"That's pretty freaky," Jayne said as he looked at the dozen crystal statues, knowing there were bodies inside each one.

"You don't like them?" River asked, confused.

"Didn't say that." Jayne snorted. "If I die, I wouldn't mind getting something similar done. Just saying the way you get the features so right is freaky."

"How do you know they're right?" Inara asked, curiously.

"Been lifting their wallets while helping hold them up," Jayne said, opening a wallet to show a picture of the person the latest crystal sculpture-tomb was formed around.

"You're robbing their corpses?" Simon said, with a look of distaste.

"Ain't like I'm taking the gold from their teeth," Jayne said. "No-one gets buried with what's in their pockets."

"Huh," Simon said. "I've never thought about that, but you're right."

"Takin' watches and jewelry from the dead ain't right, unless you killed 'em for it," Jayne said firmly. "People like to be buried with that sort of thing."

"The spirits departed here long ago," Willow said. "You aren't going to be upsetting any dead people."

"You see dead people?" Kaylee asked.

"Not here," Willow replied. "Without any living people to haunt, they all got bored and left."

"And in a total change of subject…who wants to go poke around the factory and see what they have in inventory?" Mal asked.

"I am getting a little tired of moving sand," Inara said, getting agreements from most of the crew.

"That's because most of you are pretty low on magical energy," Dawn offered. "The more you practice, the greater your reserves will be."

"I don't feel tired," Julie noted.

"It's rarely physical, more mentally draining, really," Willow explained.

"Well, let's go see what we can see," Mal said.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

"The ships are all shiny," Kaylee said as they walked through the landing fields heading for the main building.

"Sand stripped off the paint and burnished the metal," Faith said.

"Also turned the windows to frosted glass," Julie noted. Not that they hadn't had that pointed out earlier, but just wanting to say something.

"Not a huge problem, but it does slow down getting one flight worthy," Mal said, his eyes roaming over the various ships, lingering on the numerous fireflies.

"Getting sand out of everything would have been the biggest problem, but not anymore," Kaylee said cheerfully. "I didn't picture you as mechanically inclined, but that spell is a godsend."

"Picnic at the beach, sand gets in everything," Willow said, explaining why she invented it.

"Go to eat a sandwich, get a mouthful of sand," Dawn replied with a smirk.

"One too many sands," Xander agreed, making Willow blush.

"Power's out," Kaylee noted as they approached the doors. "Back-up generators would only have so much fuel and sand probably made the solar panels useless."

"Doubt the doors are locked," Faith said. "Bombs don't knock politely…though they were coming close."

"Right on the shitta," River said with Faith's accent, obviously reading her.

Faith laughed, showing a shocking amount of trust in the young psychic as far as Dawn and Willow could tell. "She can't help it," she reminded them, reading their body language as easily as River could their minds.

"Vaginal slime," Xander told Faith cheerfully.

Faith's face showed confusion for a moment before she got it and smiled. "Thanks, Xan."

"That was a compliment?" Simon asked.

"There is a brand of cigs called VIRGINIA SLIMS or as me and my friends called them growing up, 'VAGINAL SLIMES'," Faith explained.

"And their slogan was 'You've come a long way, baby,'" Willow recalled.

"Does everything he says, when it sounds like he's talkin' nonsense, make sense like that?" Jayne asked, while they all paused to let Kaylee hug and pet a starship like it was a baby.

"Probably, but since he and River have connected it relies more on who their talking to as well," Dawn said as Simon pried Kaylee loose and they continued.

"He's looking at your unmentionables through my frontal lobes," River said cheerfully.

"And we're here," Mal said as they reached the loading ramps leading up to the rear docks and saw one of the docks had its doors rolled up with at least a foot of sand spilling out of it onto the dunes, partially obscuring the rear of the building.

"Do a dragon!" River begged Willow.

"A dragon?" Inara asked. "What is she asking for?"

"I've been trying to figure out how River made those crystal sculptures, considering it should have used at least a hundred times the amount of magic she was using to do it," Willow explained.

Everyone turned to River who giggled and buried her face in a grinning Xander's chest.

"So, I had to kludge together something, but I think it'll look cool. Wanna see it?" Willow asked.

"Fuck yeah!" Faith exclaimed. "Stuff you think is boring gives off some decent fireworks, I wanna see what you think looks cool."

Willow waited until everyone agreed before starting. "OK, keep your eye on the birdy." Willow inhaled deeply and breathed fire into her hand, shaping it into a chirping sparrow.

The sparrow took flight, circling the area several times before gaining height and diving directly into a large sand dune with a thump.

"Aw," Kaylee said sadly at the flaming sparrow's apparent suicide.

"Just watch," Willow said.

The dune began to glow brighter and brighter, waves of heat radiating from it as it began to melt into a hill of liquid glass. The hill unfolded into a towering, transparent woman with hair of fire.

"Nice," Jayne said, admiring the naked statue that looked a lot like Willow as it gestured, calling a steady stream of sand from the building into itself.

The sand melted rapidly, turning the statue into a featureless blob of molten glass, but Willow gestured again, and scales began to form, as wings of glass burst out of its back, and a toothy maw grew from its face. A silicon dragon the size of Serenity was formed, radiating enough heat to make them sweat from thirty feet away. It strode over to an empty landing pad and laid down, cooling into an giant glass sculpture almost instantly.

"The transformation from woman of flame to dragon was OK," Jayne said, "but if you'd turned her into a giant egg with the sand and hatched the dragon it would have been ten times cooler."

"It was strictly improv," Willow said. "If I do anything like this again, I'll be sure to do it your way."

"I can't believe you just watched the most amazing thing I've ever seen and you're criticizing it," Simon complained. "Worse, I think you're right."

"The man knows visual composition," Dawn agreed.

"Shall we?" Mal asked, waving to the now sand-free entrance, clearly amused.

"We shall," Kaylee said. "We need to find an' restore power 'fore anything else."

"I wasn't able to get a blueprint of the building," Julie said. "Apparently they never filed any, but the backup generator should be in a maintenance room on an outer wall, rather than buried in the interior."

"We should split up-" Kaylee began.

"NO!" the Scoobs chorused.

"Never split the party," Faith insisted. "That's just askin' for trouble."

"We aren't pressed for time," Dawn pointed out. "Let's get power restored and make sure there are no autonomous security systems that are activated to kill intruders when that happens. Last thing we need is for restoring power to kill off everyone who goes left while the rest went right."

"Those kind of system are expensive, but they did have the money for them," Julie admitted.

"Maybe we ought to look for the main security office and take a quick peek first," Mal said.

Probably a good idea," Willow agreed.

"We could use a battery pack to activate the security system and see what they got without activating any types of defenses," Kaylee spoke up.

"Flashlights and a battery pack?" Julie asked.

"I need tools," Kaylee said. "Don't have much on me."

"Pry-bar and a bag wouldn't be a bad idea," Jayne offered.

"No need to loot the place, we own it," Dawn pointed out.

Jayne frowned. "Don't take all the fun out of it."

Inara giggled. "I have a full face mask and dark clothes I bought just in case this came up."

"Really?" Mal asked, surprised.

Inara smirked. "It was one of two situations I brought it for."

"Gear up and meet back in an hour," Mal ordered, following after Inara.

"An hour?" Julie asked.

"Some people may need a little extra time," Kaylee said with a giggle.

"Full-bodied cat woman outfit," Xander said.

"Can I make do with glitter and body-paint until I can get one?" River asked Xander.

"NO!" Simon exclaimed. "I mean," he cleared his throat, "only in private, not public, or near me, or when I'm on ship."

"OK," River agreed.

"I wonder if I could pull that off," Jayne said, actually thinking of camouflage patterns and designs from long extinct tigers that he'd seen in books.

"Not while I'm on the same planet," Simon replied, his mind going somewhere else and causing River to burst out laughing.

Typing by: Elrod Albino, who is taking up a collection to get dogbertcarrol calligraphy lessons for Christmas