Bad Start to the Day (Open)

[Natalie Blake]

"I take it you have a large family back home?" Natalie guessed, offering Luke a small smile. "It was just me and my parents growing up, so I can't really relate. It was a good life, though. Pleasant and simple." Her smile widened, and she added jokingly, "Then I made the mistake of going to college and found that I had UGAP on my butt."

She snorted when he joked about dinner discussion topics, grinning again when he said she had full permission to slap him if he ever actually used any of them. "Duly noted." He then returned her question, asking for her own opinion of the Venia's crew. "Well, it won't be all bad," she allowed, hugging herself and shrugging again. "It'll be... interesting, though. Close quarters and high stress-levels ought to make for some real excitement."

[Luke Martin]

”Just a bit,” he said with a chuckle, ”my family members certainly didn’t believe in abstinence, that’s for sure.” His family tree was huge, and if you asked, he would probably struggle to account for every single family member still alive today. Especially since his cousins had started having children. That’s where it got complicated. ”Having a large family certainly isn’t boring,” he said, folding his arms around his chest. That was for damn sure. There was nearly always some family to visit when he was a kid. He lost track of a lot of them since he’d started work.

Luke laughed, ”maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to give you permission to physically beat me,” he pretended to stroke his chin in thought. ”Oh, you bet,” he said in agreement to his last statement, ”it was a lot like this on the last ship I served on. There’s still a blaster fire mark in the wall where an argument between the science and tactical officer got pretty heated... no pun intended.”

[Natalie Blake]

Natalie raised her eyebrows and gave a small chuckle, grinning. "Well, my family isn't celibate or anything, but outside my parents I've only ever met maybe four or five of my relatives. The Fairholms aren't that close, and the Jules--my mother's side of the family--disowned us. Didn't like the fact that my mom married a mechanic or whatever," she said with a shrug.

She'd gotten over that a while ago. What was the point of letting it get to her? It wasn't like throwing a fit about her grandparents not loving her would make it not true. She snickered when Luke wondered aloud if giving her permission to hit him had been less than a great idea.

"Don't worry," she laughed, "my bark is worse than my bite, and as you can see my bark isn't very loud or ferocious."

A smile split across her face as he told her about the last ship he served on. "Ha, really? There's still a scorch mark?" she said, amused. "I've never served anywhere before, but I can adapt fairly well--if I feel so inclined, anyway."

[Luke Martin]

"Nothing wrong with a mechanic," Luke said with a nod. What she'd said seemed a little weird, usually guys with dirt on them under the hood of a car usually attracted women, not scared them away. Unless, of course, her Mom's side of the family had been rich or something, then he could definitely see why they would have shunned her - it was a stupid reason, but nevertheless, he could see it.

"Well, I haven't done anything to annoy you yet," he pointed out, "and have yet to feel the full wrath of your bark." He didn't intentionally go out of his way to piss people off, so hopefully that wouldn't ever happen. It was only ever superior assholes officers that ever yelled at him, and it was unwarranted (most of the time) so he tuned it out to a large extent.

"Funny thing was, the blaster was being wielded by the science officer with no training, hence why he got the wall, and not the tactical officer. He was lucky really." He smirked a bit as he finished that story, "I think in this line of work you have to be adaptable to a lot of stuff. You're not much use these days if you can only do one thing."