(NOTE: This one's also on FanFiction.net and is Work In Progress from Act Two on. This one's supposed to be released in parts taking about 10-12 minutes of running time each, think of the acts between commercial breaks on a real episode.)

SO MANY VERSES...

SYNOPSIS: The crew of Serenity is between jobs when they find an unexpected visitor on their way. Crossover, just something I really wanted to try. Not telling you which series though, just read and see!

PROLOGUE: "Nightfall"

The sky was black. Night had fallen hours ago since they left Eavesdown Docks for resupply, and the next stop is two days’ travel from where they were now. Everyone was asleep. Everyone except River, who felt comfort in staring outside the bridge window in the pilot’s seat. Closing her eyes, she gently took the control column in her hands and felt the bond she had with Serenity. The gentle hum of her engines, providing for their every need, and the excitement and challenges of every new stop. Above everything, Serenity felt like home. It felt like the best friend she ever wanted to have, and the last thing it felt like was a machine of cold steel only designed to follow pilot’s commands. River took a deep breath and opened up to all the impressions on board. From the soft feeling of Serenity’s controls at her fingertips, the most wonderful way of contact with her, to the feelings she picked up between Simon and Kaylee in their quarters. True love, in so many senses. The gentle throb of the engines felt soothing and synchronized with her breath. Her head dropped down and she curled up on the comfortable sheep skin-lined chair, her favorite place to sleep. As she drifted off, there was an echo of something far away…

With every breath, it came closer. It sounded like the ship’s background noise but then again, it didn’t. She felt there was something, slowly wanting to get closer to her and to Serenity, wanting to make contact. It’s here, she suddenly thought. The cargo bay. She tiptoed through the corridors below decks, and found the object of her distraction, quietly sitting there, in the middle of Serenity’s cargo hold. Somehow it felt like a perfect unity… River fell asleep, with her hand touching the wood that had been searching for so many centuries.

ACT ONE: "Daybreak"

Morning fell on the ship as the incandescent bulbs all through Serenity’s internals slowly lit up. River was still fast asleep, in her dreams still feeling the connection with the entity she’d been touching.

She was unaware that Kaylee had been gazing at the contraption for an hour straight. The strange thing looked like nothing they had on their worlds, although it resembled the basic shape of an outhouse. With the dark blue paint chipping off its walls, and the chrome handle on the door covered in rust. A door that had a sign above it, white letters, on a black painted background.”

“Police – Public Call Box.”

Kaylee’s eyes were filled with amazement for the mysterious thing, and the similar mystery about how it got here. And most importantly, about how it got here. And most importantly, why it got here. To her, it had the value of an old shipwreck lined with flotsam but still had a funny attractiveness to it. It was just old, terribly old. And still it managed to get here without any of us noticing. Did someone dump this in their bay when they weren’t looking? Was it something someone needed to get rid of, sell for scraps? It still looked solid enough and, she figured, could be put to enough uses.

Having just finished breakfast, Mal walked in to check on some cargo when he was stopped dead in his tracks on the walkway over the cargo bay. “Whoa, who parked that toilet into our cargo bay?”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t something I got from the salvage yard,” Kaylee answered.

Overhearing the conversation, River woke up and opened her eyes, sitting against the blue box with a feeling of certain comfort. “It wanted to be here,” she said.

Right that moment on, the sound of a key turning and the clicking of a door lock. The blue box opened up and a tall, dark-haired man with a long brown trenchcoat and a brown pinstripe suit underneath stepped out, his face grinning with fulfillment. “Yes! I did it! I’m actually here!”, The Doctor shouted, apparently satisfied with his TARDIS’ strange tendency to respond to his commands every so often. “Rose, you should come and see this! It’s one of the most wonderful eras of human history ever… something you won’t even find in ordinary history books!”

A soft voice from a young girl emanated from the apparent back of the box. She sounded like she just got out of bed and needed a good morning coffee. “Doctor… Where exactly are we now…?”

Still in the full excitement of his apparent landing skills, the Doctor continued to rattle about his apparent achievement. “The 26th Century! The revive of the old West! An era lasting just decades with an atmosphere you won’t even believe! And we’re right here in the middle of it! Serenity!” The Doctor bowed down for a few seconds and kissed the deck plating. Kaylee looked away in a look of disgust, as she was probably the only one that actually knew what substances were on there. “Eeouw, that needs some cleaning. 50-year-old paint chips, terpentine based. Spaceflight Standard Color 229-47… with more than a slight undertone of duct tape adhesive.”

Despite the Doctor’s grand display of enthousiasm, Mal still figured it was his ship and someone stole his Mule’s parking spot. “’Xcuse me some bit, but who are you what in the gorram name are you doing on my boat?”

The Doctor glanced over the crew back and forth a bit and still couldn’t believe what he was seeing. They were all there, just as the records said… and here he was, meeting them in the flesh. And currently one of them is pointing a particularly big gun towards the Doctor.

“Sorry to break it to you, but out here we’re not quite so keen on stowaways.” Mal had every reason to distrust him, this apparent Doctor sounding just like one of his more, shall we say, intimate enemies.

Jayne, who stood at the side of the room by one of the shuttle docking ports, had Vera loaded up and wanted to take this guy down by himself. He cocked the large gun and put his hand on the trigger. “Jayne!” Zoe interrupted. “Shooting people when they come through doors ain’t that polite. Not even when they’re unwanted guests on our boat!” “But how comes he’s wearing a coat like one of ours? He sure as hell ain’t sounding like one of us!” Jayne’s question was actually a really valid one. One to convince Mal enough to let his guard down a bit.

That gave the Doctor just enough time to drop in and give a bit of an explanation. “You know, Captain, that we’re actually pretty alike. First, let me tell you what I do. Nothing in particular, actually, just traveling through space and time, and it’s probably the world again that needs saving. Freelancers, if you can call it that.”

“Mal, the girl’s doing it again!” Jayne turned his attention to River in the middle of his story. The young girl was examining every inch of the Doctor’s time-ship, with her eyes showing sparkles like never before. “She’s like our girl.”

With a slow, dancing move she gently stepped through the open TARDIS door.

(Fadeout, exit to commercials, and TO BE CONTINUED...)