{Usual disclaimers apply. Most of the following characters belong to Joss Whedon, Fox, Universal, and probably a bunch of other people and organizations I don’t know about (none of for whom I’m applying for jobs). I’m just messing with them a bit. Oh, and I had a couple nice responses to an earlier bit of fluff, which has had the effect of not dissuading me, for better or worse, to burden you, poor reader, with the following. First of x parts (ending has been determined). ‘Tis better to contribute than to lurk.}

Action! Adventure! Sex! Guns! Humour! Things never go smooth.

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Given he was lying prone, with inadequate time to properly brace her, the force of Vera’s recoil slammed Jayne near his shoulder with the impact of a mule’s kick, enough to choke him more’n a bit and, worse yet, crack his collarbone. A sharp exhalation was all he allowed to mark the sudden agony, for he was disciplined in battle in a manner that rarely surfaced at any other time. So he was able to mark that the bullet caught his target in the throat, gorram pirate erupting with a huge spray of blood and dead long before she had the grace to tumble to the deck and leave a line of sight for a shot at some other hun dan . Human flesh and cartiledge offered negligible impediment upon the bullet’s trajectory, as it continued unimpeded out the airlock entrance until it slammed into the substandard material constituting the wall of the walkway between Serenity and the pirate ship, rending a 5 centimetre tear before tumbling freely into space.

Vacuum breach alarms began blaring from both ships. Moreover, the keening whistle of air escaping into space through the hole in the walkway added to the cacophony of gunshots, ricochets, yells from the several combatants, various yelps and crashing cargo. Serenity’s emergency sprinkler system added its own whoosh to the aural mix, choosing this moment to engage despite the lack of any flames to douse. For all the noise, Jayne didn’t hea