Disclaimer: The wonderful characters and the good ship Serenity all belong to Joss Whedon, or Mutant Enemy, or Fox, or whoever actually owns them, and that person or entity is definitely not me. Written for amusement purposes only. No copyright infringement intended or implied.
Rating: T, with rough language warning. May go up for later chapters.
Summary: Eight months after Miranda, the crew of Serenity still struggles to adapt to the "new normal." Constructing, and deconstructing, elements of her life, River attempts to assimilate her new and sometimes painful feelings for Jayne. - - Rayne, but will touch on other pairings. Post-BDM, of course.
Chapter 4: Women Drivers
Someone had handed Spanky a rifle, which was bad. Spanky'd certainly had a lotta incentive to use one this evening.
Mal took a quick mental vacation to try and catalog how many times he'd stood, hands hovering half-heartedly around his shoulders, looking down the barrel of a gun. Should he break out pistols from long guns? Revolvers from carbines? And there was that one time that Inara had pointed the Lassiter at him…ah, well. Time for that later. Or not.
"Hey, now, Spanky, wooden sticks are one thing, but when you put your hand to steel, this ain't high-spirited fun no more." Mal gave a hopeful chuckle as he counted heads. Eleven had made it up here; only Spanky and two other guys in the back appeared to be armed. They were all crowded in on one another, though, and the other two shooters were well back. Hard to hit.
He wondered if he'd be able to draw his weapon in time, if it came to that. He was really regrettin' making Jayne leave his arsenal in the mule before the meeting at the warehouse. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, seeing as how Jayne was wont to disrupt negotiations in an unfriendly-like manner at the first sign of a disagreement.
"Fun?" Spanky rasped in outrage, snuffling painfully. "That gorram bull broke my nose!" He glared at Jayne with his teeth bared, his nose visibly crooked and swollen.
Jayne shrugged and grimaced with an insulting lack of concern, looking around idly. Mal caught the bigger man's gaze sharpening momentarily on a wide-mouthed, heavy metal canister not far from his feet, a garbage bin or a planter or some such. Mal had to hand it to the merc: he was resourceful.
"He surely did," Mal inclined his head slightly, agreeing with Spanky in a peaceable manner, "'cause he's a mite excitable. But he's very, very sorry."
Jayne gave a snort and Mal wanted to kick him. Spanky liked to talk, and a talkin' Spanky was a not-shootin' Spanky.
"He don't seem sorry!" Spanky contradicted with a offended sneer.
"And what about my brother Jordie? He broke all a his fingers!" The guy next to Spanky accused shrilly, pointing at Jayne.
"Well, fingers are easy to splint –" Mal began helpfully.
"And his arm! In two places! Shoot 'im, Spanky!"
"Hang on, Wesley, maybe there's something better to be done with these in-dee-pendants. Who knows, maybe there's a bounty on 'em?" Spanky grinned.
"A bounty?" That caused a ripple of interest.
"Yeah, maybe they're wanted by the Alliance, maybe their job is ta go to different towns, spreadin' their lies, fomentin' rebellion!" Spanky was getting excited about his theme.
Fomentin' rebellion? Mal raised his eyebrows, mouthing the words silently. Been there, done that.
"I don't care!" Wesley shouted suddenly. "Those bastards hurt my big brother!" Impetuously, he reached out and grabbed at the rifle.
"What the hell you doin'?" Spanky fought back in annoyance. They struggled over the gun, panting and swearing.
Mal's eyes slid to Jayne, and Jayne gave a tiny nod of affirmation.
The big man reached down swiftly and grabbed the heavy metal canister not far from his feet. He launched it straight at Wes and Spanky with a forceful grunt. As it soared through the air, a strange ropy liquid slopped out of the opening, covering Wes and Spanky and splattering the front row of the others with murky, bilious goop. The container clocked Wes cold, and he folded to the ground, his tenacious grip on the rifle dragging the dripping Spanky down with him.
Mal was so stunned at this odd turn of events that he completely forgot he was supposed to be using the distraction to draw his gun.
"Gah!" Spanky gasped in disgust, losing his grip on the rifle as he tried to sit up. The substance was oozing down his hair and the tip of his nose, sending out a spray of globules with every affronted breath. There was a pool of it underneath him and his hands kept sliding as he tried to lever himself up. The whole gang was frozen in revolted horror.
"That's not ...?" Mal couldn't help stuttering out, various origins of the viscous substance occurring to him in rapid succession, none of them appealing.
"Gun!" Jayne reminded impatiently.
"Oh!" Mal drew his pistol and shot through the crowd, accurately hitting one of the armed men in the right shoulder. The guy went down with a shout of pain. The other gunman knew what he was doing, though, and fired from the other side, the bullet whizzing past Mal's ear.
Mal and Jayne hit the deck, and as Mal fell his gun was jarred from his hand and went skittering across the boards. Shots continued to fly over their heads.
"Well, fuck," Mal gritted out, covering the back of his skull with his hands.
"Ta ma de," he heard Jayne whisper in awe behind him.
"No shit!"
"Mal."
Jayne had actually reached out and tugged on his sleeve.
"Mal..."
"Jayne, do you not realize we are in a situation here...?" Mal yanked his arm away in exasperation, his gaze naturally following the path of Jayne's widened eyes.
His mouth fell open as he looked through the railings and saw the mule, piloted by River, lofting through the air, straight at the balcony.
"Is that my mule? Can my mule do that?" Mal demanded with a slightly hysterical edge to his voice. "Can she do that with my mule?"
"She's doin' it," Jayne breathed, exultation in his tone.
"What the fuck –" Spanky was now squinting in the same direction.
The mule exploded onto the balcony sideways, ass-end screeching along the inner wall, shattering windows and ripping off hardware, frames and boards, the front end shearing off the banister and railings one after another like toothpicks, plowing tables and chairs and debris before it like a wave of destruction. The group of townies concentrated nearest the building were bowled down like ninepins.
Jayne dragged Mal back a pace and they scrambled to their feet, just managing to leap over a flood of chairs that tumbled in their direction and slammed into the railing behind them.
Even before the vehicle juddered to halt, River vaulted over the side, flinging Vera to Jayne and drawing her pistols as she somersaulted onto the floor. She landed in a defensive crouch, half concealed by a flipped-over table, her rubbery boots gripping the wooden flooring beneath her feet, arms braced, pistols ready. With her flirty skirt and leggings and the two long glossy braids on either side of her head, River looked all of twelve, instead of eighteen point six. Her eyes were locked on Spanky and the rifle, having determined that the other two gunmen were either disarmed or unconscious.
Jayne snapped the Callahan out of the air, seemingly without conscious thought, as if he'd been expecting her to do that. His finger went unerringly to the trigger and he braced the weapon against his hip, strafing the wooden ceiling in a halo of gunfire, giving 'em a jubilant taste of "Who's in charge now?"
As the gun blasts echoed away, the only sounds to break the sudden, terrified silence were the wood shavings drifting hazily from the remnants of the ceiling and the tinny clatter of a small pile of rubble in the far corner, losing its battle with gravity.
You should be terrified, noted Mal with shocked satisfaction, his eyes moving wonderingly from Jayne to River, seein' as how you're bookended by two of the most violence-prone creatures currently on this world. I'm fair to being unsettled myself.
"That was…spontaneous." He commented to River in a conversational tone, clearing his throat and brushing splinters off his shoulders nonchalantly.
"No time for stealth. Police are on their way," she answered in her sweetly serious voice.
"Care to tell me how you got my mule to fly that high?"
"I found a utility vehicle with an optimal incline and adjusted my angle and initial velocity for maximum projectile motion."
Mal and Jayne exchanged an uncomfortable look.
River took pity and gave a little sigh. "I bounced off a truck."
"I got that," Jayne put in quickly.
The thought of the authorities on the way and the fact that River seemed distracted must have given Spanky courage, because his hand twitched toward the rifle on the floor next to him. River, not even glancing in his direction, squeezed off a shot, burying a bullet millimeters from his fingers.
"No," she advised coolly.
Spanky subsided swiftly, completely defeated. Couldn't really get any worse, Mal considered, than lying on the ground, covered with mysterious goo and sawdust, outgunned by Pippi Longstocking.
He spotted his pistol and reached down for it, blowing off the wood shavings and inspecting it calmly before he spun it around his finger and holstered it.
"Well, this has been all kinds of entertaining, Spanky," he smiled. "But my ride's here."
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A/N: Sigh. I love my captain! Fun opening sequence is over, time for River's POV. (Rayne on the horizon!) Thanks to all for the great reviews and for reading. Hope you liked! Gem