanding and even a little pride showed through. Nodding, she ran at a dead sprint, vaulting over the confused Henchmen© that stood in her way. Reaching her destination she threw open the door and hurried inside.
"Huh," one of the guards muttered. "That's weird."
"What? What's weird?" asked a similarly dressed friend next to him.
"Well, I just always thought women were supposed to go to the bathroom in groups."
"Oh, yeah. Hey, that is weird."
Inside the bathroom, Kim was standing in front of the sink. One of her gloves was off as she held her bare hand under the running tap. After a few seconds, she pulled the hand back, slipping her glove back on as she turned to look out of the open door.
"Hot water's running!" she yelled across the room. "How's it coming over there?"
"It won't budge!" Ron grunted back. "None of the controls are doing anything. He had it pointed at that skylight up there, so I'm betting he figured it wouldn't need to move around all that much."
"Then push it over this way!" a touch of panic hung around the edge of her voice.
"Been… urng! Been trying to, KP! This thing's gotta weigh a ton. I need some help. Hey, Rufus! Think you could give me a hand, buddy?"
The ground beneath their feet shuddered. Once, then again, then again. The men in grey turned, hardened nerves weakening as they saw what it was making the castle shake. Or who.
The hulking figure stood at least twelve feet tall, maybe more. Legs like tree trunks. Chest as wide as a barn door. With a sound like thunder, two palms each the size of frying pans crashed together.
"Oh, ha ha," Ron griped. "Stop clapping and help me get this thing turned around."
"Sure thing, pal," the giant answered, still chuckling a bit at his own joke.
Bracing his massive shoulder against the device, he let out a grunt and started pushing. Metal groaned over stone as the machine scraped along the floor. It was so loud that Ron had to tap his large friend the hip to stop him once the Projector was on target.
"It's done!" he called out, still having to shout now that the grating sound of moving the doomsday weapon had been replaced by the whirring sound of it prepping to fire. "I think this is our cue to get out of here!"
All over the castle, the guards were scrambling to evacuate. Those unlucky enough not to be stationed on the ground floor took their chances jumping out of windows to land in the murky waters of the moat. Grabbing hold of her friend's outstretched hand, Kim flew the both of them out of the castle with her personal jet pack. Landing a safe distance away, Ron opened his mouth to call out for his oldest friend. Before he could speak, a thump that registered 3.2 on the Richter scale sent him sprawling.
"Show off," he grumbled as Rufus stepped out of the deep impressions he'd made after jumping the eighty-some odd yards from the hole he made in the castle wall.
Back inside, Dementor paused in cursing Kim Possible for foiling his plan just in time to watch his invention fire a beam of blinding blue directly into the lavatory sink. In an instant, the hot water froze solid causing the pipe in the wall to burst like an overripe melon. It didn't stop there, the cold traveling along the pipes and bursting them until it came in contact with the enormous boiler in the castle's basement.
"Oh, Mutti…"
The tiny would-be tyrant scrambled out the nearest window as fast as his stumpy legs would carry him, right before the explosion rocked the stately fortress and shook its very stones apart. The Projector stopped firing as it was crushed under several tones of falling debris. Professor Dementor had barely touched the water when a final blast of cold shot out of that ruined castle in all directions. He, and all his Henchmen© found themselves flash frozen, in scummy moat water.
"I guess you weren't kidding when you said he'd have time to cool off, huh K.P?" asked Ron, playfully. "Looks like another victory for the unbeatable Team Possible! BOOYAH!"
The blond indulged in a vaguely spastic victory dance while his friend looked on, smiling. She was about say something about leaving the dancing to the professionals, but a familiar voice broke her thoroughly out of the moment.
"Kimmie-cub?" an echoing voice seemed to call out from all directions at once.
"Run-tse duh fwotzoo… what's he doing here?" she asked, glumly.
"Hey, at least we got to finish this time," Ron said, putting a comforting arm around her shoulders.
"Yeah, I guess you're right," she admitted, smiling.
"Kimmie-cub? Ronald?" the disembodied voice echoed again. "It's gotten very quiet up there."
"We better go see what he wants," sighed the redhead. "Come on."
With that, the teenage crime fighter closed her eyes and let took a deep, relaxing breath. Immediately, she started to blur, fading away into a kind of fine mist.
"See you on the other side, KP," said the boy, happily.
His own eyes shut as the world around him began to warp, melting into inky black.
///////\\\\\\\
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Kim Possible, at least a foot shorter and suddenly closer to cute than beautiful, lazily blinked the sleep out of her eyes. Savoring the warmth of her sleeping bag, she almost drifted off again before the constant pressure against her side and source of much of the warmth started to shift. She felt the gentle grip on her hand release as its owner groggily pulled himself into a sitting position. He didn't look too different from the boy in her dream, just a few years younger. Rubbing his eyes, he turned and a big, goofy grin formed on his face as soon as he saw her.
"Kimmie-cub…" the voice was much clearer now, and obviously coming from below them. "If you don't answer me right now, I'm coming up there!"
"Everything's fine, Daddy," she answered, sleepily. "Ron and I just fell asleep."
"Yeah, it's all good… YAWN… Mr. Dr. P," confirmed her friend. "Just getting a head start on those recommended eight to ten hours our growing bodies need. It's half the point of a sleep over, right? Sleep? I mean, it's right there in the title."
From below, Dr. James Possible saw the exit hatch of the high grade polymer pre-fabricated tree house whoosh open to reveal the smiling, cherubic faces of its two occupants. Even though they were both barely eleven years old, he wasn't thrilled with the idea of the Stoppable boy having any sleep-related contact with his only daughter. Despite all that, the three most important women in his life, and he still couldn't believe his wife had actually waved his mother at her luxury retirement villa on Bellerophon, had completely overruled his decision.
"Okay, okay," he relented. "You know, in my day, when kids got that quiet, they at least had the decency to be up to something."
"We promise to get ourselves into tyen-shao duh first thing in the morning, okay Daddy?" she called back, cheekily. "We just need to rest up first."
"That's my girl," Dr. Possible grinned up at his firstborn. "Goodnight, Kimmie. Ronald. Sweet dreams."
The hatch closed and he turned to walk back inside, doing his darndest to convince himself that those giggles he heard couldn't possibly have anything to do with all those terrifying things that a father with daughters can think up.
The boy and girl recovered slowly, a few stray snorts and chuckles keeping their breathing from normalizing all the way. Kim, as usual, bounced back first, using the opportunity to tackle her towheaded best friend to the ground in a firm hug.
"That was so shiny, Ron!" she squealed. "A real castle, an evil super weapon only we could stop. It was like we were really there, having a real adventure on Earth-That-Was. And the bad guy! When he pulled out that luh-suh flashlight, I could barely stop myself from laughing!"
"Heh, yeah," he said as he pushed himself upright, turning in her arms so they were sitting side by side. "I got the idea from this guy at my mom's work, Demenz. He's barely taller than me, but he walks around like he's king of the Allied Planets or something. Last time I saw him at one of their big office parties, he kept talking about Earth-That-Was, and how he could've kept it from getting too hot if he'd been born 500 years ago before everybody left. Plus, that accent just kills me!"
The two friends shared another laugh that quickly turned into a brief tickle fight.
Kim won, as usual.
"I think that might've been the best one yet," she said, sighing contently.
"I'll win next time," Ron swore defiantly. "I just gotta figure out how to keep you from getting that spot behind my ears."
"Not that," Kim corrected, driving the point home by hitting him with a pillow. "I meant the dream."
"I don't know, KP, we've had some really good ones," he countered. "What about that one where we saved that secret ninja school?"
"Oh?" a wicked smile pulled at the corners of the redhead's lips. "I think I know why you like that one. At the end, when that ninja girl thanked you…"
"No!" he was blushing furiously now. "That's not why I like it. I… uh… I just like doing all that cool ninja junk."
"'Oh, Ron-san,'" her hands were clasped together by her head, which was tilted to the side and wearing an expression of pure adoration. "'You have saved Yamanouchi from the forces of Darkness. I must now reward you with a kiss!' C'mere, Chosen One!"
"AAAAHH! Stay back!" he shrieked, pressing himself against the far wall before narrowly dodging an assault of outstretched arms and puckered lips.
Above the dull grey roof of the tree house, beyond the mesh of leaves, the night sky over the core world Osiris was shining with the light of a billion stars and planets.
///////\\\\\\\
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Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don't care, I'm still free
You can't take the Sky from me
Take me out to the black
Tell 'em I ain't coming back
Burn the land and boil the sea
You can't take the Sky from me
There's no place I can be
Since I found Serenity
But you can't take the Sky from me…
///////\\\\\\\
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Can't Take the Sky
///////\\\\\\\
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Warning: may contain spoilers for the series Firefly and the film Serenity
This story has been Rated T for violence, adult themes, and Chinese profanity
12 years later and a million miles from nowhere…
"… Tanaka?"
"Nothing to move."
"Horowitz?"
"He can't pay half what we need, even if he had the work."
"Holden Boys?"
"Want nothing to do with us."
"Renshaw?"
"Got another crew. No need to contract out."
"How about Warrick?"
"Made it clear that the job was a one-time thing. Might not have been before, though."
"Higgins? Not the older one. The boy, Fess. Maybe she could wave him and--"
"She already tried. He's passed along his sympathies. That's about all."
"Fei-fei duh pee-yen… Badger?"
"Not in the mood to do us any favors, but…"
"But he'd say he had a job just so's he could tip off the Feds, same goes for Fanty and Mingo, after the little Albatross roughed up their barflies… you don't figure Patience…"
The captain trailed off as his first mate seemed to be trying to glare a hole through his skull. Honestly, he wouldn't put it past her to succeed in that endeavor.
"Sir, exactly how many times does that woman have to shoot you?" she asked with all seriousness.
"A few more weeks of this, I'll gladly take a bullet in any part of me that's less than vital if it means we get the coin to keep Serenity in the black," the captain answered, with hopefully less seriousness.
"And, in a few weeks, I'll be happy to pull the trigger myself but, just in case I'm right and your parts work better with none but the holes they came with, I suggest we start finding folk that have need for what we do," if she was trying to hide the bitterness in her voice, he didn't notice the effort. "And that was always hard enough before."
He didn't have to ask "before what?" One act, one single decision that some part of him had hoped would be the final, defining achievement of his life, had done more and less than he'd ever thought it could.
"Last I heard from Monty, he told me he owed us a round of drinks next time he sees us," said the captain, though he didn't sound overly pleased. "'Course he said we'd only get 'em after he knocked out every tooth in my tyen tsai head for bringing down the fiery wrath of the Alliance down on every man what marched with the Independents, once upon a time."
"That ain't exactly a job, Sir," noted his observant first mate.
"That it ain't. And thirty-two pearly whites ain't exactly a small price for some free liquor."
He decided not to mention that Monty's had been the friendliest answer he'd gotten after going through his own list of contacts from the old days in the 57th Overlanders Brigade. You could count off the survivors of the former "Balls and Bayonets Brigade" with two hands and a little bit of imagination, so the number of threats on his life and curses on his immortal soul had been mercifully few. What did they have to be so sore about, anyway? As hard as those whiners had claimed the Alliance was riding them lately, the Feds sure seemed to have all manner of free time to spend chasing his Serenity around. Fact was, if it weren't for their pilot and her borderline eerie talent for getting into the heads of the other pilots…
"Mal," a youthful feminine voice called over the COM system, startling the captain as he mentally cursed himself for letting his mind wander far enough to draw her attention.
He'd already stood up from the table he'd been sharing with his first mate and was about to press the button on the COM panel mounted on the wall when the electronic voice spoke again.
"I didn't call you because you were thinking about me," she said, confirming the unpleasant fact that she was reading his mind. "Not always pleasant for me either, by the way. Got a wave."
"… shuh-muh?" said a confused Mal, finger firmly on the button despite the fact that he knew his pilot could hear him without it. "You want to send that by me again."
"Got. A. Wave," she repeated slower, like she was worried the words had been too complex for him.
"River, sweetheart," the first mate was up now, also choosing to speak through the COM. "Where are we right now?"
There was a slight pause.
"We're on Serenity," answered River, completely serious. "I'm in the cockpit. You and Mal are in the dining area. Inara's in her shuttle, reading. Jayne's in his bunk, wondering if he's going to go to hell for using pages from the Bible, the one he got from Shepherd Book, as a replacement for toilet paper. Simon's in the engine room with Kaylee. She's on top of him and she's--"
"Alright, wu de ma, ENOUGH!" Mal shouted over anymore information he certainly didn't want. "We're coming up!"
The pair walked hurriedly out of unwalled pantry, past the large square table they'd been seated at. An open doorway led to a comparatively gritting looking hallway, pipes of various sizes running along the ceiling and metal rungs there at regular intervals along the floor leading to the crew's quarters. Silently, the agreed that neither heard any strained grunts coming from one particular bunk, so they'd never mention it. Ever. Bounding up the short flight of half a dozen stairs, they were faced with the back of a teenaged girl's head.
"Now you're in the cockpit," she informed them without turning around.
"Seein' as you were inside my head a minute ago, I'm fair certain you know exactly what Zoë was asking you," the captain said, frowning. "But, in case you missed it, she wants to know where you got us flying."
"On course, see?" Clearly humoring him, River distractedly punched a few buttons, flashing their location on the rounded screen in front of her briefly before reverting to the scanner readouts she'd been studying.
"No," Mal's barely contained frustration, threatented to burst. "I don't see. The course we set was meant to take us so far off the beaten path that the Feds couldn't whiff us with ten tons of luck and an engraved invitation, I'm wondering how we got a gorram wave when we're not supposed to be within two sectors of a system sending out a Cortex beacon!"
"Not from the Cortex," she answered, simply.
"River…" Zoë was hesitant, not wanting to upset their pilot but ready to grab her out of her seat if she was having another one of her episodes. "You do know that the Cortex-"
"Is the data transfer network of signals beamed at a broad spectrum from the more technologically stable worlds, interconnecting them and allowing for audio visual communications, colloquially known as "waves," between worlds? And that Serenity is capable of receiving data transfer from the Cortex at a maximum rate of 1.91 terrabytes per second , but only when in range of minimally a Tele Fonix X7500 model beacon?" the younger girl asked, her voice steady to the point of being monotone. "Uh-huh, I know. Didn't come from the Cortex."
"That don't make any kind of sense," Mal grumbled, stomping over and setting down in the copilot's seat. "If it ain't from the Cortex, then it had to be ship-to-ship… but proximity sensor says we're all by our lonesome. What, did they open up a pipeline, drop the wave, and run like hell?"
"No ships," River calmly explained. "Haven't passed or been passed by anything with a greater mass than a shirt button. Not in the last hour, and the wave came six minutes thirty eight seconds ago."
"Sir," Zoë interjected, "why don't we spend less time worrying about what sent us the wave, and focus on what was sent. River, honey, can you play it back for us now?"
"No," her tone wasn't defiant, merely stating a fact.
"Can you play it back for us… later?"
"Probably," answered River, after a few seconds thought.
"How did I let my cockpit turn into a bughouse?" Mal asked himself softly, squeezing the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "River, how soon before we can see it?"
"As soon as you give me the password."
"Password?" captian and first mate said at the same time.
Their pilot answered them by hitting a few keys, promptly blacking out every screen on the bridge. Mal had conjured up an impressive stream of Chinese obscenities but, before he could open his mouth, a tiny green square was blinking on and off in the center of the fields of black. Slowly, a single letter at a time, that little box had left three lines of folksy verse in the same bright green.
Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don't care, I'm still free
-
The square sat, blinking, on the fourth line. Simultaneously, one thought flashed across the minds of both Captain, formerly Sergeant, Malcolm Reynolds and first mate Zoë Washburne, formerly Corporal Zoë Alleyne.
That seemed to me more than enough for River, who cheerfully typed out the last line before either veteran could say a word to stop her.
You can't take the Sky from me
No sooner had she entered in the final part of the couplet, than the text flickered and disappeared, replaced by a long string of numbers broken up by periods, colons, semicolons… Planetary coordinates. Mal looked half ready to grab his sidearm and shoot out every one of those screens when they flickered out again, replaced this time by the shadowy outline of a man. A very… chubby man.
"Malcolm Reynolds," a voice, clearly run through a synthesizer to sound inhumanly deep, crackled over the speakers. "You're not an easy man to pin down."
"Alright you jung chi duh go-se dway," the captain growled, unconsciously happy to be able to use some of the Chinese he'd prepped a few moments before. "Who the ruttin' hell are you, how'd you send a wave without a gorram Cortex beacon, and how in the name of all Hell do you know about-"
"All very good questions, Mal," he interrupted, his unseen grin evident even with his digitally altered tone. "I can't give you all the answers just yet, but I have a question I'm sure you know the answer to. If I was Alliance, would I even bother going after you, knowing what I know? The Feds get their hands on those coordinates, they'd have enough work on their hands that they might actually let you be the one that got away. You know I'm right."
Mal slumped back slightly in his chair. Mysterious or not, the man made a strong point. As high profile as they'd become, they were strictly little fish compared to what those numbers stood for, for what the song stood for.
"I had a feeling you'd say that," the voice continued, breaking the silence. "I think that everybody's entitled to a little mystery, don't you?"
"Say what?" his gaze darted from the screen to Zoë to River and back. "I didn't say anything. Did I? I… Go-se, can everybody in the 'verse read my mind now?!?"
Zoë looked a little helplessly at her commanding officer as let his paranoia run wild. The man's words had left her just as shaken and confused, but she always did her best to keep her head. She turned to River and her silent question was answered with a sigh and a slow shake of the head as if to say "of course a reader's abilities don't work over wave transmissions" with "dummy" possibly tacked on at the end for good measure. She was about to reassure Mal when synthesized laughter came pouring out of the speakers.
"Sorry… sorry, heh," the man said, once he'd composed himself a little. "In case you haven't figured it out by now, this is a pre-recorded message. I paused when I thought you'd be talking and made some educated guesses on how you'd respond. When we finally to get a chance to talk for real, you'll have to tell me if I got you or not."
"I'm gonna kill him," the captain murmured in disbelief. "I don't know him, but I'm gonna kill him."
"Like I said, you're a hard man to pin down," he continued, totally oblivious to the death threat. "Ever since you guys dropped that broadwave bomb two months ago, you've been flying under everybody's radar, including mine. Even now, I don't really know where you are. I'm good, genius kinda good. But not even I can do the impossible, and opening a pipeline from me to you while you're floating out in the far end of the black is impossible. For now, anyway. But, I still had to reach you, so… I wrote out some messages, stuffed them in bottles, and let them drift."
"Wide-range binary array…" River said, suddenly, switching over her own screen to analyze the signal and confirm her estimation.
"I sent out the message all across the solar system, hidden in about ten million lines of binary code. If you're worried that anyone else picked it up, they did, but stop worrying. The code wasn't just the message itself. It was a program, designed to identify the system it was in and immediately self-delete if not all of the parameters were met. In this case, an Aught-Three Series K64 - Firefly transport registered to Malcolm Reynolds. And even if someone managed to fool the program by simulating all of that, if they'd entered anything other than the next line of the song, the program would automatically erased all traces of itself. I'm sure it's already found and ruled out more than a billion different systems by now, but it was bound to find you eventually. Like an old friend and rival used to say, 'You can't stop the signal.'
"Yes, as I'm sure you figured out, I'm talking about Mr. Universe. I won't defend what he tried to do to you, but I can understand what it was like for him. Hackers talk big when they're on one side of the Cortex and the rest of the 'verse is on the other. When the Feds invaded his space, everything got a little too real. At least he managed to do his part in the end… Well, like I said, we were friends, but you don't have to worry. I never liked his style much, anyway. Too sloppy. He orders a Love Bot®, charges the bill to the Prime Minister of Interplanetary Parliament and remotely hijacks an unmanned shuttle to deliver it to himself. Very shiny. Then, he turns around and orders lingerie for it out of a catalogue and doesn't bother covering his tracks. Sloppy. The Feds knew exactly were he was for years, they just let him dangle because they thought he'd be useful.
"You already know I'm not Alliance, and the fact that I know exactly how they tripped up Mr. U should tell you that I'm smart enough not to get caught. But, enough about me, time to let you know why I called. I know that you've had a run of bad luck lately. Feds breathing down your necks, everybody else pretending they don't know you. Work's been scarce, the legal kind and the… other kind. That's where we come in. I can promise you a minimum of five jobs of varying difficulty and… legality, and the payoff is 250,000 platinum. I can even get you 65,000 in credits, if you're willing to deal in Alliance currency."
"Alright, what's the catch?" Mal broke in before he could stop and remind himself that it was a recording.
"It probably does," answered the shadowed form, sympathetically.
"Ha!" the other two in the cockpit were startled as the captain stood up and pointed an accusing finger at his screen. "You guessed wrong that time, didn't you? Your super genius brain ain't so perfect now, is it?"
"I'm assuming you said that this deal sounds too good to be true," mystery guy continued. "Otherwise, I'm guessing you asked what the catch was. If you did, I'm getting to it."
Mal visibly deflated and sunk back in into the seat, cursing softly to himself about stupid Ching-wah TSAO duh liou mahng geniuses.
"I'm practically gift-wrapping these jobs for you, and I consider that a fairly big favor. But I'll consider us even if you do one for me. You see, two very good friends of mine could use a ride…"
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Author's Note: I'm in dangerous skies here, brothers and sisters. I'm a KP fan, clearly, but I've considered myself a fan of Joss Wheadon's most short-lived brainchild since I caught a few episodes on the Sci-fi Channel. However, the sad fact is that Firefly, for reasons I've never understood, always had a very strong but very small following. That presents two distinct problems.
First, there's the masses of people who have no idea what any of this is about. Hopefully, I'll be able to squeeze in a lot more exposition in the next chapter if I need it, but I'm not going to transcribe the series or the movie. There's other folk that do that in this wide 'verse we call the Internet.
That brings me to the second problem, those plucky Browncoats. Now, I bought the series on DVD, I bought Serenity, I've read a mountain of fanfics, but I still get the feeling that these guys won't accept me as one of their own unless I'm holding a picket sign and marching around the Fox building. And that'd get really confusing, 'cause I'm pretty sure the writer's strike is still on. The point is I'm not sure if they'll look at this and say "Shun-sheng duh gao-wahn! A Firefly fusionfic. Shiny!" because they have to speak Chinese like that, or if they'll send me death threats for crossing it with a cartoon.
In either case, whether you don't like Firefly, or you like it so much that you think my means of expressing how much I like both shows is offensive, I have one thing to say:
Tai-kong suo-yo duh shing-chiou sai-jin wuh duh pee-goo
On another note, I won't be showing the translations for the Chinese I use in this fic. I will, however, tell you to Google "fireflychinese" to find a site run by someone called "Ying." I've found it invaluable, personally.
A review will garner a response from me in some forme and, if you have time, please head over to the profile my associate, Mr. Wizard, and drop a review on his story Ronicus Iberius saying that the "Ronicus" series needs third installment. If any of you are Firefly fans, I have no doubt that you're well-equipped for the task. We got a movie out of a show that everybody though had been shuffled, didn't we?
May blessings rain down upon you with the radiant light of a meteor shower
-Brother Bludgeon
Kim Possible created by Mark McCorkle and Robert Schooley
Firefly created by Joss Wheadon