DISCLAIMER: I don´t own these characters, I only play with them …
Notes: Please let me know if you like it, it´s still a little edgy, I know ( cringe) but I do my best!
Getting to know you
Mal was not entirely sure if he liked the recent developments. They had been ready to go out and look for Kaylee when she had finally arrived with three strangers in tow. Now these strangers stood in the middle of cargo bay, looking around. Mal could tell they were assessing the surroundings, looking for exit ways and other important strategic points. It would be the exact same thing he would have done…..
While Zoe and Jayne kept a watchful eye on the newcomers, Mal listened to the outrageous story Kaylee was telling him about how the girl and her two companions had saved her. To be honest , Mal had a little trouble following the story that included three yellow-eyed creatures that exploded into clouds of dust……
" Come again?" he asked his mechanic bemused, all the while wondering if these people could have drugged her. It was not just the story she was repeating to him for the third time in the last twenty minutes, but also her excited giddiness that seemed odd.
" Oh Captain ..I said that she fought with these guys and …I don´t really know what she did exactly , ´cause it was so dark , but she must´ve stuck ´em with somethin´…and they shrieked and just went …puff! And then I told her about Serenity and Alice told me that they were looking for a ship. Great coincidence, Ha? And she made the blond guy carry the heavy backpack with the new accelerator-bolts …so that we could have a nice girl- talk ….a real girly girl-talk captain ……Ohh ..the new parts …I struck quite a bargain …"
" So you told these people you don´t know that we would take on passengers?"
Kaylee stopped talking, staring at Mal.
" Sure…"
" Well we don´t!" he told her
" What …but why, they´re really nice and they can pay!"
" I don´t like ´em, that´s why!" Mal explained with another look at the three of them.
They were all wearing dark clothing, heavy coats with big hoods. The girl was extraordinarily pretty, with long auburn hair and fine features. She wore tight leatherpants, kind of like the ones Zoe wore sometimes, and a tight, midriff -baring shirt, that showed off a slim, yet curvaceous figure. Mal took her to be no older than River.
The two men, now that was a whole different thing. He could see from the way they moved that they were strong, most likely fighters. There was something about them, their pale skin, the way their eyes shone ……..something Mal did not like.
" But captain …"
" Is that wise, sir?" Zoe cut in smoothly, giving Mal a doubting look.
" We have no cargo…"
" And no job-offer to speak of!" Jayne growled.
" We could sure use the fare!"
Mal stared sat them, annoyed.
" Did you two hear the story Kaylee just told? With the yellow-eyes and people going – puff? For all we know these people are on the run from the alliance!"
" Oh right and we don´t take on fugitives, ha?" Kaylee challenged him.
Alice knew that her two companions had been following the conversation that went on on the catwalk above them. So she had simply tried to relax and wait for the captain´s verdict, but she was getting an eerie feeling. Slowly she turned around, squinting out of the still open cargo-ramp into the dark. Out of the corner of her eye she had seen something moving.
" Damn it!" she whispered to herself.
" Oh hey ….ahhh , don't wanna interrupt or anything, but maybe it would be a good idea to close that access ramp now!" she yelled at the captain.
He turned around to face her, an impatient look on his good-looking face. Had the occasion been a bit different Alice would have definitely considered giving him a wink…..
" Yeah , that´s a good idea…once we have decided if you can stay…"
" What´s wrong, love?"
Alice shook her head, shouldn´t he feel it too?
" We got company…" Mal heard the taller man with the dark hair mutter mere seconds before two figures emerged from the darkness, stepping onto the ramp.
" Slayer…" one of them said with a nasty lisp.
Mal blinked a few times to make sure that his eyes or maybe the light didn´t play tricks on him, but the picture his eyes were showing him did not change. The two men were very tall and robust….and they had those bright yellow-eyes Kaylee had told him about. But that was not all, in the lights of the cargo-bay Mal could see that there was something wrong with their faces…..they seemed strangely contorted or deformed. They look liked creatures from a nightmare.
Mal shot a look at Zoe, who stared back at him.
" I heard a slayer was here on Rubicon.." the creature with the lisp continued, leering at the young woman. " Couldn´t believe it, but it seems as though you had a run-in with some of my associates earlier. So you coma to my town and don´t even pay your respects to me ….I´m heartbroken!"
" See Captain …I told you there…"
" Kaylee……no talking now, ok?" Mal hushed her up quietly, before putting a hand on the gun Jayne had pointed on the intruders. Signaling the mercenary to lower his weapon.
" We don´t have trouble with these people and I got a feelin´ that we don´t want to …..let´s see how this plays out."
Alice threw a look over her shoulder to measure the reaction on the catwalk. She could see that the captain was waiting for something and smiled grimly. He was right, she´d give him that. This was not his problem. She and her companions had brought this on them and she would be the one to take care of it.
" Respect.." she said loud and clear, shrugging of her coat.
" There´s a funny thing, you see…cause my daddy taught me that respect is not a thing you have a right to, respect needs to be earned."
Mal could see the dark haired man coming up from behind her while the blond one snickered, shaking his head.
The girl shot both of them an angry look.
" Stay back." She hissed .
" I´ll take care of this."
" Ally …"
" I said I´ll take care of it!"
The blond man nodded his assent, turning his head towards the catwalk where Mal was standing.
" Putting on a little show…." He muttered to his companion before he leaned against one of the crates in cargo- bay to observe.
The dar haired man shook his head warningly, but complied too.
If the girl was scared it didn´t show.
" I beg your pardon….maybe I should introduce myself." The creature said with a sneer.
" My name is Davlok and I´m ….."
" Don´t care who you are, never heard of you anyway. It´s all the same to me, so why don´t we cut through the niceties and get it over with?"
Zoe lifted an eyebrow at Mal, he could tell from her look that she liked the girl´s attitude. Jayne started grinning.
" Very well…" Davlok lisped.
" I heard a slayer´s blood is the sweetest….".
There was something like a sigh going through the three of them, but later Mal wasn´t sure if he had seen it right. He could have sworn that the two men exchanged uncomfortable looks, while the girl tried to catch their reaction. What the talk about the blood was about, Mal had no idea……
" Maybe, but you´ll never find out. So you´d better leave now or …"
" Or what?"
" I´ll kill you, both of you …..you and your not very talkative henchman!"
Davlok laughed.
" Is that right, well we´ll have to see about that …"
Suddenly the second men, the one Alice had referred to as the henchman, jumped forward with a speed that surprised Mal. He didn´t even see Alice make her move, from the catwalk it looked like she had punched him firmly in the gut. But her small hand disappeared in a blur and when it reappeared it was covered in blood.
The henchman stared at her for a second, there was no pain in his face, only complete confusion. Then she punched him once more, this time to the chest……Mal could see there was something in her hand this time that looked like a wooden stake ……
He heard in shriek and in front of his eyes the henchman combusted into a cloud of smoke.
" Did y ´all just see that…." Jayne asked, a baffled expression on his face.
" See …I told you.." Kaylee cut in.
Alice took a step forward towards Davlok. He grinned, trying to circle her like a lion would it´s prey. Then he rushed in, throwing an enormous strike at her face. It never reached the girl. Her small hand caught his fist mere inches from her face, pressing his arm down, at the same time gripping his other wrist with her free hand.
" You could have just left , but no …" she told him through gritted teeth.
" I´ll get you slayer…" he spat at her.
Alice made a disgusted face. She had enough of this.
Deliberatly she started squeezing his hand until he winced. Then she pushed him off her, whirling around to deliver two swift kicks to his head and abdomen. Mal could hear the breastbones crack. She pulled another stake out of her sleeve and buried it in his chest. Still reaching for her throat Davlok turned into smoke and flame.
" Is it just me or are these guys getting dumber the closer one gets to the Core?" she asked aloud, while the blond man snickered again.
" What the hell was that?" Mal yelled at them from above.
" Watcha´mean mate?"
" Well the …everything!"
Alice sighed. The turmoil had obviously attracted the rest of the ship´s crew, since she could see several other people gathering on the catwalk overlooking the cargo-bay.
There was an incredibly beautiful woman in fine clothing, a young man of similar descent, an older man who from the look of it seemed to be a priest and a young girl in a wide flowing dress and haunted eyes.
" Well I might as well tell ´ya because you´re gonna find out anyway if you take us on as passengers.." she shrugged.
" Ally…." The dark haired man tried to interrupt her.
" What…you think we won´t have to explain about your eating habits and the stuff you carry around in that portable cooling-unit?"
He groaned.
" So….." Mal asked, still not at terms with what he had just witnessed.
" Who the hell are you?"
" This is Angel!" she introduced the dark-haired, handsome man to her right, who shot the assembly on the catwalk a short look and nodded.
" And the other one is Spike." The blond man stepped up next to her, waving at them with a half-hearted grin.
" My name is Alice .." she finally said, " the Vampire- Slayer."
Mal´s eyebrows shot up, almost connecting with his airline.
" The what ?"
" Vampire-Slayer.." Spike repeated with a grin.
" You´ll get used to it, has a nice ring to it too, just keep repeatin´ it for a couple of times."
" What the hell is a Vampire- slayer?"
" Like a Dragon-slayer?" Jayne asked amused.
" Sir, I think you just saw what she does …" Zoe said lifting her own eyebrows.
Suddenly the dark haired girl in the dress stepped forward, leaning over the railing to get a closer look.
" In every generation there is a chosen one. One girl in all the world to stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the slayer." She recited in an eerie voice.
Alive smiled at her surprised.
" That´s about right." She answered, while everybody stared at the girl. River smiled back at her before she turned around to the captain.
" She is good, fights evil. She should stay." She stated simply, then she turned around to leave.
Mal stared after her. Now he had seen his share of freaky things in his life, but today's events definitely blew the top off of that. Somehow he had a feeling that nothing would go smooth with these weird people as passengers.
On the other hand, Zoe was right they could use the fare! And it seemed as though these were passengers that he would not have to look after, they could quite obviously take care of themselves. And that vampire thing, noe he did not believe in vampires or demons ……but he did not believe in readers either, and some of the things River said and did had taught him to rethink that assessment.
" Well taking…. the three of you along, won´t come cheap, even though you saved our little Kayleer here." He told them.
Alice gave him an amused look, before she pulled a little pouch filled with hard currency out of her coat and threw it to him.
" Don´t worry captain, we can pay. Didn´t think you looked much like the space-version of Robin Hood and his merry band of outlaws."
Her eyes flew over the assembly again.
" Well ..maybe outlaws but right now you don´t look very merry to me!"
Mal could hear a stifled giggle from Inara.
" Come on up ……Kaylee will show you around. I got a feeling we might wanna get off of this rock, before more of your weird friends show up."