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Job Hazard ------------------------

His legs were hairless. And somehow soft and round and even chubby. In a way. Where they stuck out under his belted underwear. His entire body was soft and chubby and hairless. Except for his head, of course. That hair was as always. Or near so.

Didn't help him look more intimidating none, and better than half of his crew were taller than him and they all had dimples. Dimples in their chubby, adorable cheeks! How in the gorram verse were they supposed to be doing jobs?

It was just so incredibly unfair! It took a lot to suppress a manful stomp onto the pilot chair on which he stood to reach the controls. A lot was more than he had and the chair wobbled slightly.

"Don't worry so much, Cap'n," little Kaylee chirped with her squeaky little-girl voice, which just sounded utterly wrong belting out the sudden cussing she let loose underneath the console. "I can't turn this... Jayne?"

A head of angelic brown curls shuffled past the arm rest next to Mal's leg and soon disappeared from view crawling down where Kaylee's tiny bare feet wiggled in annoyance. "First time I'm down and sideways with ya, and we're no more'n pint-sized. There's just no rightness in that."

Kaylee girl-giggled and so did Jayne. And he sounded like a gorram choir boy.

Wrong. All manner of wrong.

"You just behave down there," he yelled over the ensuing metallic, mechanical noises.

"Yessir." More giggling. There was just no respect to be had wearing Kaylee's flower-print tanktop, for lack of anything else small enough not to fall down right around him.

The only consolation, in this mess, was that Simon seemed to feel even more miserable than he did, wrapped in one of his fancible shirts, hovering over a suspiciously unmorbified and - good God - bare-naked River, who in turn hovered over a very unsuspiciously exasperated, very disturbingly tiny Zoe. In a Hawaiian shirt.

"Any reason you're staring at me, sir, instead of looking ahead?"

There was, actually. Among many, her hair was kind of short and standing every which way, framing her head like a fluffy halo, this also being what prompted the Tams - Tiny Tams, his head supplied unaskedly - to start bestowing order upon it by the manner of braids. Compulsive Core creatures.

"Oh, you know," His short, chubby fingers drew a vague circle into the air. "No reason at all. Why would I be staring, just because my first mate just so happened to be turned maybe five gorram years old!"

If his voice broke into a squeak somewhere to tward the end, no one was tactless enough to point it out.

He was about to turn back to steering, when a short, plump, pouting creature in ruffled pink rushed into the cockpit.

Hell. He felt himself blush and turned back to the sea of sparkling black outside the window.

Leastways she was dressed now. Unlike before. When they'd been arguing and suddenly found themselves a lot closer to the floor in a pile of their far too large clothes. And with the squealing and running for cover.

Of all the moments to unexpectedly be naked in a room with Inara...

So unfair.

He braved another glance.

Inara wiggled toward him, hem of her blouse carefully pulled up to keep her from tripping flat forward until she reached the edge of his chair. "Mal, have you reached Mister Soren yet?"

"Wasn't going to try without ambassadorial representation, figuring how it's me the old coot holds a grudge against."

Or more acurately, old coot with magical powers.

"The term is wizard," River supplied, although ostentatiously still deeply involved in her braiding experiment.

Zoe raised one half-suggested eyebrow. "Might be wise to do as he says, sir."

"And smile," Kaylee advised, having apparently fixed whatever she'd felt the need to fix and crawling back out from under the console. Jayne stayed behind, stretched-out feet visibly unmoving.

Off his look, his size-decreased mechanic merely shrugged. "He's nappin'."

Right.

Inara refrained from asking permission to use his ankles as climbing aids and blithely ignored his glare once she stood next to him on the pilot chair, instead opting to selfishly focus on the matter at hand. Her lips pressed together in concentration, dialing and staring at the screen.

Didn't stop her from talking at him.

"Do you have it memorized?"

He felt his lower lip pushing forward in an unmanly pout. "Yes."

"Good, and don't imply that he's a disease-ridden, corrupt sell-out aga--" Her face lit up mid-chastisement. "Mr. Soren! I'm so relieved to reach you!"

Relieved like a worm on a fishing hook.

"Please don't ruin our lives," Simon helpfully stage-whispered from about three and a half feet above the floor.

Glaring at the doc was regrettably out of the question, considering the amount of contrite staring they had determined necessary in the planning stages.

Not that the old guy with the long, white beard seemed particularly caring about that. With his mean little grin and all. And the pointy hat.

"Miss Serra, I presume?"

'Nara nodded in a too-wde way and made her eyes all big and sad.

"Mr. Soren, we thought about your conditions and," she sighed with much talent for the stage, "we are ready to accept them."

Mal fought the urge to cross his chubby little arms.

"Well enough, then," Soren laughed. In an evil way. "I'm listening. And tell your little Captain to speak loud and clear, I don't want him just rattling it down."

There was a somewhat hazardous narrowing of eyes that could not be suppressed.

Inara's hand awkwardly patted his back where Soren couldn't see. "Of course!"

"Just do the job, sir," he heard Zoe mutter with some resignation.

Fair enough.

He took a deep breath.

"I hereby do apologize for being very late. I didn't wave to tell you that we would not make the date. I selfishly made detours and by that I made you wait. And left your secret cargo to a very painful fate."

The old guy nodded, apparently pleased with the epos. Except then he frowned again.

"And?"

Gorrammit.

"When you waved to complain I said some things quite impolite. I was in a bad mood, because I'd just been in a fight. My crew said I was cranky and I guess that they were right. I'm sorry and I take it back, please, turn us back to our normal age and height. Please."

Those last words somehow didn't come out as elegantly as Inara had poetified them before. Or so her little dimpled glare suggested. And he could practically feel Simon cringe behind him.

"Well, well," Mr. Soren pondered, as if he had all the time in the verse to be pondering an elaborately rhymed apology from desperate folk. "It appears that you've learned your lesson, Mr. Reynolds."

Mal smiled with too many teeth - and one gap where his first lost babytooth had chosen to make a re-un-appearance. "Yessir."

Soren smiled back, with too much glee for comfort. "Apology accepted." And the screen went black.

So.

Mal frowned. With some justification, because nothing was yet happening.

They were still little.

Oh God.

"Wait for it," River tried her hand at reassurance.

He turned to send a very sarcastic frown her way, but suddenly the entirey universe shifted sideways and the chair disappeared from under him, landing him in a very, very painful heap on the metal cockpit floor.

"Ow!"

His suggestioon was met with much enthusiasm when suddenly the entirety of his crew emitted squeals of varying pitch, volume and endurance, followed by a veritable stampede in the vague direction of the crew quarters. Which, witnessed upside down from his position on the floor, appeared like little more than a vast flash of rosy pink.

And then silence.

He blinked.

And lifted his head. Which hurt. So he put it down again and sent one hand exploring. His legs were hairy again. Thank God. Thank. God. Anyhow.

The improvised clothes were a shredded mess of material. There might be, he suspected, a vague relation between this fact and the general state of rushed flight among his crew.

Heh.

He sat up.

Jayne still lay snoring underneath the console. Bucknaked.

Rut it all to hell, of all the people to be suddenly naked in a room with....

"That's the last time," he declared at nothing and no one. "The last time with wizards."

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- END.