I must be some kind of MACHINE putting out chapters like this, what can i say the creative juices are flowing :3
as usual, read, review, and i still need pre-readers.
Mal was standing in the bridge doing captainy things. One of said things was talking to Badger, or at least trying to. The problem was that the picture on the other end was coming from the floor of his office and there were dead bodies all about. Shiny, looks as though we're not getting paid…again. He closed the channel and several seconds later another wave came in. He opened the channel and looked at the face staring back at him, "Hello Fanty."
"I got a job for you; I'm sending you the details now."
Mal looked over the details scrolling out on a second screen, "A bank heist huh? Alright, we can do it."
"Excellent, you can make your delivery on Beaumonde" then Fanty cut the transmission.
Maybe we get to eat after all.
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Simon was pacing back and forth in the infirmary, looking at Rei and then looking at the floor again. Rei had taken the news well all things considered. Simon looked at her one more time. "I'll need a blood test to make sure…"
Rei smiled slightly at Simon and provided her arm, "That's okay."
Simon delicately poked the syringe into her arm, drawing out a blood sample. Rei looked up into his eyes. "What is this for?"
Simon turned and put some of the blood into a machine on the counter. "It's to see how long you were in cryo, the process leaves traces in your system and its possible to determine an approximate time that you were frozen." He stared at the screen waiting for a readout.
The machine was a modern medical miracle; it could give a complete profile of the supplied blood. Chemical composition, glucose levels, white cell count, red cell count, DNA profile, among other things. The readout appeared on screen and Simon's jaw dropped. Girl's full of surprises…The readout was…interesting to say the least. Her basic readings were normal enough but the DNA profile was wrong, very wrong. He turned to Rei. "This isn't possible, it says your DNA is fifteen percent human with eighty-five percent unidentified…"
Rei shrugged at him. "I…don't know I feel human enough."
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The landing on Lilac was eventful. Mal was standing on the bridge during entry to atmo and was looking out the forward window when an object flew up past the window. "Did the primary buffer panel just fall off my goram ship for no apparent reason?"
"This landing is going to be interesting." Wash was fighting with the controls to keep the ship stable.
"Define interesting."
"Oh god oh god we're all gonna die?"
"Just get us on the ground"
"Oh, that's gonna happen pretty definitely"
Mal walked over to the handset and pulled it down, talking into it. "This is the captain. We have a little problem with our entry sequence, so we may experience some slight turbulence and then… explode."
Mal walked out of the cockpit towards the back of the ship, as he passed the crew bunks he saw Jayne in the hallway "Mal I don't wanna explode."
The rest of the landing went fairly well, they touched down and didn't explode, which was a positive in the opinion of the crew.
Mal, Jayne, and River boarded the Hover-Mule and took off towards town; Wash went with them after arguing that he hadn't yet gone on a job that didn't end in being tortured by Niska. Upon entering town they got off of the mule and went into the bank. Jayne shot out the security cameras as Mal ordered everybody to the floor "you're all gonna wanna be looking very intently at your belly buttons." Meanwhile river walked through the room, looking at everybody before pointing at a man near the wall; Mal nodded his head and walked over to that man, pressing his pistol into the man's head. "Don't be a hero." The man slid his gun under a cabinet in the corner.
Mal and Wash walked over to the safe and forced the manager to open it, inside were a few small bills. Mal reached inside and pulled on something on the top of the safe and the floor retracted, revealing a stairway leading down into the main vault.
Wash called down into the vault. "We're coming down there now."
"I'll need your authorization code" replied a young voice, that of the guard.
Mal shot a few rounds out of his pistol into down at the staircase.
"Okay."
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"Ai-ya Tyen-ah" Rei swore as she sat in the cockpit, looking at the sensor screen, seeing half a dozen Reaver ships dropping in from orbit, directly on the settlement that Mal's group was robbing. She snapped a hand down on the intercom switch. "Kaylee I need engines right now!" her voice was urgent.
In the engine room Kaylee pulled down on the primer lever and the engine began to turn, the urgency in Rei's voice overriding Kaylee's better judgment about starting up the engines for somebody who wasn't Wash or Mal. "Rei, what's going on up there?"
Before the engine had even finished its startup sequence Rei had already fired the thruster pods and lifted the ship off the ground, slower than normal as the grav-boot hadn't fully initialized. "Reavers." And that was all Kaylee needed to know.
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River saw a Reaver in front of her and fell as it slashed at her, after seeing the vision she whispered from the floor, and Jayne heard her. "Reavers."
Jayne's eyes opened wide and he ran for the vault. "Mal!!"
Mal looked towards the stairs and started walking. "Every job he's gotta yell my name…" then he called out louder, "What is it?"
"Reavers, the Reavers are here!" Jayne's voice had panic in it, the Reavers terrified him.
"ta ma de, does this vault lock from the inside?" The young guard nodded his head. "Get everybody down here and lock the door, don't open it as long as you have air, dong ma?"
The guard nervously replied "Y-yes sir."
Wash looked at Mal "It never goes smooth huh?"
The two of them grabbed the bags of money and ran to the mule, taking Jayne and River with them on the way out the door. Once on the mule Wash radioed Serenity, "Kaylee warm up the ship, we're on our way back and uh, oh yeah, we're being chased by Reavers"
Unexpectedly it was Rei's voice that answered them, "Hey Wash, the ship is already in the air and I am approaching your location." By the end of her transmission Zoe had reached the bridge.
"What the hell is going on up here?" Zoe was reaching for her gun seeing the girl flying the ship, distrustful of her intentions.
"Thrilling heroics" she deadpanned "You're going to be needed in the cargo bay in about forty-five seconds, I'd grab a gun and run."
Zoe cocked her gun and Rei heard the click. Rei slapped the button to drop the loading ramp and open the inner airlock doors, she turned to Zoe and looked at the gun, a little uneasy about the possibility of being perforated. "Reavers are chasing the Captain and your Husband"
That was all Zoe needed to hear, she turned and ran from the bridge without saying a word, running through the hallway and down into the cargo hold. She looked out the open door and saw the mule, it was being chased by a Reaver skiff. She readied her rifle and stood at the open doorway, waiting.
On the bridge Rei had radioed the Captain. "I'm going to try something, head straight into the cargo bay and don't slow down until you hit the ramp.
In the mule Mal had little choice but to listen to the girl, she was flying his ship and was his only real chance to get off this gorram rock alive. "When this is done we're going to have some words, little girl!"
Rei, in the cockpit replied one last time, "You have no idea." The mule hit the ramp and then two things happened nearly at the same time. In the cargo bay Zoe slammed her hand down on the button to close the ramp. On the bridge Rei pulled hard on the thruster position lever and spun the engines one-hundred-eighty degrees and killed Serenity's forward momentum in the half second it took for the mule to cross the ramp into the ships gravity field, slowing the ship enough as to not splatter the people riding the mule against the back wall of the cargo bay. Slamming the lever back to the middle of its range of motion the thrusters faced ninety degrees to the ship, facing straight down and sending the ship upwards and out of the way of the Reaver skiff. Rotating the thruster back towards their forward position and gunned the engines, spinning them past their rated maximum speed and heading towards the town. This is going to end great.
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In town the citizens of the town were dead, dying, or locked into the vault. The Reaver ships were still tethered to the ground as the Reavers themselves continued to search the town for survivors. Overhead, if they had been looking, they would have seen a firefly flying at unsafe speeds toward them, as it was they were too busy raiding the town.
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On the bridge Rei was putting into action something she knew to work, she'd talked with Kaylee enough during her time spent in the engine room and she knew what happened when the main engine lit off in atmo. She activated the intercom to the engine room. "Kaylee, I need you to get ready for full burn."
Kaylee was extremely nervous about that particular concept. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"
Rei answered her, "I can't think of anything better."
In the engine room Kaylee prepped for full burn.
In the hallway leading to the bridge Mal overheard Rei's request for full burn, and yelled towards the cockpit as he broke into a dead run, "Don't you dare!!"
For Rei things seemed to move in slow motion, she killed the thrusters and used the maneuvering jets to spin the ship backwards, nose up, tail down and thus put the ship into an aerodynamic stall, the ship was directly above the tethered Reaver ships, they had no way of getting out of the way in time. Rei called into the intercom and Kaylee fired off the main engine at full burn, superheated plasma shot out of the engine as it produced maximum thrust, said plasma detonated in the atmosphere of the planet and, unlike the ship on whitefall, the ships here were very small. The concussion wave from the blast sent the ships tumbling into the ground, destroying some, seriously damaging others. The second effect of firing the main drive was Serenity herself rising from the blast like a phoenix born of flame, clawing for the black as it rose higher and higher in the atmosphere. As she finally broke atmo Mal reached the pilots seat and slammed the butt of his pistol into Rei's head, knocking her out cold.
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Rei woke up in the airlock, a radio on the floor in front of her face. The radio crackled and Mal's voice came through.
"I think it's time we had that talk."
Rei reached out for the radio and pressed the talk button, "Okay."
"You're full of mysteries girl, lets start with where you're from, I don't believe this amnesia bit anymore, no way you can fly like that if you can't remember nothing."
"I can pilot, I remembered that I could when I had to do it, and I learned a lot from Wash."
"That don't tell me where you're from darlin."
"I don't remember."
Mal reached over threateningly at the button to open the outer airlock door, "You be givin me clear answers or there's gonna be trouble, I gotta look out for me and mine and I conjure that ain't you right now."
Rei clicked on her radio again, "Simon tells me I'm from Earth-that-was..."
"That's go se ain't no way you can be."
Book stepped into the bay, having heard the exchange from the upper catwalk on his way to the dining room. "She's not lying Mal."
"Stay out of this preacher."
"Would you murder this girl?"
"She's a danger to my crew"
"That's an interesting way to look at it, as I recall she just saved your life."
Seeing the shepherd's point he opened the inner airlock door and Rei stepped out. "I still want answers, girl."
"I think I can help with that." Book handed a sheet of digital paper to Mal, on it was a picture of Rei wearing a white rubber-latex bodysuit, and a picture of a tall one eyed mecha, stenciled on the arm were words: 'Evangelion Unit-00 Prototype.' A white capsule not unlike the one currently in their cargo hold was sticking from its back. The paper read:
Ayanami, Rei
Designated pilot Evangelion Unit-00 (Prototype)
Age:14 years
Date of birth: Classified
Mother: Classified
Father: Classified
Responsible for piloting synthetic life form Evangelion Unit-00 in combat in defense of the city of Toyko3, Japan against the threat of the Angels.
Put into cryostasis September 23rd 2017
Unit-00 put into cryostasis September 23rd 2017
Pilot and machine placed on J.N.S Katsuragi June 19th 2250.
Launched on July 12th 2256 with initial migrant fleet for new solar system.
Contact lost December 30th 2301.
Mal looked at the paper, then at Rei, then at the capsule, then back at Rei, again at the capsule, and then at the paper one last time. "Shepherd, you're gonna have to tell me who you really are"
"No, i don't."
"I insist, you get first class treatment on that alliance ship, now you show me this, i really need to know."
Book nodded his head slightly and pulled out his ident card, showing it to the captain, at the top of the card there were two words: 'Section Two'
One word came to Mal's mind, "Huh."
