Author's Note - This is legitimately only being done because it's fun. I'm not looking for a big plotty story or a regular posting timeframe or anything like that. If this finds a plot, it will be wholly on accident. That being said... it is lots of fun for me, so I'll probably keep writing in this 'verse on and off. Enjoy!
"No, see, cause the primary nav coupling is bypassed so that the secondary thrusters' got enough juice to drive us just a mite faster. Gets us up an' runnin' while the other guy's still spoolin' up their power."
"How did you cope with the blowback, though? I mean theoretically, it should work and, well, obviously it actually works, now that I'm thinking about it, but how did you compensate for that much power routing through the main lines to the engine without it going... boom?"
"Well, I mean, if we just had yer standard engine, sure, but I've tweaked her a bit here an' there."
"Oh… oh wow… this is not an off-the-line EVT29-4000-A90 pulse-feedback generator. Did you seriously resection the entire power grid?"
"Shiny, huh?"
"Yeah. That's brilliant. I'm… really sorry I broke it."
"Any of that make sense to you two?" Zoe asks the men standing next to her.
"All I caught was sorry I broke it and I gotta say… I ain't likin' the sound of that," Mal replies grimly.
"You two can fix it, right?" Oliver asks, looking to Felicity and Kaylee.
The two women look at each other, grease and oil smudged across their faces and coating their hands. There's a whole silent communication thing going on between them, which is somewhat worrying to Oliver considering he knows Felicity isn't the silent type and in the half hour or so since he's met Kaylee, he's come to believe she really isn't either.
"Yeah, well… sure. We can fix it," Kaylee says finally, hesitantly.
"Good. You get right on that then," Mal tells her.
"Will do… soon as we get a new enhanced graviton accelerator core," Kayle finishes up, wincing as she speaks.
Felicity cringes a little at her side. It might be funny, how similar the looks on their faces are, if it weren't for the context of the situation.
"Pardon?" Mal asks, blinking in disbelief as Zoe curses up a storm in Chinese behind him.
"It's… it done blown up, cap'n," Kaylee says. "Mighta been okay if we'd had a standard system when Felicity hacked in and set the primary power conduit to cycle back through on itself - nice work by the way. That was some neat trick. Real handy."
Felicity looks supremely pleased by the praise for half a moment before forcing the smile off her face under the weight of Mal's obviously displeased glare.
"Right, um…" Kaylee starts up again, clearing her throat. "So it woulda probably been fine on a standard system but with the way we got it all done up custom like, she blew her whole power core. Caught on fire an' everything. Ain't nothin' left to fix."
"You blew up my ship?" Mal asks angrily, glaring at Felicity.
"Only… a little bit?" Felicity asks. "As blowing up goes, I feel like this was a minor incident. Based on experience."
Mal takes a step towards her, probably without even thinking about it, but Oliver is directly in his path in an instant.
"We will take you and your crew to get a new core," Oliver tells him. "But if you or any of your people threaten Felicity again, this is going to go another way."
The two captains are toe-to-toe as they stare each other down. Oliver's hood is off and mask pocketed, with the need for anonymity now gone, but he still wears the rest of his disguise and it serves to make him all the more intimidating.
To anyone other than Malcolm Reynolds, apparently.
"We're dead in the water without a new core, Captain," Zoe points out carefully. "Ain't no way we're affording a new core on our lonesome. An' even if we could, we ain't likely to have another ship pass by an' offer to give us a ride."
Mal's expression tightens at that. Zoe's right. He knows it. He's just not quite ready to admit it yet.
"I did sort of blow up his ship, Oliver" Felicity chimes in. "It's okay that he's upset about it."
"You've already been held at swordpoint once today, Felicity," Oliver tells her, not breaking eye contact with Malcolm. "I have a problem with that. No one gets to threaten my… crew."
There's a weird pause toward the end of his sentence, leaving Felicity wondering exactly what he'd wanted to say instead.
"Quite a captain you got there," Kaylee says with a wide grin and a raise of her eyebrows. "Real gentleman-like."
Felicity tries not to blush. She sort of fails.
"We got us an accord, I think," Mal finally decides. "Me an' mine don't mean no harm. You give us a lift for the time bein', get us a new core and take us back to Serenity for your engineer an' mine to fix her up. Then we'll work together to bring down the purple bellied bastards set on destroyin' our way of life."
Oliver pauses at that for a moment, eyeing the other captain. But whatever he finds in the man's face is apparently sufficient because a moment later the two men are shaking hands and Felicity is breathing a sigh of relief.
"Get your people and whatever things you need. We'll leave within the hour," Oliver tells him.
"I get ta see their ship?" Kaylee asks with entirely too much excitement.
"Don't get yer knickers in a twist, Kaylee," her captain tells her. "This ain't a joyride, just a quick hitchhike. We'll be back before Jayne cleans his gun."
"Ha! I'm not the only one who makes unintentionally dirty comments!" Felicity says somewhat triumphantly, earning looks from literally everyone in the room, including Oliver who appears to have something stuck in his eye from the way he's blinking at her. "Oooor… I just read into things more than everyone else. Carry on. Forget I said anything."
"I was thinkin' it too," Kaylee whispers over to her.
"I'm going to go get Roy to oversee Felicity and Kaylee finishing up here and then check in with Sara about her contacts for a new core," Oliver says.
"Your girl don't need a bodyguard on my ship," Mal says, looking offended.
"Didn't you just explain to me that the girl who held a sword to Felicity's neck was crazy?" Oliver questions.
"That's… a valid point," Mal agrees, looking like the idea of Oliver making such a point completely throws his worldview.
"I'm sending in Roy. Don't leave his sight," Oliver says to Felicity.
She rolls her eyes at him, but nods. She might not want a babysitter, but the presence of crazy girls with swords is an incredibly good point in Oliver's favor. She's willing to cave this time. Which he seems pleased with.
He nods at her and says thanks, earning a small smile from her in return before he strides out of the room with Mal and Zoe close behind.
"He's so handsome with those muscles and those eyes an' that jaw. Surely dunno how you ever get any work done with him around," Kaylee sighs, yanking some burned out wires off of the engine.
"It's a challenge," Felicity sighs in reply. "Wait 'til you see the salmon ladder."
Verdant is one of those few ships that rolled off the assembly line right at the height of Alliance decadence before the war. She's not meant for transporting cargo or fighting battles. She's a pleasure cruiser, a party boat meant for a joyride by the rich and entitled along with a dozen of their closest friends.
She was Oliver's dad's boat, once. One of several. They probably would have taken her out on that ill-fated trip near the rim if she hadn't been in the shop being retrofitted with new anti-grav repulsors at the time.
In that way, she's sort of a survivor. Just like Oliver. Just like Sara. And, like them, she's changed by her experience. She's full of custom upgrades using top-of-the-line equipment that better suits their needs. She's a well-tuned machine. A weapon unto herself.
She might still look like a party boat on the outside, but she's not that. Not anymore.
The symbolism of this, with one-time Ollie Queen standing in his Arrow gear in front of her open cargo bay doors, is lost on precisely no one. Well… okay, maybe it's lost on Jayne.
"I ain't comfortable with leavin' her," Mal grumbles, looking back at Serenity. "Vultures could pick her bones while we're gone, leave us with nothin'. She's defenseless."
"No way we're gonna find a core like we need this far out," Zoe points out. "It's gonna be three weeks on the minimum round trip an' we ain't got enough supplies on Serenity for half that time."
"Still think one of us oughta stay behind. Keep her safe," Mal says.
"And be humped for sure?" Zoe counters. "Alliance knows we stole those supplies. They got our number already, Captain. What do you reckon happens when they track down a grounded Firefly class ship?"
"Kaylee and I grabbed all the most expensive parts to bring them with, Captain," Felicity chimes in. "We made it look like she's already been picked over and we've got tracking beacons planted all over her. If someone tries to steal your ship, we'll be able to track it."
"And how, exactly, are we gonna fit my whole crew in with your crew on your ship?" Mal counters.
"Carefully?" Felicity ventures.
"We have eight quarters," Oliver tells the other ship's captain.
"And I got me nine people you're takin' aboard. Now math ain't exactly my strong suit, unless we're countin' credits, but I'm thinkin' that don't quite work out," Mal says.
"Dibs on bunking with Felicity!" Kaylee grins widely.
"Felicity's staying with me," Oliver asserts.
"What?" Roy asks with a sharp laugh.
"What?" Felicity echoes bewildered.
"Just… I'll sleep on the floor," Oliver tells her lowly. "I just need to see you're safe."
"Kaylee's not going to hurt me, Oliver," Felicity tells him.
"It's not Kaylee I'm worried about," Oliver says, his eyes trained on River who is barefoot and drawing symbols in the dirt with her toes while she giggles.
"River's not going to hurt anyone, either," the girl's brother pipes up.
"You'll forgive me if I don't take your word for that," Oliver tells him bluntly, looking on edge and more than a little defensive.
"Fine. Look… it's fine," Felicity says, placing a hand on Oliver's arm and earning the whole of his attention. "I will sleep with you. I mean in your bed. ROOM. In your room. God, my brain needs to do the thing where it thinks before I talk."
In spite of himself, Oliver's lips quirk into a thin smile before he lets his hand settle on her back and turns to the rest of their recently merged crews.
"Zoe, Wash, you two can have one of the spare rooms. River and Simon get one, too. And Captain… you can have the last free one," Oliver tells them.
"What 'bout the rest of us?" Jayne asks indignantly.
"You're bunking with Digg," Oliver tells him, to which Digg grumbles in clear dislike.
"Why's I got to bunk with him?" Jayne asks, obviously about as pleased about this as Digg is.
"Because I trust you only slightly more than I trust River and the other option was to have you bunk with Sara," Oliver tells him.
"I'm not objecting to that plan," Jayne says, perking up considerably.
"Believe me. You would," Sara tells him darkly.
"You'd be dead inside of a day and I imagine your captain would object to that," Oliver tells him.
"Might do. Depends on the day," Mal says with a shrug.
"Shepard, you'll be bunking with Roy," Oliver says, to which Book nods amenably. "Kaylee, you can have Felicity's room. And Inara… where are you most comfortable?"
"Gracious of you to ask, Captain," she responds with a bow of her head. "Tactful, as well."
"I wasn't about to make assumptions or dictate to a companion where she sleeps," Oliver responds.
"Didn't seem to bother you with the rest of us," Jayne grumbles.
"I'll be fine staying with Kaylee," Inara replies. "Thank you, Captain."
"Shiny! It's like a slumber party!" Kaylee grins. "This'll be fun!"
"The edge of night creeps in," River says all of the sudden, staring up at the bright blue sky, her face open and oddly childlike in its joy. "It's hard to slumber with all the screams. They echo."
"You say the most comforting things," Wash deadpans.
"Come on," Oliver says, guiding Felicity toward their ship but never taking his eyes off of River. "We need to get moving before the Alliance catches up with us."
"Or the edge of night creeps in," Felicity says emphatically, looking up at him. "I rescind any earlier objections to staying with you."
"Good."
