I don't own the sandbox, Joss and corporations do. Soot Sprite betaed it for me. Our heroes are still stuck between the Battle scene and the funeral.

This Land

Lt. River was worried. Her brother's squad was cut off. They had been playing cat-and-mouse with the Browncoats led by the infamous Malcolm Reynolds. Her brother didn't really take her worries seriously. Well, he was a boob, there were the dinosaurs, and if you looked very carefully you could see Reynolds and that scary corporal of his.

*****

"No sir," Zoe replied, "I wouldn't expect Captain Tam to use dinosaurs either. Not that I wouldn't expect The Alliance to cheat by using dinosaurs, my experience with Tam was he's too honorable to cheat. Jayne just looked like he would rather shoot 'em and be done with it, or grab a coil of rope and beat 'em. Kaylee just wanted to cuddle them.

"Gorram it, Sergeant …," Jayne whined. "I don't need to go there again, Jayne," Mal growled, "There's an Alliance patrol out there. You go shootin' at 'em ... or pettin' 'em" he held Kaylee's eyes, "Tam'll see you dead, can't get back to our lines if we're dead, dong ma? Tam may be Alliance but he's still ruttin' 3%, and that ain't nothing." "Yeah," Zoe added, "and his sister is twice as smart and 4 times the shot he is."

*****

"Book, take Inara," Simon whispered, "head back a bit up our back trail lets see if we can work around these dinos." " NO, wait" River started. "Sorry, Simon, ... shepard's coming." "Gorram girl must have an O'Reilley radar unit hardwired to her skull," Book thought as a very ugly but loud shirt became visible at the far edge of the meadow both sides were skirting.

The newcomer seemed unaware that eight very deadly military grade firearms were pointed at him. He just whistled once and t