"This is your captain speaking. We'll be making a pit-stop on Desmaria, in about 3 hours. Desmaria is a planet with many lovely sight-seeing opportunities, and is populated by beings of all races and all different planets, all the best cutthroats and scavengers live there - excepting yours truly of course - because Desmaria used to be the local prison planet before the inmates banded together and took over! Should be lots of happy fun times.
…
I am making this announcement because I'm bored. Someone fetch me some vodka, my ice cubes have become frighteningly dry." I signed off the intercom with a flourish, staring back out into space.  My beloved sanctuary, the one place I felt truly okie dokie.  If any of my friends, who were fast and secretly becoming my family, tried to drive Iris while sloshed, I would skin them alive and use them as curtains.  But seeing as the Vodka helped me control my little problems, I think it’s much, much safer that I be inebriated.
Ishvala and Bard dropped off my bottle, Ishvala looking amused and Bard looking scared shitless.  Seriously, you’d think I was driving blindfolded and backwards.  I’m just wearing boxers and a flannel shirt with a bottle of vodka and some cookies to keep me company.
“It’ll be interesting, I promise.” I smiled at the two of them.  “How’s Memet-chan?”
“ERM… he’s still out of it.”  Ishvala explained, while Bard looked decidedly uncomfortable about something or other.  I will demand story time later, but I’ll accept this sad little answer… for now.
“MKAY, well I gotta’ get back to driving, got some black holes I need to navigate around.”  I winked, making a joke of it, while poor Bard looked ready to pass out from sheer terror and Ishvala just laughed while looking vaguely nervous.
Well, you can’t make everybody happy all the time.  They left me back to piloting Iris, while I got the vague impression that more was going on than I wanted to know about, like I knew nothing about what was going on outside my isolated bubble here in the cockpit.  I didn’t care, I was happy.  Happy, damn it, happy flying towards one of the most dangerous planets in the known galaxy in a giant tin can.  I really am crazy.
Roughly three hours later and after a less than graceful landing (hey, Iris is HUGE and landing her is like landing a small moon sometimes) we arrived in one of my favorite places to shop for cookies and such.  I bounced into the galley, enjoying my belted goth-man pants, sarcastic t-shirt, and comfortable boots, complete with a pair of goggles hiding in my fluffy white hair. Plus a lovely pair of blue boxers with little yellow rubber ducks that no one could see.  Sometimes, I really do love Iris’s clothing generator.  I also love dressing like a guy, letting myself get a little scruffy.  It’s pure bliss after a week of miniskirts and makeup.
"Ish, you come with me, we'll go get fuel and liquor. I've left Memet in charge of Iris for the meantime.”  Why does that seem like such a bad idea?  “And I'm assuming you'll want to stay attached to Ish-kun's hip, right?" I smiled at Bard, who nodded while sneaking a glance at his little buddy.  I still think he thinks I’m scary as all hell.  Whatever, maybe I am.
It was a bit of a hike from the landing field (brandishing Rebel Blood took care of the “protection fee” and scared the hell out of the “management”) through the forest, which was unseasonably hot.  Normally, it was mildly warm, but this was like hiking through a poorly maintained microwave - too hot and rather sticky.  In the direction of New Alcatraz ( I LOVE that name for a trade city), I heard a good deal of “KABOOM!”s and lots of crashing, like rocks falling on soft squishy things like earth and flesh.
"What the hell was that?!" I screeched, knowing full well what it could be but refusing to make friends with Reality.  Ishvala proceeded to have a full-on panic attack against a tree trunk, while Bard and I waited patiently.  Well, Bard looked worried as all hell, but I waited the episode out and shot my little friend one of my infamous eyebrows once he had recovered a tad.
"Asthma attack." He lied.
"Sure." I replied, arching my eyebrow further.  I will demand the truth later, but for now curiosity and the siren call of Oreo’s saved Ishvala from the third degree.
Not long after, and after watching many a person rush past us in utter terror and shooting us confused looks, we arrived at what was left of the gates to New Alcatraz.
"Huh. That's funny." I paused, surveying the utter destruction.  I had seen smaller warzones.
"What?"  Ishvala asked, making a steady survey of his boots.  I’m pretty sure he’s memorized every stitch and stain on them by now.
"There used to be a marketplace here." I answered carefully, thoughtfully.  A very nice marketplace, by the by - for a place run by the underbelly of the galaxy, it was comparable to some major marketplaces on the nicer, more “sophisticated” planets.
"Holy shit." Ishvala muttered in awe.
But I wasn’t paying attention.  I “saw” Memet at the helm (BITCH, get outta’ my chair!) a oddly familiar woman dragging my big metal baby, Iris freaking out and not wanting to take off.... "Spidey sense! Iris!" I managed to mutter before I started sprinting back towards my ship.
I think Bard and Ishvala followed me.  I was too busy trying not to plow into trees and thoroughly surprised people who had only a few short minutes before seen me strolling casually the opposite direction.  Or maybe they only saw a big, angry, freaked out blur.  The sight that I met on that dock both pissed me off to no end and hit me with a hammer of awe.  
Iris was attempting to take off, with Memet at the controls.  I was ready to skin the emo son of a bugger alive right then and there.  Holding my ship by one wing and dragging it back to it’s proper parking space was a tiny, almost dainty looking woman wearing a rather ragged and outdated dress.  Dragging it by ONE WING, ONE HANDED for the love of God.  Iris is the size of some countries, it’s huge and heavy and NO ONE should be able to do that.  No one that tiny and cute looking in any case.
"Memet Kemeret, cease and desist or be destroyed. This is the starship Iris, registered to Captain - "  In an idiotic attempt to save my embarrassing full name, I slammed my fist full force into her mouth.  I heard by hand break, and howled in pain as I heard all the bones in my left hand get pulverized.
"Why did you strike me?" My hit didn’t even faze her.  My God, she’s an android.
"WHY are you made of METAL?!" I screamed irrationally, holding my sad little broken hand in the other.  It’ll be fine in an hour or two, but for now it hurt like nothing else had in quite a long while. “And why would you announce my name to the world like that?!  It’s embarrassing!”
The woman merely cocked her head to the side and continued to re-park my ship in the most unconventional manner possible.  “But the ship IS registered to Captain J-”
“PLEASE don’t!” I whimpered, clamping my hurt hand across her face.  The bones were back in the right place, it was just knitting back together and fixing a bit of the bruising at this point.  “Besides, who are you anyways?  I adore that you saved my ship, but why?”
“She asked me to.  I am Isabelle.”  The droid, Isabelle, replied.  Memet had finally turned off the engines, for now at least.
I pointed one very bruised and unhappy looking finger up towards the cockpit.  “YOU GET YOUR SORRY SAMARAI ASS DOWN HERE NOW BEFORE I COME UP THERE AND DRAG YOU OUT IN PIECES!!!”  I bellowed at Memet, knowing full well he could hear me.  I hadn’t been this mad since someone had thrown out all my cookies.  I think they’re still in a coma… I had just saved his sorry backside and this is how he repays me.  I knew his social skills sucked but this is just ridiculous.