1920s - “So, what are we doing?” “Crime!”
After fighting in the trenches of the Great War, Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne open a restaurant in Manhattan. Serenity’s a bit dingy and a lot disreputable-looking, but it is a front for a speakeasy and other not-so-legal enterprises. Jayne Cobb’s intimidatin’ person makes public relations a breeze, and no one on the East Coast is half the getaway driver Hoban “Wash” Washburne is. Kaylee Frye’s young, but she’s a genius when comes to keeping Serenity running. Good thing too, no one else has a clue how restaurants and speakeasies work. Inara Serra lends the operation some respectability. Can’t be too bad a place if you’ve got a talented jazz singer, right? Things get a little complicated when the Tam siblings come crashing through with the Bureau of Investigation hot on their heels. Simon gave up a glittering surgical career to break River out of a fancy government-funded boarding school upstate. He says they were messing with her mind. Whether or not that’s true, she’s definitely a bit in the way of Zelda Fitzgerald. It’s a heap of trouble, but the crew doesn’t have to explain gunshot wounds to nosy nurses anymore. For some reason, Derrial Book’s hanging around, and he knows an awful lot about shady folk and their ways for a pastor. Not much they can do about that: the guy’s a real help. Still, it ain’t easy. Plans never go smooth and it’s a bit too easy to catch a bullet between the eyes, especially when everyone in town thinks you’re a man of honor in a den of thieves. But at the end of the day, after they’ve outrun cops and outgunned competition, they still got Serenity. It ain’t much, but it’s enough.
