Wash wondered, bemusedly, when his life had turned into a romantic comedy. It had crept up so quietly: one moment he was, you know, eating breakfast, trimming his moustache, picking out his lucky jumpsuit, and the next he was committed to rebuilding the navigating system of a C-class Firefly practically from scratch for between 100 and 150 credits. And the moment after that little episode, he was falling down a ladder into a half-naked woman's bunk--the single most stunning half-naked woman he'd ever seen, even from behind--and being manhandled all over. And then out of some misguided notion of...what? his brain queried wearily. What the hell notion was that back there? Bad notion. BAD.

Anyway, he'd kissed her.

It was just sex, though, he reminded himself, staring now down the barrel of the gun his boss and ex, Sondra Tanaka, currently had aimed at his face. Wash had a type when it came to romance, he acknowledged: he liked his women tall, gorgeous...smart...wanting to kill him... Maybe it stemmed from his relationship with his mother.

"Oh, it's you," Tanaka said, tossing the gun onto her desk. "Sorry. I was expecting someone."

"Really?" Wash said politely. She gave him half a glance and her mouth quirked.

"Barry," she ordered the guy with the sword strapped on his back standing behind her desk, "outside, please."

Barry went. The door shut with a gentle click.

"So," Sondra said. She leaned back, propped her feet on the desk, and lit a cigarillo. Wash shoved his hands in his pockets. His hearty respect for her talents in violence, based on a theoretical understanding of the precepts it entailed, had been upped to a measure of terror when he'd seen, accidentally, the kind of work her yakuzas really engaged in. Sondra hadn't just maneuvered her way up to the top of New Calcutta's underground ladder. Why do I get involved with these people? he asked himself for maybe the six thousandth time in his life. I just take one job, one innocuous little job, or make one innocuous little contact in o