[RP] The 'Verse (Accepting profiles)

[Akai_ryu]

"To the good doctor." Jas replied with a smile as she lifted her glass in response. "Who is brave enough to stand up to Jaden."

"It shouldn't make you blind, doc." Jaden quipped before raising hir own glass of moonshine. "To the doc. No offense, doc, but hopefully you won't have to do much work, eh?"

Jin-Li, on the other hand had - in the few seconds that it had taken to propose the toast - slipped under the table briefly before her head popped up between Fayra and Jaden. Anticipating what the mechanic was about to do, Jaden reached down and caught Jin-Li's shoulder before she could hug Fayra.

"No hugs for the doc, mei-mei" Jaden murmured. "Remember that you just met her."

In response, Jin-li shrank a little in disappointment before deciding to swipe Jaden's beer to toast Fayra with. One moment the little mechanic was under the table and the next she was in Jaden's lap, holding hir beer up. Then, once she deemed the toast was over (and having stolen a swig of Jaden's beer), Jin-Li raised the bottle again.

"To the ship!" she chimed.  

[DeirdreTonbo]

"Well, someone has to..." Fayra mumbled when Jas commended her standing up to Jaden. "Besides, I don't think ze is scary."

Both Aria and Fayra took drinks from their glasses as appropriate to the first toast. Aria set her cup down with her normal grace, but fayra was still clearly experiencing the burn of the alcohol.

"For a ship medic like me, the least work I do the better off the crew is, right? I you promise I wont go blind?" Fayra managed a smile, looking into hercup to avoid having to see Jin-li's disappointed face.

"To the ship. And having the bet mechanic in the 'verse to keep her running beautifully," Aria agreed with said mechanic and clinked her cup against Jas' this time and then took a drink from her cup again.  

[Akai_ryu]

Jas hid her smile at the thought of someone finally finding Jaden not scary behind her glass. They had gone through a series of medics that Jaden had intimidated off the ship before Jas had finally given up and simply started patching up the crew on her own. She had put up the ad figuring that it was worth a try again now that Jaden had time to figure out that it was better to have a real doctor on board than trying to get by with just what Jas knew. It seemed like she might have been right, too, given the way Jaden was protecting Fayra.

Jin-Li seemed to be amused at the way Aria and Jas clinked cups because after the second toast, she immediately raised the bottle again. Jaden caught a look from Jas and caught the mechanic's sleeve by her elbow as ze set hir glass down.

"Mei-mei as fun as it would be to get us all s**t-faced before we finish eating, don't you want to enjoy the bao?" Jaden muttered into the mechanic's ear.

She seemed to contemplate it for a moment before slipping back under the table and popping back up in her own seat with Jaden's beer in hand. The muscle scowled at Jin-Li before picking up hir bowl and shoveling food into hir mouth.  

[DeirdreTonbo]

Aria hadn't spent a lot of time with Fayra and Jaden yet, and her eyes moved back and forth between the two of them with piqued interest. She then continued to eat her meal while she could, before Jin-li got to make the rest of her toasts.

Fayra did blush just a little bit under Aria's scrutiny, focusing her attention on the bowl in front of her. She didn't drink, and the two swigs she'd taken were already making her feel a little warm on the inside. The meal was really quite good, she would have to remember to tell Jaden when the companion wasn't paying quite as much attention to them.

"So, Jin-li, er... mei-mei? What is the project over there on the couch?" Fayra tried to make up for the sad expression the engineer had shown earlier by addressing her, looking up from the bowl of rice in her hand. She indicated the mess of wiring that was pushed aside from Jaden's rising from hir nap.  

[Akai_ryu]

Jaden, with hir face practically buried in the large rice bowl ze used for a plate, completely missed Aria's scrutiny. As did Jin-Li, but the mechanic had been in the process of what looked like an attempt to inhale a large bao. Despite that fact, she perked up when addressed by Fayra and, still chewing, tilted her head slightly to the side in thought. Then she swallowed and perked up again, having remembered what the project was.

"Redundancy, redundancy backup!" the mechanic announced in her usual sing-song. "I wanted more space and so wires needed moving and then I decided that if once set of redundancy backup wiring was important, a second set would be good."

For a moment it looked like Jas was going to protest to the useless addition to her ship. Instead, the captain sighed and took another sip of her moonshine before returning to her dinner. If they had been a combat ship it would have made perfect sense. But they weren't. However, Jin-Li usually was right about things. Like the emergency air evacuation system she had installed in the engine room.

Theoretically the ship's designers had a way to deal with potential explosions in the engine room, but Jin-Li had decided to run a vent from the engine room to the outside and re-program the doors to the room. It had forced them to stay on planet longer than Jas would have liked, but when Jin-Li was done the system had been set to automatically slam the engine room doors shut on detecting an explosion there and to blow the cover off of the vent. Which had in turn been designed to vent forward to slow the ship down so they wouldn't crash into anything.

Three months later, Jin-Li had hopped ship again temporarily and shortly after there had been an engine fire because her replacement had turned out to be an incompetent idiot. They had been drifting for a few days, but they had the air to do so because of Jin-Li's improved system.  

[DeirdreTonbo]

Fayra had no idea what Jin-li meant, but she listened with interest. In a way she could imagine the ship as a body and Jin-li as its surgeon. If she put it into the context, it was possible to actually understand some of it and see why it was that way. Just because the body that the engineer operated on was so different than what Fayra had studied in school didn't mean it was any less than medical work. They were both saving lives in their own way.

"Oh, Jaswinder, did I tell you I brought home a bottle of peach brandy?" Aria said quietly with a side look at the captain as she sipped her moonshine. She shifted her weight a little, crossing her legs at the knee.

Across the table, Fayra was still talking to Jin-li and didn't hear Aria. "So that makes it... that wiring is in case the back-up for the back-up fails? That's... good? That there's back up I mean. More back up." She was really trying, hopefully that counted for something.  

[Akai_ryu]

"Yup! Redundancy, redundancy backup." Jin-li nodded before putting her face flat on the table next to her plate and peering at the mabodofu that Jaden was putting on the plate for her. "Goopy, drip drip plop."

"Yes, mei-mei, although most folks call it sauce." Jaden observed dryly as ze put the spoon down and reached for a bao.

Meanwhile, Jas was ignoring the by-play in favor of conversation with Aria. The mention of peach brandy had caught her interest and it seemed like Aria had gotten over whatever had made her get up abruptly from the captain's lap.

"Oh? Perhaps the celebration was in the works already. I picked up a sake." she noted, setting down her chopsticks and reaching for the plate of chow fun. "I left it in my quarters since I doubt the others would actually appreciate it...well, except for maybe Doctor Gardiner. She seems like the sort who would appreciate quality alcohol."  

[DeirdreTonbo]

Fayra was drinking without quite the expression of her throat being on fire now, she thought maybe it was because the lower part of the drink was less caustic? Or maybe she'd just lost the capacity to feel it sear. Hard to say. Quietly she took another bite of food, eyes following the 'goopy drip drip plop' of Jaden serving Jin-li. She gave her bowl a stir, mixing rice and sauce to distribute it more evenly.

Aria smiled at the mention of sake, eyebrows rising. Jas knew perfectly well she had a weakness for it. She held out her bowl to the captain while she was putting more food onto her plate, silently requesting some added to her own as well.

"How long has it been since we did this anyway? Maybe it is time we stopped working to hard, at least for a night."  

[Akai_ryu]

"A while." Jas said as she scooped food onto Aria's plate before doing her own. "But maybe it is time we had a night to relax. I wouldn't say we've been working too hard, though. Most of our time is downtime between planets or waiting on a client to load or unload their cargo from our ship."

Just before the tall blonde could put the chowfun plate back down, Jaden reached across and grabbed the other end. Ze scooped some into hir now empty bowl and made an offering sort of gesture at Fayra. Meanwhile Jin-Li was testing whether or not the table was level according to ship's gravity by rolling her chopsticks back and forth in front of her nose.  

[DeirdreTonbo]

"Yes but you refuse to relax when we are in the black because an asteroid may hit us," Aria pointed out after smiling her thanks for dishing some of the food out for her. "Or you may need to make a minor course correction. And you also do not like to relax on planet because you don't trust people outside your ship."

It was true though. Jas made it in a cutthroat business because she expected everyone to stab her in the back. With the exception of her crew. But sleeping on the bridge and being alert on the planet eventually wore on a person.

Aria's expression, teasing Jas initially turned softer for a moment and she spoke in a quieter voice again. "I just don't want to see you burn out, Jaswinder."

Fayra gave herself a little shake and made herself focus on what Jaden had in hir hand. A shy little smile of sorts curled her lips and she held her bowl out. "Thank you. It um, it is very good."  

[Akai_ryu]

"I'd rather be paranoid than slip up and make a mistake that gets you killed." The tall blonde pointed out before taking a bite of food. Then, as if remembering while she chewed and swallowed that there were now others on the crew, she continued after the brief pause. "Or the crew. I'd say hurt, but...that's sort of inevitable in our line of business, especially with Jaden around."

While Jaden scooped out noodles for Fayra, Jin-Li disappeared back under the table with her plate and chopsticks. She could be heard eating and half-talking to herself under the table. Most of what the mechanic was talking to herself about was the food with her ideas for the ship coming a close second before being forgotten.

"It's nothing." Jaden replied with a wry smile. "A poor imitation of my grandmother's cooking. You'll get tired of it soon enough."  

[DeirdreTonbo]

"And I am glad everyday that you work so hard to keep... all of us safe," the brief pause as Aria chose words was short enough it could have just been her breathing. Nothing more. "But even you have your limits. So drink up." With that Aria smiled with warmth, clinking her glass against Jas'.

Fayra accepted her noodles and wrapped hands around the warm bowl. She wasn't cold, in fact she felt rather warm just at the moment. But the warmth of the bowl felt nice against her fingers and the smell of the food made her happy. "It's better than I've had on a ship before. And I've already seen more variation so there's no complaints here. I haven't tried to cook before but I have no point of reference to start from either."  

[Akai_ryu]

Jas chuckled and clinked her glass against Aria's. "At the rate that my crew is having me drink, we'll be finding that limit pretty quickly."

As it was, the tall blonde was already starting to feel the effects of the moonshine. It could have been general stress, or it simply could have been the toasts before actually putting a significant amount of food in her empty stomach. Or perhaps the fact that somehow half of the glass of moonshine she had poured for herself was now gone.

"Ah, hell, doc, if you wanna try cooking you're welcome to. You can pull up recipes on the Cortex and I can help walk you through 'em." Jaden offered with a shrug, down the table from the Captain and Companion, before picking up hir bowl and shovelling some of the noodles into hir mouth.  

[DeirdreTonbo]

Aria took a sip of her moonshine and then continued to eat, shifting again so that her knee brushed against Jas' leg. Her expression was carefully interested in her food and her eyes were directed solely at the same thing. Not that the rest of her nerves weren't trying to be aware of Jas' reaction.

"Really?" Fayra's expression changed and she lit up just a little. As much as she loved to be a doctor, there were times when she felt like she was more a burden to the ship than she was a boon. So far all she had done was drug one of the crew. "I mean, I sort of wondered if I could but if you really liked cooking I didn't want to get in the way..." Did she always ramble like this? A little bit of a blush came to Fayra's cheeks and she put food into her mouth to keep from babbling out anything else stupid.  

[Akai_ryu]

Jaden's short bark of laughter pulled Jas' thoughts away from Aria shifting so that her knee touched the tall blonde's leg. She had been fairly certain that it had been on purpose even if the light touch was completely innocent compared to Aria sitting in her lap and toying with her braid earlier. But Jaden laughing was an odder thing.

"Doc, I started cooking because...well, you should see Cap attempt to cook. It wasn't in any of those fancy lessons she's got. Aria's good at snacks and she makes a mean cup of tea, but snacks ain't dinner. And I'm not letting Jin-Li anywhere near dinner prep." Jaden chuckled.

At the mention of her name, the mechanic's head popped up from under the table. She looked around at the chuckling Jaden, Aria intent on her food, and the curious Jas before crawling into her seat and cradling the bottle of beer she had stolen from the muscle. For a moment she fiddled with it then began blowing across the top, creating short whistling bursts of noise.