Kaylee was the first to feel it.

She typically was the first to feel anything that Serenity had to tell her, so in tuned with the ship was she. The first tremor of the floorboards under her sneakered feet told her that something was amiss with her girl, and sent her sprinting for her engine room.

By the time she discovered the cause, the little tremor had developed itself into a serious shake. No one could help but notice it, things were falling off the walls, and maintaining a dignified standing position was becoming more and more difficult.

“Kaylee!!!” This was the Captain’s voice, of course, it was always the Captain’s voice whenever something like this started to happen. He always seemed to forget that he could comm down to the engine room without screaming, but he seemed to take so much more satisfaction from the screaming itself.

She was scrambling around the engine compartment, looking for something to be immediately amiss, and easy answer to their problem, and there it was. The answers were always easy when you knew your girl as well as Kaylee knew Serenity.

Mal was in a full fury by the time he reached the engine compartment. He had already called Kaylee’s name three times, and she hadn’t answered him. He knew, of course, that Kaylee couldn’t yell back to him from across the ship, but that didn’t irritate him any less about having to repeat himself. He hated to not be answered, and as far as he was concerned, every human should be able to yell as loud as him.

“Now, Captain, sir, don’t go getting all in a twist,” Kaylee told him. “It’s shinier than you think, it really is. We just need to set down for a spell--”

“Kaylee, we have three tons of Alliance stamped, sealed, signed and blessed fertilizer scattered all over this boat. Setting down for a spell is not on my list of things I’d really like to be about right now. Unloading my cargo and getting paid is what I’ve got closest to my heart.”

Zoë poked her head into the engine compartment at this moment. “Sir, why are we falling apart, agai