Disclaimer: For those of you who've been out on the Rim too long, Joss Whedon owns Firefly. I love Joss. I love Firefly. Its writers, crew and shiny cast. God bless them all.

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ELEVEN INHERENT METAPHORIC PARALLELS – Part 2

“Taikong suoyou di xingqui dou sai jin wo de pigu!”

“Whoa, Kaylee!” Mal exclaimed, clamping his hands down over his ears. “You could take a man's ears off with words like them. Specially if he had a weakness in that area.,” he said, absent-mindedly tracing a finger down the scar behind his left ear.

Kaylee flushed. “Didn't see you there, Cap'n.”

He crossed the engine room floor to stand beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. “So mei-mei, what's got you all tetchified?”

“Well, Simon was s'posed to be teachin' me some of that fancy dancin' you an' 'Nara was doin' at the ball...” She ignored his small frown of disapproval. “But then this happened. Looks like that poor animal has gotten real hungry. Look.” She knelt down and pointed to a frazzled piece of wiring. “Eaten clean through it. Knocked out our nav-com an' the cortex link.”

“Can it be fixed?”

“Sure. 'S fiddly, is all.”

“Here, let me give you a hand. I ain't a complete mechanical dummy.”

She smiled broadly at him. “That's good. This is 'lectrics.”

They worked in companionable silence to strip back the wire and repair the damage. Finally Kaylee nodded. “That's it, Cap'n. Good job.”

Their satisfaction was short-lived. Almost immediately the comms system crackled into life. “Firefly class vessel Serenity – by order of the Alliance of Unified Planets, you are ordered to land immediately.”

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This time the feds were all over Mal. Should've been careful what you wished for, he admonished himself as he was pushed into a cell at the federal police station.

He looked around. Bare walls and a small high window scarcely large enough to see the sky through. A concrete shelf for a bed. A bucket in the corner. It was all unpleasantly reminiscent of the pro