"What'd I miss?" Wash asked as he joined the crew in watching River chase Xander around the cargo bay.

"Jayne and River kidnapped a powerful reader who was able to fix River," Kaylee replied. "The side effect seems to be that she's itching something fierce, but he won't scratch it for her until she's in her right mind."

"He fixed her?" Wash asked in disbelief.

"As impossible as that is," Simon agreed.

River managed to outmaneuver Xander, trapping him in a corner, whereupon he ran up the bulkhead and sat on the overhead.

"That is completely unfair!" River protested.

"And impossible," Simon said, trying to figure out how he'd done it.

"You come down from there!" River ordered.

"Not until you're in your right mind," Xander called down to her.

"I'm in the rightest mind I've been in for nearly forever!" River complained.

"And in an hour or so you'll be even righter," he assured her.

"Fine," River said with a growl. "I'll be in your bunk working on that," she said with a smirk before turning and walking off.

"How is he doing that?" Mal asked River as she reached them.

"A combination of mental and physical energy," River replied, not slowing down as she vanished into the ship.

"Not going to stop her?" Zoe asked.

"I would prefer not to see my sister masturbating," Simon said bluntly.

"How are you sticking up there?" Jayne called out.

"I have very muscular buttocks," Xander yelled back.

"Did he just claim he's clinging to the overhead by his butt?" Wash asked.

"I believe so," Zoe replied, amused.

"It's safe to come down," Jayne told him, "she's gone to flick the bean in your bunk."

Xander dropped the dozen or so feet to the deck, landing without a sound.

"Can you teach me to do that?" Jayne asked. "I've got a really good ass. In fact, some have said it's my best feature."

"It'd take weeks and a lot of meditating," Xander told him.

"What, really?" Jayne asked, wondering what meditating had to do with having ass cheeks strong enough to support your weight.

"Yeah," Xander agreed.

"I'll have to pass then," Jayne said regretfully, "it sounds like something that would just put me to sleep."

"Hi, I'm Wash, the ship's pilot," said a short man wearing a Hawaiian shirt as he offered his hand.

"Xander, vagabond and lay about," Xander replied, shaking his hand.

"Shouldn't you be on watch?" Jayne asked.

"I needed to use the little pilot's room and ask Kaylee to check on something," Wash replied.

"What do you need?" Kaylee asked.

"Can you check the fuel sensors? Both tanks read as full," he replied. "Everything else is good across the board, but those are malfunctioning."

"Got a read on the fuel sensors?" Kaylee asked Xander.

"They're both working," he assured her, "tanks are full."

"I only paid for a quarter of one tank," Mal said. "Guess they got some wires crossed somewhere. Hope they don't try and gouge us for it later."

"Might," Zoe replied, "you didn't exactly make us a lot of friends there."

"I think we can put off coming back here for a couple of months," Mal said, "just until they cool down a little."

"We have the fuel to do so," Zoe agreed dryly.

"Lucky break that," Mal noted smugly.

"You can read machines?" Wash asked Xander.

"Machines and people by touch," Xander agreed.

"That's amazing," Wash said.

"Yep," Xander agreed, "it's made my life pretty easy."

"River said you were sticking to the ceiling by a combination of physical and mental energy," Simon said, the question obvious.

"I can do that too," Xander agreed, "and I really should come up with a way to keep her from reading my mind."

"I can see why you hide everything you can do," Simon said, "The Alliance would fall over themselves trying to capture you."

"Well, none of us are Pro-Alliance so you can be sure you're safe with us," Mal assured him.

"Safe from everyone but River," Jayne offered, "and she ain't lookin to turn you over to anyone."

"How long is she going to be that way?" Simon asked.

"Initial surge is short lived," Xander assured him, "and while her hormone levels will be elevated for a couple of weeks it's easily ignorable."

"So, she's not going to be chasing you all over the ship?" Kaylee asked.

"If she does it'll be because she decided to and not her hormones," Xander replied.

"And you can just heal anyone like that?" Simon asked.

"Only if he's a fast runner," Jayne said, "which is probably how he got his ass in such good shape."

Xander laughed. "Most people don't jump me, they jump their significant other."

"And River being single decided you were the closest port," Mal said thoughtfully.

"Or she liked what she read from him," Kaylee pointed out.

"Probably a combination of both," Simon said. "She was channeling you in dealing with him right before he healed her."

"Channeling me?" Kaylee asked.

"Phrases and tone?" Xander guessed.

"Yes," Simon agreed. "Kaylee is one of her female role models."

"Aww, that's sweet," Kaylee said.

"That bit at the end there was pure Zoe," Mal said.

"Sir?" Zoe asked in a tone that demanded an explanation.

"She told him what she planned and that she'd be waiting when he came to his senses," Mal quickly explained, "simple, straight forward, no subterfuge."

Zoe considered that for a moment and nodded in agreement, allowing Mal to relax.

"Also being descriptive enough to make him regret making her wait," Wash added.

Zoe turned to her husband and raised an eyebrow.

"It's one of your most effective tactics," he said, "with a hundred percent success rate."

"Have we assigned you a cabin?" Mal asked Xander, trying to change the subject.

"Jayne gave me one," Xander assured him.

"River said you were hiding how powerful you are, which seems a bit ridiculous considering the amount of power you've shown," Simon said, "but since we are most definitely not Pro-Alliance would you mind revealing a bit more?"

"No," Xander said, shaking his head, "in fact, I'm going to deny nearly everything you've already seen except for reading and fixing things."

"How's that going to work?" Mal asked. "I mean, we saw you sticking to the ceiling and all."

Xander shook his head. "Now that's just crazy talk, it was probably a glitch in the gravity controls. Sounds more likely to me."

"If I didn't know better, I'd have bought it," Jayne said cheerfully and gave Xander a thumbs up.

"Can he really do that?" Kaylee asked.

Xander burned a Mana to create a half dozen rolls of gold coins in the pocket of his jacket and tossed one to Mal.

"Looks like he can to me," Mal said with a smile, "after all it ain't really our business what he can and can't do. Wouldn't be right to badger a man about his capabilities when he's paying us and we're not paying him."

"That is fair," Zoe agreed.

"Where are these coins from?" Mal asked. "I don't recognize them."

"I make them myself," Xander replied, "that way I know the gold is pure, plus I like the design."

"You'll still help out in the engine room, right?" Kaylee asked hopefully.

"Of course," Xander assured her, "I already showed I could read and repair machines."

Kaylee beamed, already making plans on how to make some much needed repairs while they were enroute.

"Please, don't strain yourself too much," Simon said, thinking about how much he owed him for helping his sister.

"When I get a nosebleed I'll stop and wait to recover before doing more work," Xander assured him.

"What should we work on first?" Kaylee asked.

"All the spare parts in the storage room," Xander replied. "We get those sorted and fixed up and it'll make things a lot easier in the future."

"Can you fix more than hairline cracks?" Kaylee asked. "Cause I got some replacements that are little better than scrap." The two headed into the ship as they talked.

"I'm sure they are all a lot better they seem," the young Planeswalker assured her.

"Do you mean you can read them, and they are easily fixable, or you can fix them, and we'll just pretend they were dirty?" she asked as they vanished down the hall.

"You're taking River's attempts to bed our guest a lot better than I'd expect," Mal told Simon as Zoe and Wash left.

"She's finally sane enough to make those decisions for herself and she's read him," Simon replied. "If those two reasons alone aren't enough, you can add in that if I tried to get in her way she'd probably knock me out and do it anyway."

"Fair enough," Mal said.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

"Where's River?" Mal asked as he joined the crew for lunch, Jayne having relieved him at watch.

"Asleep," Xander replied. "Once people work through the hormonal spike they tend to pass out for about twelve hours. Once she wakes up she'll be as right as rain."

"That's good to hear," Mal said with a smile.

"So, tell me about Sanctuary," Xander said. "What's it like?" He eyed the small cubes they were eating for a meal in the center of the table.

"It's a small colony, not even a thousand people," Mal replied after swallowing a food cube.

"They're nice people," Kaylee added. "They're working hard to build things up, but it's a frontier world, so the Alliance barely terraformed the place."

"Air's a bit thin, but not by much," Simon added, "so you'll probably feel a bit tired for the first couple of days there until you adapt."

"To be fair to the Alliance," Zoe began.

"Which we hate to do," Mal interjected with a grin.

"Terraforming so many worlds takes time and resources," Zoe continued, ignoring the interruption, "so most of the frontier worlds are set up in such a way that within a century they'll be just like the core."

"I still hold that it's a means of control," Mal said, "keep the worlds poor so you can make sure you have complete control over them before they become valuable."

"There's some truth to that," Zoe agreed. "It wouldn't take much water and wildlife to get Sanctuary to that point."

"There are a number of worlds like that," Wash said, "and every time someone gets the idea to fix that by ice mining… accidents happen." He popped a purple cube in his mouth.

"We got a thousand-gallon tank on the Serenity, so we help out, but it's just a drop in the bucket really," Kaylee said.

"Being from the Core and all you probably ain't heard any of this, The Alliance is frighteningly effective at controlling what you all hear," Mal said.

Xander nodded. "If people knew they'd start up a charity to help fix it, which if The Alliance were smarter, they'd allow and then use it to choose which worlds to help, those being Pro-Alliance worlds which would increase their influence."

"It would, wouldn't it?" Mal asked with a frown. "Glad they ain't all that smart then."

"You'd think at least a few would come up with the idea," Wash said.

"They probably have," Xander replied, "but they wouldn't want any one faction to control that much power, so any time they tried another would block them and then a study would be released explaining that that charity was a scam and the planets being easily improved was a conspiracy theory." He ate a pink food cube which tasted faintly of pork and corn and decided to skip 'dinner' and just create something in his cabin to eat.

Xander faked a yawn. "It's getting a bit late and I need my beauty sleep. Night all."

"Isn't River in your bed?" Wash asked.

"She doesn't take up much room," Xander replied as he left.

Typing By: Abyssal Angel