Don't ask me why, but I got inspired – at work, no less. Admittedly, once you get your shit together banging out 500 words isn't the most difficult thing on earth; that being said, Mercenary's Diary is a bit of a throwaway fic – my more serious crack-fic (in which I posted my first 2000 word chapter in over a year) had me producing 50 words a day if I was lucky.

Anyway, blah blah blah, new chapter …and it's a lot smoother than the previous one (released yesterday)

Please read and review.

Well, it had to happen – someone finally got sick of Mal's constant orations on the evils of the Alliance and, instead of standing around listening to him, simply shot him: between paragraphs.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so I put a put a bullet through the head of the gunman and am currently raising a glass to their ghost in the privacy of my bunk.

That being said, I'm not sure if I shot him because, as Serenity's tame mercenary, it's my job; or because the idiot was a poor shot and didn't do the job properly and I loathe amateurs. If you're going to shoot someone, do it properly. Shoot to kill; that's what a gun is for, killing. There's nothing more obscene to my mind than the idiot that hunts for sport and then leaves a trail of wounded animals in their wake and, similarly, if you're hunting humans, kill them, otherwise someone else is just going to have to come along and finish the job you couldn't complete.

Call it professional pride, but if I'm killing someone, they stay dead; they don't lie around moaning about how they've damn well be shot (again) and 'where the hell were you Jayne?' …Because, of course, I'm psychic and know precisely when and where someone is going to take a shot at Mal – although, past experience would probably necessitate that I just gun down entire rooms on suspicion.

I also don't believe in the ostensible 'object lesson' of shooting to wound – if you want to provide an object lesson, kill your target's entire family, or burn their house down – don't shoot them in the foot.

As you've probably figured out, Mal's not dead – more's the pity - he got shot in the leg but, fortunately, his pants were so damn tight that they acted like a tourniquet and controlled the bleeding until we were able to pull the doc's face out of Kaylee's lap and get him down to Serenity's medbay.

I have to admit that I'm glad that it was Inara they sent running to get the doc – because I don't fancy going blind, that and I was also busy killing someone - although when Inara returned she was white as a sheet. I'm not sure, however (because she closed up tighter than an arthritic clam when asked), if that was from some form of delayed shock from seeing her beloved get his, the exertion from sprinting off like a madwoman to summon help, or because she was withholding a desperate need to provide Simon with professional critique on his technique – my money's on the latter; the damn companion never misses an opportunity to rub her expertise in someone's face; or someone's face in her expertise, as it were.

So now Mal's moaning. Inara's crying. Kaylee was screaming and moaning and is now crying and Simon is cursing, and I just wish they'd all shut up because I'm currently trying to raise (yet another) glass to the poor bastard I shot.