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She didn't like surprises. Not really.

Certainly, there was the odd moment or several where the unexpected had hit her pleasantly, pulling the joy at something even higher for the lack of preparedness, but... in general, no.

Surprises were a disturbance of the equilibrium.

They put ripples into her lake surfaces, smudges onto her sparkling mirror surfaces. They.. walked over her immaculately trimmed front lawn surfaces. Imagery-wise.

Tran-quil-i-ty.

Of course, a popular and widely known Companion suddenly travelling with criminals on the Rim, she had a certain taste for the ruffled and scruffy flavours of life, as long as they took place outside her mindsphere.

She liked her expected unexpectedness.

There was very little unexpected about Kaylee.

She had expected a certain ignorance from Border people. She had expected a certain clumsy admiration. She had expected a certain amount of... dirt. And unrefined language. And carnality. And truly abysmal taste in clothing.

She had fully expected to like Kaylee in spite of it, upon first sight. Like she had expected to like most people, upon first sight, simply for being new.

She had not expected, though, to love all of those things quite so much, wrapped up in her lipgloss smile.

Two weeks on board, and she was running a 500 credit brush through hair that hadn't been washed in four days, listening to Miss Kaywinnit Lee Frye-with-an-e's mind-bending sexual escapades and ignoring grease stains forming on her brand-new upholstry. Giddy and giggling like she hadn't in ten years.

Like the world was wide open in more ways than one.

She had gone out hunting for something extraordinary and there it was waiting for her in a death trap of an engine room.

It didn't knock her out of place, but she had never seen it coming.

Surprisingly unsurprising.

Just the way she liked it.

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END.