Walking through the familiar hallways of Moya, Chiana was more than surprised to come face to face with an unknown Sebacean woman, especially when that woman leapt back with a small scream. Chiana jumped back too, wary of the stranger.
"Who are you?" they both said at the same time.
"You first," Chiana told the woman, gesturing at her.
"Willow," the red-haired woman said, placing her hand on her chest.
"Chiana," said the grey-skinned Nebari warily, doing the same with both of her hands.
"Are you a prisoner of the demon frogs too?" Willow asked conspiratorially.
"Frog?" Chiana said, cocking her head to one side. "You mean Rygel? That's what Crichton calls him."
"Crichton?" asked Willow, frowning.
"Yeah," said Chiana, relaxing. "You know Crichton?"
"Who's Crichton?"
"Guess not," sighed Chiana.
"Can you understand me?" Willow asked, frowning.
"Yeah, course I can," Chiana laughed, a couple of gurgling notes. "Why wouldn't I?"
"The prisoner is loose!"
Willow flinched as D'Argo's voice came over Chiana's com unit. She tensed as Chiana reached for the small device she wore on her scanty corset and the black-eyed Nebari held her other arm out peaceably as she touched the com unit.
"Relax guys, she's with me," Chiana told her shipmates. "Where the frell did she come from?"
"Prisoner? What prisoner?" Dominar Rygel the Sixteenth demanded to know.
"We don't know. She appeared out of nowhere in the middle of command," Zhaan explained. "Where are you?"
"Tier seven," Chiana told them. "Near Moya's neural cluster."
"I'm on my way!" said D'Argo.
"Drad," said Chiana. "Hey, what she do anyway? Seems like a thoddo to- Dren!" Chiana swore as Willow suddenly turned and ran.
"What?" asked Aeryn.
"She took off!"
On tier nine, on their way up to the galley with crates of foodcubes, Aeryn and John exchanged a quick look before ditching the crates and drawing their weapons. Racing up the hallway to tier eight together, they hesitated at a crucial junction.
"You take hammen and I'll take treblin," Aeryn said and touched her com. "Pilot, seal off the levels."
"Closing access points," Pilot informed them as the door that they had just come through began to swing shut.
Nodding his agreement, John took off down the opposite hallway, checking in every room before he closed it. Moya's DRD's began to zip along the floor at odd angles as they joined in the search. They found her before he did.
"Crichton, the DRD's have located her in your passageway," Pilot said urgently over the com link. "She is running in your direction."
"Thanks Pilot," said John, slowing his pace down and flicking Winona's safety mechanism off.
He spotted her shortly after that, her red curls bouncing as she ran toward him. Crichton yelled at her to stop and she stumbled to a halt, staring at the gun in his hand and then back over her shoulder at the DRD's following her. They fanned out, blocking the hallway behind her, their small laser guns extended at the slim threat to Moya and her crew.
"You okay?" John asked uncertainly, lowering Winona as he saw the terror in her wide eyes.
"Oh, thank the Goddess!" she gasped breathlessly. She took two steps forward only to halt as he raised Winona again. "Please help me," she implored. "I don't wanna be eaten by demon frogs and I think the grey demon is helping them and I can't find my way out and I know I should wait for Buffy to rescue me but I hate frogs, I didn't even know there were demon frogs, did you?"
"Demon frogs?" John said to himself as she continued talking about how they had to find a way out, staring at her in awe as he wondered if she'd taken a single breath yet. She must mean his Royal Frogginess, he thought.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," said John and she faltered and stopping talking, staring at him with impossibly large eyes. "Start at the beginning. Do you remember how you got here?"
"Uh..." said the girl and it was as though a shutter had fallen over her hazel eyes. "No. Honest," she insisted as John raised his eyebrows skeptically.
Not convinced, John moved on to the next question, "Where did you come from?"
"The hospital," she said.
"What hospital?" asked John, frowning.
"Sunnydale hospital. I am still in Sunnydale, right?" she must have read the confusion on his face because she gasped. "Oh, Goddess, I'm not, am I? Where are we? Are we in hell? I don't wanna go to hell, Buffy went to hell once and she said that the demons there made you work until you were old and then spat you out where you came from a day later, she didn't say that they were demon frogs though, you think she'd have mentioned that, wouldn't you? Something like that, that's need to know information..."
How the hell did she breathe? He couldn't see any gills but they could have been hidden by her hair. "We're not in hell," John told her as she carried on speaking.
"We're not in hell," she repeated, mid-sentence.
"No."
"We're not in hell," she sighed, and he suddenly realised how tense she had been as she relaxed.
"There you are!" Aeryn exclaimed, hurrying down the corridor towards them.
The girl jumped, skittering away from the newcomer as the DRD's cleared a path for her. Warily, John stepped back as she moved closer to him, raising Winona slightly and she stopped in her tracks.
"You could have told me you found her," Aeryn complained. "What's her name?"
"We hadn't got that far," John told her, proud that she was keeping her pulse rifle trained on the ground instead of the clearly terrified girl. The Aeryn Sun he'd met almost two years ago wouldn't have been so restrained. "So, what is your name?" he asked the girl when she remained silent.
"W-Willow," the red-head stammered, staring at Aeryn as through she'd never seen a woman wear leather before. "You can understand her?"
"You don't?" John frowned, turning to Aeryn, "I thought translator microbes came as standard, even out here in the Uncharted Territories."
"They do," said Aeryn, looking troubled as she touched her com unit. "Pilot..."
"I have been monitoring the situation through the DRD's," Pilot replied as Willow cried out in pain.
Turning his attention back to her, John noticed the DRD backing away from her as it folded one of its arms away in its casing. Recognising immediately what had happened, he put Winona away in her holster on his thigh as Willow backed away from them all, wedging herself in-between two of Moya's curving vents.
"Hey, it's okay," he said soothingly, holding his hands up and away from his body. "It's just translator microbes."
"Translator microbes?" she whimpered.
"Yeah, they colonise at the back of your head," John told her, pointing at the top of his neck as he slowly moved towards her.
"Stay away from me!" she squeaked, practically trying to climb the wall. "You're in league with the demon frogs! I'm from Sunnydale, I know a minion when I see one!"
"Demon frogs...?" Aeryn frowned as she rolled the sounds around her mouth, testing their familiarity. "Crichton..."
"I'm no-one's minion!" Crichton objected.
"Are too!"
"Am not!"
"Are too."
"Crichton."
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
"Am not."
"Crichton!"
"Are too."
"Am not."
"Crichton!"
"What?" John snapped, breaking off the petty squabble to turn to Aeryn.
"She's speaking your language," she told him and both of the humans gaped at her, although for very different reasons.
"No way," John said automatically, staring at the strange girl who had appeared so mysteriously. Was she? He'd gotten so used to the translator microbes that he couldn't tell anymore.
"I can understand you," breathed Willow at the same time, gazing at Aeryn with wide eyes.
"It's the translator microbes," Aeryn said to her. "They help us to understand each other."
"You speak English?" John asked Willow.
"Well, yeah... and French, Spanish, Latin, Ancient Greek..." said Willow, ticking them off on her fingers. "My Sumerian's still kinda shaky."
"You're from Earth?" John said incredulously.
"Of course," Willow said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. Which, of course, it wasn't. "Wait.... you mean we're not on Earth?"
He'd fantasised about what he'd say to another human being if he ever got the chance a thousand times, thought John. But not once in all the times he'd thought about it, had he imagined that the first words out of his mouth would be 'Stop or I'll shoot!' How the hell had she got here?
As Crichton seemed to have been temporarily struck dumb, not a usual occurrence by any means, Aeryn replied, "No."
"But... you said this wasn't hell," Willow said to Crichton. "If I'm not on Earth, and I'm not in hell... where am I?"
"Right now?" said Aeryn. "You're onboard Moya, a leviathan ship currently orbiting a commerce planet in the Uncharted Territories."
Ship... orbit... planet... the words registered in Willow's mind but refused to make any sense. If they didn't make sense then they couldn't be true.
"You're lost," Crichton added. "In space," he grinned suddenly. "Welcome to the club."
"Space..." Willow gasped, staring at him. "Ship!" she asked Aeryn, visibly shaking. "Spaceship? I'm on a spaceship? Oh... my... Goddess... Xander would be so jealous. I ended up on a spaceship. How far are we from Earth?"
"I don't know," Aeryn told her.
"Lost, remember?" John reminded her.
"How... how long have you been lost?" asked Willow in a small voice.
"Almost two cycles," said John. "Sorry, years."
"That's why you look so familiar," Willow realised. "You're John Crichton! You were testing your slingshot theory when your spaceship tore up in the atmosphere and you died."
"Not exactly," John said. "I triggered a wormhole which sucked up my module and spat me out just inside Peacekeeper territory. Everyone thinks I'm dead?"
"We had a minute's silence and everything," Willow told him awkwardly. "Sorry."
"How did you get here?" Aeryn asked her.
"I don't remember," Willow lied without really knowing why. Something told her that telling the truth right now would be a bad idea. "What about you?"
"I was born in space," said Aeryn.
"Aeryn's not human," John explained. "She's a Sebacean."
"A Peacekeeper," Aeryn said.
"A former Peacekeeper," John corrected.
"You're an alien?" Willow asked the dark-haired woman, surprised. She looked so human. Judging by the fluid vowels and glottal stops in her speech, she'd figured that she came from Africa or something. Not space.
"That a problem?" Aeryn asked, easing her pulse rifle up slightly.
"No!" Willow squeaked in alarm. "Some of my closest friends aren't human. Well, they're not my closest friends exactly, but they are friends, actually Spike isn't so much a friend as he is an enemy-turned-ally and Angel was always pretty distant even before he moved to LA and I don't really like Anya much but-"
"You have friends who aren't human?" John interrupted urgently. Had aliens found Earth? What had happened in the two years since he had left?
"No!" Willow lied quickly. "Did I say that? Ha, ha. Must be shock. They don't act human sometimes, that's what I meant."
"Right..." Aeryn said uneasily, lifting her pulse rifle higher.
"We'd better get Zhaan to check you out," John said, beckoning Willow out of her nook. "Make sure you're okay."
Cautiously, Willow stepped out from between the two curved pillars. She was relieved to see that most of the small yellow robots had disappeared although the woman, Aeryn, was still giving off some serious Faith-like vibes.
"C'mon," John said, walking back the way he had come.
Aeryn followed them as the human woman hurried after Crichton, holding her pulse rifle ready in case she tried anything. She didn't trust this new human. How had she arrived on Moya? Aeryn didn't believe her when she said that she didn't remember. What if it was another of Scorpius' twisted plots to capture Crichton? His voice floated back to her as he eagerly resumed his interrogation of the new arrival.
"Hey, who won the Superbowl?"
'Scape-ism's (in order used)
Frell: Expletive. Roughly equivalent to 'fuck'.
Drad: Cool. "It was the draddest!" (It was the coolest!)
Thoddo: Idiot, dimwit, slow.
Dren: Expletive. Roughly equivalent to 'shit'.
Hammen: Starboard
Treblin: Port
DRD's: Beetle-like robots that maintain Leviathans.
Winona: John Crichton's pulse-pistol. Named after Winona Ryder.
Uncharted Territories: Sector of space (theoretically) beyond the control of the Peacekeepers.
