I love the new crew. Good story; I look forward to reading more :)

the other crew sure sounds intresting - hope you write more

interesting. most highly amused by the pink industrial battery ;)

the language: Okay, I can't wait to see the reason :)

the grammar: The issues I pointed out were besides vernacular, more along the lines of improper punctuation, and they were outside of dialogue, within the narrative.

"benevolently screwy" - great wording, made me laugh. :)

Good work, but on a criticism note: The dialogue towards the end was a bit choppy. You may want to shoot for less dialogue and more narrative description.

The female captain came back very soon. Strangely, she was still alone. She was, however, carrying a large pink cannister the size of a five pound coffee can. "What the hell?" This speaker's identity is unclear. I'm -guessing- it was Jayne, but I can't be sure. You want to make sure there is no ambiguity left to your readers.

Also, one last note - keep your vernacular and accents consistent. You may want to study up on Old Western slang. Locke seemed to slip in and out of it. Also, make sure you never overdo an accent in dialogue. It's like a deadly sin of writing :) You only need to make it just clear enough to put the picture in the reader's head!

I hope this review was helpful. I am to be critical and constructive, not just gushing praise.

Wow. I love this!

Absolutely on target with everybody. This is great and I can't wait to read more.

ok, that was cool. really cool. update soon. :)

I'd probably enjoy it a little better if I knew if these were characters out of your own head that you're crossing with Firefly, or if they're actually a different series.

Hence why disclaimers generally help somewhat.

So, who are they?

Well, actually it's my speculation that Japanese would in fact have managed to persist out into the worlds of "Firefly", although not quite as widely known or used as Chinese. Perhaps more prevalent amongst the ranks of the properly trained/accreditted mechanics and other forms of practical science... Japanese characters show up persistantly on-set (though admittedly most of it doesn't make much more sense than the written Chinese)

I'm a little disappointed by the lack of gorram cussing and Kaylee unusual display of slightly less country grammar, myself. I like the grammar in the narrative. Its consistency to the grammar in the series sets the mood for me. The only criticism in this area I can muster, I think, is that to me, Locke's regular speech patterns seem to cause her forages into Japanese to sound a little bit forced.

Babsji committed a logical fallacy when she jumped from cat to River. Valid deduction would require him (her?) to reason that River holds the knowledge of the univer and is all-knowing, and therefore is a cat.

It's a great start and I hope to see more, but a few criticisms:

I wouldn't add any Japanese in here. It would confuse many readers. Just because they use Chinese in Firefly doesn't mean that Japanese would be used as well. (Chinese is used so freely because the main world powers got down to America and China, and so those two cultures were very much in contact with one another. Any other racial/ethnic cultures are pretty much nonexistent or very not-prominent at all.)

A few minor grammar issues but that's it. I would love to see more of this.

cats are smart. cats are all-knowing. cats hold the knowledge of the universe. river is a cat. therefore river holds the knowledge of the universe and is all-knowing...can you believe that my deductive logic teacher had the nerve to give me a d for her class? keep it up.