Author’s (Mini-essay) Note: Setting in Firefly: After “Arial”. Setting in Doctor Who: The new season one. As long as it’s after “Rose” and before “The Empty Child”, we’re good. Joss owns all the Firefly coolness, and much to the benefit of the franchise, BBC owns the rights to Doctor Who, not me. Shouldn’t have spoilers for after the specified setting. Odds are this will shift about of perspective a lot (and as I’ve already written at least part of this story as I’m typing this, it does). And as we go to other perspectives, until people get names in that perspective, they’re a description. Further more, when there’s a * * *, it’s a shift in perspective, but otherwise, a blank line means a passing of time. Ah, and a note to the (insert fandom) fans reading this…. Don’t mock me on some of my descriptions; you know, sometimes people read crossovers from one pure fandom, so my funny explanations are cheating towards the (other fandom) fans here. And a note to both fandoms: This may seem a bit odd to you, ‘cause there are explanations of some basic concepts, but little explanation for others. And a note for people from neither fandom: why are you reading this? It’s a combination of two complex universes. Unless you understand at least the basis of both, you’re hopelessly lost to me. And… read, review, and criticize all you like. I’m not sure the changes will be made… ‘cause I’ve at least.5 chapters already written when I’m writing this bit, and, you know, I don’t always note when I’m being stupid. /AN

Serenity: Perspective: Zoe An unfamiliar wheezing, grinding sound echoes throughout an otherwise quiet Serenity. It’s the middle of the night, at least for the crew, and everyone’s asleep. Tonight, however, Zoe’s not big on deep sleep, and she looks at her husband, makes sure he’s still sound asleep before she gets out of bed. She grabs her Mare’s Leg and puts on a shirt, her vest, pants, but not shoes; shoes made noise on deck grills, and she’d done worse to her feet in the war. As soon as she was dressed, she glanced back at her still-sleeping husband, and thought about the noise for a moment. The noise had seemed to be coming from the engine room, so she, as quietly as possible, opened the laddoor (ladder/door) of their room, climbed up, and stood in the dimly lit hallway, adjusting to the light. As a courtesy wake-up call, she made a quick, though mildly loud rap on Mal’s laddoor before moving swiftly and silently down the hall towards the engine room. * * * The TARDIS: Perspective: Doctor and Rose The Doctor and Rose weren’t exactly sure where they were, or even why they were here; for some reason the TARDIS had just gone on its own behalf. Honestly. They’d come back to the TARDIS, and she’d just dematerialized as soon as they got back in. As the grinding of materialization stopped, the Doctor approached the door with his usual apparent abandon of thought. “Let’s go see where we are, then, Rose! Maybe that’ll tell us why she’s taken us here, anyway.” As he opens the door for her, grinning like the maniac he was, Rose steps out of the TARDIS, and so does he. Quicker than lightning, and before he’d even turned to close the door, he’s given a brutal crack in the side of the head, and Rose is startled to find herself at gunpoint by an impressive looking warrior-woman type. * * * Serenity: Engine room: Perspective: Zoe and Mal “Step back from there, out towards the center of the room, dong ma? And don’t touch anything.” Zoe watches as, skittish as a beaten dog, the blonde steps into the area by the engine. Luckily, Zoe thought, Kaylee’s in her bunk tonight, rather than in here. As the blonde stands there, obviously concerned about her fallen companion ((AN: *glare* all I’m saying is this: it’s spelled with a small ‘c’.)). Zoe heard Mal’s laddoor open, and heard the stumble as he came down the hall to find out why he’d been awakened at such an hour. “Sir,” she says, as she heard him walking towards the bridge, “I’m in the engine room. You’ve got your gun?” “Always do, Zoe.” he replied. “But tell me this: Why’m I up this ungodly hour?” As he walks in the room, he finds out why, and pulls his gun; now awake. There were strange people and objects on his ship that he knew nothing about, and in the middle of the night, no less. Immediately, he didn’t like the situation here, and sent her a further questioning look. He knew that she’d tell him what he wanted to know in her own time, however, and didn’t press her further. Mal’s wearing only his (half buttoned up) shirt, his gun belt, pants, and boots. He’s forgotten suspenders, so it’s a wonder his pants are on (must be ‘cause they’re so tight), and he’s not wearing his coat. And his hair’s mussed. “Keep a gun on the blonde one, sir, I’m gonna check that I didn’t kill the other.” Mal consents with a slight nod, and she kneels down, checking for a pulse. After finding one, albeit an odd pulse at that, she lifted his head, looking at where she’d hit the odd man, dressed peculiarly in a battered dark brown, almost black leather jacket, a dark v-neck jumper, and some dark pants. “Zoe,” Mal asked, confused, overriding his earlier thought to wait until she’d figured it out. “What’s these people? And how the hell’d they get on my ship?” “I’m not rightly sure, sir, but they came out of there,” she responded, standing back up, and vaguely gesturing to the strange blue box. “But we’d best move ‘em. No telling what these’ll get up to, showing up like they did, but I’d say take ‘em to the infirmary, and get the doctor, at any rate. It looks like I hit this one pretty hard, and his pulse wasn’t quite normal.” Pending further instructions, she did nothing, but simply looked at Mal. He nodded, and Zoe picked up the strange man, wincing as a strange device fell from his pocket to impact loudly with the grating, but deciding, mainly due to her hands being rather full at the moment, not to pick it back up. “I’ll get that later,” she says, thinking out loud. She walks cautiously between Mal and the strange blonde girl, and heads towards the infirmary. The girl, at a gesture from Mal’s gun, follows Zoe rather skittishly.

Serenity: Perspective: Mal He’d gotten up in the middle of ship’s night to find two intruders on his boat. So, he’d put a gun on the one Zoe hadn’t attacked, taken her to the infirmary, and went to go get the doctor. Zoe had stood guard on the two as soon as she’d put the guy down, and Simon had looked the strange guy over, and walked out again, mumbling to himself about his strange pulse. Then, since Zoe hadn’t the slightest chance at even a bit of objectivity in long-term guarding, even with her innate discipline, Mal’d gone off to go get Jayne to replace her. It was what Jayne was paid for, anyway. “Why today? On our way to a perfectly good job, an’ then this happens. Strange folk on my boat… what’d I do for this? Next thing you know we’ll be hailed by the high and mighty Alliance,” he said, taking Jayne down to the infirmary to stand as guard for the aforementioned ‘strange folk’. “Don’t shoot ‘em ‘less you have to. ‘cause we don’t’ know ‘em, and I don’t feel like wasting bullets and med supplies on ‘em. And ‘have to’ means they’re escaping, shootin’ at you, or shootin’ at any of the other crew. Which does include Simon. And his sister.” As soon as Jayne had grunted in assent, he tromped back up to the bunk level of his ship, to go get Kaylee and see if she couldn’t make any sense of this situation. ‘Cause he couldn’t. * * * Serenity: Infirmary: Perspective: Rose and the Doctor Rose looked around the infirmary, alone but for the Doctor, and he wasn’t even conscious. The people with guns - Zoe, she’d heard the warrior-type called, had brought them in here, and their doctor had looked over hers. Of course, he’d done nothing but look at him, check his pulse, and make the same comment about how odd it was, which meant no scanning of any sort (a plus in this situation). They said he was okay, but she could only assume they were right, ‘cause she didn’t think he looked any differently from normal, except the spot where he’d been hit, and that was just a lump or a bruise or something. All she could do was wonder is why they’d come here in the first place. And worry, she remembered, as the people with guns had ambushed them before he gotten to close the TARDIS door, and they didn't have the sonic screwdriver, because that woman hadn’t picked it up after she’d dropped it, either. Outside, she saw, continuing her listing of just what was going wrong with her day, was a man who had an obvious love for his weapons standing to guard the door. When she saw that he wasn’t really watching them, she crossed over from the corner in which she’d been standing to the Doctor, who was doing some combination of laying and sitting on some combination of an examination bed and a chair. “Doctor, where are we? This doesn’t make much sense to me and then you’re not even awake are you? Kinda of pointless talking to you like this, isn’t it?” She sighed, and was surprised to see that he was smiling up at her, rather enjoying her moment of daftness. “Do you want your questions answered, then, Rose?” The Doctor was enjoying mocking her, here. “In order: I rightly don’t know, yes, I was, and yes, it was pointless. But funny.” He chuckled, but stopped to grimace. “They aren’t kind people here, are they? Seems my memory the reception was a bit fuzzy. All I remember was getting hit out of nowhere.” Rose grinned at the good-natured mocking, but still looked at him with concern. “Um, yeah, that was that Zoe person.” She stopped, and became more serious still. “Doctor… there’s something that I’ve got to tell you. When you were attacked, there wasn’t any time to close the doors to the TARDIS… and–“ The look on his face was not a happy one. Not in the slightest. There wasn’t even a proper category for the emotion shown here, as it was so complex. But to describe the undescribable emotion, it was a mix of pain, loss, fear, and rage. And steely determination. “We’re getting out of here.” There was a sharp tone to his voice; there was something seriously wrong with the TARDIS alone, open, in an unfamiliar environ. He searched quickly for the sonic screwdriver, and couldn’t find that either. A look from Rose told him that that, too, had been lost. “What happened to it,” he asked, but without the tone of a question, and without needing to tell her, it was known that he was speaking of the almost infinitely useful tool. “It fell out of your pocket when she picked you up to carry you down here…” He groaned, and Rose felt like she’d irreversibly betrayed the Doctor’s trust. And it wasn’t even her fault that these things were happening, either. They’d happened entirely too fast for her liking, and she’d been held at gunpoint by two different people in the time span of a minute: it was not turning out to be her best day. Without the knowledge of the location of his sonic screwdriver, either, things got more complicated, but for the TARDIS, anything had to be possible. He got up, a thing generally not advised for people in his state, because after the infirmary had reeled by a few times, he closed his eyes, head down, and put his hand to the side of his head. That’s it. We’re getting out of here, he thought, and, together, they began to look for a way out. * * *

Feel free to comment, say you hated it, etc. And Cos. By the time you're here, you think I've forgotten you. Nope. This one was for you. The next one might be too, if you're still sulking. And yes. My Nine's probably horrible. But... he doesn't talk much in this bit.