trans_9 | Sooo...Meet-y

"Well, thanks, I really do appreciate it." And he did, very much. He figured he could find the place eventually, but he wasn't about to turn down Jo's offer, especially since she could probably find the locker faster than he could on his own.

"Yeah, I know what telepaths are... I'm just surprised to hear they're on this ship. But then again, what with all the different people on board, maybe that's not so surprisin' after all." That being said, he turned to look at the two people Jo indicated. He didn't expect there to be a giant flashing sign pointing them out as telepaths, because that would've been ridiculous, but he still couldn't help but be surprised at how normal they appeared. "Suppose they don't intentionally go around listenin' in on people's thoughts, do they?"

"It's not a problem," Jo said with a dismissive wave of her hand. She didn't mind, one he needed a gun, and two she wanted to make sure no one was trying to steal stuff.

"Oh, well. I don't know." Jo said truthfully as she looked back and forth between the two. "I don't like... Really talk to either of them? I don't see why they would though." She shrugged, like she kenw anything about telepaths and how they used their powers. Heck if she was a telepath though? She'd be afraid to be listening in to too many of the crew's thoughts.

"Well, if you're sure about that." She didn't seem to mind, so Mal didn't force the issue anymore.

"Yeah, I guess there wouldn't be any reason to. Just wonderin', 'cause I haven't met many telepaths before. Well, there was one, but I ain't too sure how strong her abilities were." Mal didn't say anything more about that, because he didn't want to be responsible in case unforeseen consequences arose from talking too much. He hadn't spoken about it to anyone, but part of him still suspected there was some Alliance involvement; whether that was irrational of him or not, he wasn't sure. Maybe he'd just spent too long running away from the long arm of the government.

As it was, unless Jo asked him directly, he wasn't about to volunteer more information on that subject.

"Well you'll meet more than just telepaths here," Jo informed him. "Like there's all sorts of people with powers on this ship. There's some speedy guy, and well... You'll see. It's all kinda mind boggling."

"So you knew a telepath? She read your mind all the time or something and that's why you wanted to know if ours did too?"

"Yeah, I'm beginnin' to see that," Mal replied. "Just met a kid who said he's the fastest kid alive.. Maybe the same one you're talkin' about. Might be mind-boggling, but I figure I'll get used to it in time."

"I knew one. Like I said, I ain't too sure how strong she was with that stuff, but on occasion she showed signs of bein' able to sense things. It wasn't exactly readin' minds, but sensin' things." Mal paused to think for a few seconds. "Well, no, it wasn't so much that, as it was that I don't like the idea of people knowing everything I'm thinkin'."

"Could've been," Jo grinned and shrugged her shoulders. She'd lost track over who was who and who did what. It sucked, but she did pretty know who were the trouble makers on board.

"Well hopefully our telepaths have a little bit of control." Jo's nose wrinkled because she too didn't like the idea of someone always knowing what she thought. She'd probably get in a lot of trouble if someone bothered to keep track of her every thought.

"Well just let me know when you want to go to the weapons and possession lockers, OK?"

"I'm guessin' they do. The telepath I knew was still young, with a lot of growin' left to do." Mal left that conversation thread alone, more interested now in getting himself armed.

"Guess there's no point in puttin' it off. I've got the time to go there now if you do."

"Sure I got some time," Jo answered and motioned for him to follow her out of the Obs deck.

"So you're probably going to see some... interesting stuff in the weapons and possessions locker. But be sure to only take what's yours because stuff in there might belong to someone who might pop soon, and well... Don't need to be getting in a fight over possessions, you know?"

Mal couldn't help the urge to roll his eyes. He didn't mean to be disrespectful or anything like that, but the idea of taking something that might belong to someone else never occurred to him. "Don't see a point in taking someone else's things. I only need the stuff that belongs to me, however temptin' some of the stuff there might be."

That being said, he followed Jo out of the Obs deck, noting the surroundings and general layout as he did so.

"I didn't mean to imply that you might..." Jo quickly backtracked with a sheepish expression. "Sorry." She was just... Warning him. You never knew, and it was always better to stay on the safe side sometimes.

She pointed out various areas on their way to their destination, but kept the chit chat to a minimum mainly because she didn't want to experiance another moment of open mouth - insert foot. Foot didn't taste all that good.

"So, here we are," Jo said as they approached the entry way to the weapons and possessions locker. "You might have to dig through stuff to find your things. Oh, and watch out. There's been reports of a fuzzy furball with sharp teeth on the loose in there."

Mal waved a hand, brushing off her apology. "No point in apologizin', you didn't say anythin' you shouldn't have. Thanks for the warnin'." He did appreciate her warning; he didn't want to think what might happen if he'd been unaware, and accidentally took someone else's gun or other possession.

He followed Jo's lead, remaining fairly silent until the two of them reached the locker. "A fuzzy furball, huh? Someone's pet that got loose?" He smirked at that idea as he walked in through the entry way.

Once properly inside the room, Mal headed towards one of the lockers, where he began digging through the various things inside. To his surprise, it didn't take long before he spotted a couple things that were familiar to him: a brown coat (http://www.filmjackets.com/FEATURES/IMAGES/Feature_Firefly-big.jpg) and a hand gun (http://www.fireflywiki.org/img/Mal23.jpg).

Of course, with the bizarre plantsuit that Mal was wearing, the coat wasn't much use to him, but he decided to keep it anyway. And no decision needed to be made about keeping the gun. He turned around to look at Jo. "Think I've got everythin' I need."

"I guess, though I haven't seen it. Apparently some teenager accidently knocked it's cage over and... How did she put it? It tried to eat her ankles." Jo explained as she leaned against the door frame... thing, and crossed her arms.

Her eyebrows lifted a little in interest as he turned. A coat and a gun? Interesting. Pushing herself off the door frame thing, she leaned forward a little to examine his gun. "Wow, what year are you from?"

"Well, here's hopin' I don't run into it. Might be too easy to put a bullet in it." Mal was mostly sarcastic, though if the thing did appear and caught him off guard, the possibility of shooting it was quite real.

Mal folded up the coat, the gun still in one hand as he replied, "2518. Things ain't changed that much, far as I can tell." Well, unless you counted the fact that the Earth had been "used up" and made uninhabitable some fifty years earlier, give or take a few years.

"Well let's hope it doesn't come to that. Stacy has a mean bitch slap, I don't recommend ever experiancing it for yourself." Jo informed him quite seriously.

Her eyes then widened and she couldn't help but a little awed. "Seriously? I'm from like 2008. Wow, that's kinda cool," she informed him, trying not to appear so awestruck.

"So I've heard. I'll try not to get too trigger-happy, then," Mal replied, taking her warning very seriously. Some might accuse Mal of being a reckless man, but he also knew when to be serious.

He took Jo's surprised reaction in stride, keeping in mind that there were others from different years and different worlds. "Suppose it is, at that. Like I said, doesn't seem that life's changed any, but I guess I can't really say for sure." Earth-that-was had been uninhabitable for a long time before he came around, so he couldn't make any comparisons.

"Well that is way cool," Jo is seriously impressed here. "But really, how can life not have changed. You're what? A good five hundred years plus from the future? Are there flying cars? Have you all fixed Global Warming?"

"All right, maybe we've got some advanced technological stuff but I don't know nothin' much about that," Mal admitted. "Anyway, flyin' ships and transport vessels are mostly what we got, for travelin' between the planets. And depending on what planet you're on, there are some kinds of flyin' cars. Most of us use land speeders though. They work well enough."

"No, we ain't fixed nothin'," Mal said rather flatly. "Hate to say it, but the fact is, some time ago, the Earth you probably know got used up, was made uninhabitable. There were too many people livin' on it, and all the resources got used up. A new kind of Earth was made, and everyone left the old Earth and went there."

"Can you fly?" Jo asked, a wide smile forming on her lips. Wow, this was....

Suddenly not so cool anymore.

Jo's smile faded away and she was suddenly giving him a look that basically screamed 'why-would-you-tell-something-like-that-you-big-jerk'. "No more Earth?!" Jo asked, trying not let her voice rise, but it was kinda hard.

Though really why she was getting upset about all of this was beyond even her. Heck her world had been apparently destroyed by some insect aliens and she gets more pissed that humans ended up destroying some version of Earth?

"What did you all forget about birth control?!"

Mal was about to answer Jo's question about flying, when the floodgates opened. She was suddenly angry, and he had the odd feeling that she was about to punch him. He raised his hands in what he hoped was a placating gesture, as he tried to come up with a response.

"Earth still exists, or no one would be livin' at all. There's just a.. a new version of it." This was going well. Mal rolled his eyes at himself. "It was about 50 years ago. If you're angry, take it up with the people who did it." He wasn't trying to be harsh, but he was trying to tell her that there wasn't much point in getting worked up about something that happened so long ago.

Still, he figured there wasn't a reason to be a jerk, so he added, "Sorry, guess that was the wrong thing to tellin' you."

"Ya think?!" Jo snapped before taking a deep breath. OK, she really just needed to calm dow. This was something dump to be getting all worked up over. But seriously, she'd have thought humanity might get a little smarter in the future, apparently she was wrong.

"Sorry," Jo apologized to him for the second time since she'd met him. It must have been a record. "I'm not mad at you. It's just.. Seriously humanity just seems to be full of idiots. No matter what the time period peole are from."

Mal didn't say anything to her exclamation, deciding it would probably be better if he shut up for awhile, let her blow off some steam. But short of apologizing a thousand times, he wasn't sure what else, if anything would calm her down. He hadn't had a direct hand in it... in fact, a lot of people had nothing to do with it. 50 or more years was a long time... Most people had forgotten what happened to Earth-that-was, and only a few seemed to have learned from the mistakes.

"Méi guānxi. It's all right," replied Mal. "Of course humanity is full of idiots. I'm thinkin' it'll be amazin' if we manage to not destroy the planets again. You'd think people'd learn from their histories, but that's never the case. Wars and destroyin' planets happen all the time 'cause people just never learn." He sighed heavily, rolling his eyes. It was a sad state of affairs with not a lot of chance of anything being done to break the cycle.

"That's why I wonder sometimes if it's even worth tryin' to save things," Mal admitted slowly.

OK, that last comment was almost enough to make Jo hit him a good one - but the thought of being smacked around by Stacy made her think better of it. Instead he gets another glare.

"You seriously think that?" Jo demanded, shaking her head. "No matter how dumb people are, they don't deserve to die. Hell, back in my world the town I live in is FULL of brilliant idiotic scientists, who one a regular basis mess up and almost destroy the town and on occassion the world, but... They're MY people and I'm gonna do everything in my power to ensure that things get turned back so they're OK!"

She continued to scowl at him. "You need to get over whatever it is you're wangsting over and pull yourself together."

Somewhere underneath all his cynicism regarding saving lives, Mal knew Jo was right. It wasn't people Mal had an issue with; it was systems of government run by people who thought they had the ability to fix everything and make everything better, even when their efforts meant causing harm (financial, social, economic, you name it) to people. He'd seen it many times over, every time he traveled from the central planets to the outer planets. The facts were there; governments meant trouble, if they weren't run by the right people.

But Mal didn't say any of that to Jo. He figured she didn't want to hear it, and part of him really didn't want to go down that path again. There was a reason why he never talked about this kind of thing with anyone; the reaction that typically arose was never pleasant.

So, Mal dragged himself out of his internal monologue, and tackled Jo's arguments. "All right, Jo. I don't really think that, but I also ain't convinced either. There's some good people out in the 'verse, but there's also corrupt ones. They're the ones I don't think are worth bein' saved. But it ain't possible to be choosin' who gets saved and who doesn't, which is why I still got some hope that maybe people'll turn themselves around. What I don't believe so easy is the idea that governments who think they can make everythin' right, but don't stop to count the consequences, can change."

Mal shook his head, and sighed. "Seen enough damage caused by people like that, and it ain't pretty. And far as my 'wangsting' is concerned, hate to say it, but it ain't gonna go away just 'cause you want it to." Though, even as he said that, Mal thought he felt some of his cynicism starting to disappear.

He knew exactly why that was, also. It was because of the person he was with; Jo was beginning to represent something to Mal... Her personality represented some facet of his own that had been lost through disappointments and just being knocked around by life. Though he couldn't make himself believe entirely in the good of the human race, Jo's stubbornness made up for what he was lacking.

Jo herself had seen the ugly side of what corrupt goverments could do to a country. She had seen first hand what happened in wars, and how it affected everyone involved, and even those who weren't. She wasn't naive enough to think that Governments should always be followed and she certainly wasn't naive enough to think that all governments were infallable.

She knew better.

But she also knew that there were enough good people in the world that there should always be hope for something better, for hope that things could and would get better. Perhaps she was stupid to think so, but she truly believed that.

Jo crossed her arms and shook her head. "That might be so, but I don't think every world that was effected by the Ohm are like that. And even if they were, everybody here deserves a chance to go back to their own worlds, not matter how messed up they are... Because believe it or not - things can alwys get better."

"Guess we're gonna have to agree to disagree, Jo," Mal said with a hint of a smile. "But who knows, maybe someday I'll be able to believe that, 'cause anything's possible."

After a moment, Mal thought up something else he wanted to ask her. "So I've told you about what things're like where I'm from, but aside from me guessin' a few things, I'm not entirely sure what your world's like."

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blah, sorry for the tl;dr

Re: blah, sorry for the tl;dr

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