* * * Serenity: Bridge: Perspective: Wash Mal had gotten the rest of the crew up, and he’d put Wash to the task of finding out if there was anything nearby they needed to worry about. With a yawn and a groan of displeasure at being roused this early, when he already put in late hours on the bridge alone, he’d gotten up. As he sat alone (yet again, he sighed) on the bridge of Serenity, he kept scanning for any ships from which their latest visitors could have come from. But there were only so many times one could repeat the same process over and over again without getting horribly bored of it. He’d been working for a while, scanning different frequencies as well, just to see if there were any waves going about that he could pick up on, like a transmission that could possibly be being sent to the impromptu visitors. Though, as is his wont, Wash ended up playacting with his dinosaurs, a sanity preserving activity if ever there was in such a lonely task. * * * Serenity: Perspective: Mal (with assorted others) Once Mal had gotten her up, Kaylee and Mal had gone back to the engine room, to find out what that blue box was. Mal stood in the door, to give Kaylee her room, just in case he might do something to get in her way, but he was anxious to know why the thing was there, how it got there, and what their “visitors” were doing in such a small box anyway. As Kaylee was looking about, she almost stepped on the little device that Zoe’d dropped, and, not recognizing it as one of hers, she picked it up and examined it. “This ain’t one o’ mine, cap’n. You know where it came from? Sure is neat, little thing, but I couldn’t tell you what it is for my life.” Kaylee was fascinated by the thing, and turned it round and round, examining the thing end to end. It was just about a hand span in length, and in some places, about as thick around as her finger, with a little head bit at one end. “I think that’ll be the bit Zoe saw drop from the guy’s pocket when she picked ‘im up to take ‘im down to the infirmary. Don’t know what the thing is my own self, Li’l Kaylee. You just look about and tell me what that thing is, will you? I’m gonna go see if that guy’s up and about yet. He took a nasty crack to the head, if I know Zoe well…” He waits a second, knows he’s not gonna get a response when she’s immersed in mechanic-y things, and leaves Kaylee to her work. Mal walks out of the engine room, down the hall, and off to see these people on his ship without a right to be. As he rounds the corner and downs the steps, he sees the two of them busily looking for a way out of the infirmary, and Jayne sitting there oblivious, regarding Vera with the utmost of love and care. “Jayne,” he barks, “what’re you playin’ at? I told you to watch those two. Look at ‘em! He’s up and about, and they’d probably get out before you noticed. Next time I think I’ll oblige Shepherd to watch out for guests.” “Oh, captain. Didn’t think they’d do nuthin’, man bein’ uncon-shus an’ all...” Jayne looks silly; it’s obvious that he thought that a guy with a big gun would be a bit discouraging to escape attempts. Bewildered, he stands there, wondering why anyone would try to get out when they’ve seen a guy with a powerful weapon barring their paths. “This is another classic example as to why you’re paid to shoot people, not to think. Get out of the way.” He bustles past Jayne, raps on the glass window on the infirmary door, and motions for them to get back. As the two of them stop their rummaging and look at him, they share a brief look, then step back towards the back wall of the little room, as if this is a common problem with them. Girl doesn’t look like much, but this guy might be a problem, Mal thought, regarding the man’s expression. Even as he opened the doors, the man wouldn’t stop looking around, eyeing the parts of the room he’d not gotten to look in before the two were interrupted in their little escape attempt, and then looked him square in the eye. “Wo bu shin wo dah yan jing,” he mutters, as he steps in the tiny space. “I got people who I didn’t take on in port showin’ up in the middle ‘f the black, and no boat to be seen. How?” he asks, roughly, starting what is obviously going to be a long list of questions. As he stands there, he looks them over, trying to figure this out for himself, and failing miserably. “Haven’t the foggiest. We’re just getting to the wondering that ourselves, how we got here. Do I get a question now? Where are we?” The man looked genuinely confused enough as to not know where he was, and Mal reckoned that in all honestly he truly didn’t know how they had gotten here. “Boat called Serenity. I’m her Captain, Malcolm Reynolds. Person who doesn’t take too kindly to random travelers showin’ up on ‘is boat without his knowledge, as a general rule. Zoe, my first mate, is likewise inclined. Which explains why you’re in here, as opposed to a closet somewhere.” He paused, took a breath. “So, I can’t just keep callin’ you two people ‘people’. You got names?” “I’m the Doctor, and my companion here is Rose Tyler. We’re just travelers; showing up in strange places is what we do.” A rather abbreviated version of the truth, the Doctor reckoned, would be good enough to start on. At the word ‘companion,’ though, Mal’s eyebrow arched. “You’re telling me she’s Companion?” He scoffed. “T’ain’t so. I seen a Companion most every day goin’ on a while now, and I’m telling you: she isn’t one. And to say you’re a doctor… Are you alright in the head? I think I need to get on to Zoe about the way she greets strangers. You seem a mite muddled, and you don’t look like much of a doctor, if you don’t mind me sayin’.” “I’m the Doctor. Just: ‘the Doctor”’ And this, as I previously stated, Rose, but I’m not sure what you’re meaning by ‘companion,’ because it sounds like you don’t mean it in the traditional sense of the word. Before we get bogged down in dictional wordplay, however, I’d like to know why we’re here. To do that, I’d have to go back to… my… box. It’s big, and blue, and you’ve probably been wondering what it is.” Rose is a bit out of the loop here, and she’s getting to the point of being kinda annoyed at this, but almost as if her sole purpose in life was to alleviate Rose’s boredom, Rose sees a willowy girl with dark wavy hair walk by. She’s a strange sort of girl, Rose can tell, and even from the way she walked, she seemed like she perceives more of the world than average people do. Rose was about to ask who this girl was, but then she remembered that it wasn’t the time to do so, and just stayed quiet, wondering who the peculiar little girl was. Just now, Wash comes on the comm. “Ai yah tien ah! Captain, Alliance cruiser hailing us. Says we’ve come right up to a checkpoint, and they’ve got us set up on a tractor beam to be checked over. Must be a new checkpoint, if I don’t know about it, but they want all cargo and people in the cargo bay when we get there.” “How w’rin bu lia, whai w’rin bu jwo, Wash!” Mal is obviously not happy with this development. “Can’t we just get something right today! Strange people claiming to be things they obviously aren’t, funny blue boxes, and now the gorram Alliance on our backs… runnin’ ain’t an option, I take it?” “No, sir, they’ve already got us under the tractor. Best get everyone to the cargo bay, and I mean now. We probably only have a little less than a couple of minutes to get everyone down there, and we don’t have a cargo roster like they’d like, ‘cause –“ “Bi Jweh, Wash.” He clicks off the radio to the bridge, and immediately opens a shipwide channel. “Attention: as some of y’all might’ve noticed, we’re being brought in on a new Alliance patrol checkpoint. I’m not too happy about this, but we’ve all got to be in the cargo bay yesterday. Those of us as have ident cards, you’re gonna need them. Preferably fake, whenever possible: we don’t wanna get held up longer than we have to. In the cargo bay now, dong luh ma?” “You, Doctor, or whoever you say you are. Yo hua kwai suo. You’ve got some sort of ident card on you?” Mal’s uptight, and not glad to be in this situation. “Of a sort,” the Doctor replies, sticking his hand in his pocket and fingering the (slightly) psychic paper fondly. Many a situation was averted with this little friend. To be fair though, it could easily cause its own problems. “Okay. Follow me; we’ve got to get down there now. And don’t think this conversation’s being forgotten. Soon as we get a chance, we’re gonna sit down and talk about this. It has an oddness to it that I’m not used to. No. Wait here.” The captain picks up the radio once more, and turns it on: “Wash. Get the ship’s papers, and see to it mine get down there too. I’ve got to take these guys.” He puts down the radio again turning it off as he does so, and turns to them, gesturing to follow. As he leaves the room, he says, quite brusquely to Jayne: “No guns. And leave the knife in here.” He continues walking purposefully out of the infirmary, and through the door to the catwalk above the cargo bay floor, making sure the Doctor and Rose are following, and then gestures to the center of the room, which is free of cargo. “Stand in the center of the room. Neither of you have weapons, I take it? Reckon Zoe wouldn’t let you keep them anyway. Good; I don’t know who you are, and don’t much like the idea of y’all runnin’ ‘bout with weapons. I know the Alliance won’t take well to it, either, if you’ve got ‘em.” * * * Serenity: Cargo bay: Perspective: Any manner of third person you could choose (assuming it’s in the cargo bay… of Serenity… at this point in the story) Almost as soon as the crew is assembled in the cargo bay, the Alliance soldiers enter the cargo bay via the air lock. The Doctor and Rose, as instructed, are standing in the center of the room, and the Captain stands off to their right, holding papers out to the official in charge of these soldiers. They see him check the papers against an electronic pad of some sort, and he nods to the soldiers, who spread out and hold guns on the assembly of persons. Zoe and Mal were stripped of their guns, though Mal gets to keep his holster, probably due to the fact that there wasn’t anything but the gun in it. “Hey,” he protests, in a semi-jest, semi-serious sort of way, “you be careful with that. It’s got extreme sentimental value.” He’s silenced again by one of the soldiers, though, just in time for the impressive officer type to start speaking. “Malcolm Reynolds, you are hereby bound by law by authority of the Anglo-Sino Alliance. Your charges include illegal salvage, falsified documents, smuggling, evading the law, and countless others. You will be brought on board for further questioning and investigation, and your ship will be searched. Do you understand this?” Before Mal can respond in either the affirmative or the negative, everyone is taken over to the Alliance vessel, where there are more soldier-types, this time with handcuffs. The official looks as if he’s caught a particularly annoying fly that’d been irritating him for quite a while now, and he’s happy about this. Mal, crew, and the Doctor and Rose alike are all bound and led through some non-descript hallways to their holding cells, of which there are six. Before being placed in cells, blood is taken from all in a newly funded effort for DNA tracking of criminals. There’s no undue fussin’ here, because the handcuffs have already taken the blood, so, more accurately the feds just take the deposits, hand them to a couple of runners, who were sent to give the bits to the lab techies, and go on their way. Well, another reason there wasn’t a fuss is because no one knew what the little bit was that were taken off each of their left cuffs, they just knew that something was removed. Once the blood was sent off to the lab, the prisoners were lead further, to where they actually meet their shiny new holding cells. Into the first went Kaylee and the Doctor; the second was for Mal and Zoe; the third Jayne and Simon; the fourth was to contain solely River; the fifth Inara and Rose; and into the last were sent Book and Wash. * * *

(Key: “Wo bu shin wo dah yan jing,”, being “I don’t believe my eyes!” “How w’rin bu lia, whai w’rin bu jwo, ”, being “Things never go smooth” “Bi Jweh “, being “Shut up” (But you knew that ;) ) “dong luh ma?”, being “Are we clear here?” (Again, you knew that, right? ;) ) “Yo hua kwai suo.”, being “Speak now and quickly” The last bit of the title means Alliance in Chinese. Not that it's italic-ized, but...

No telling where that tide of Chinese came from, unless you count my perusing of the Serenity Role Playing Game… XD Review, enjoy, etc. And… my Nine voice still didn't have time to suck... And... *wince* I hope the italics in the title works... doesn't. >.>?