After the Commander's little speech about sharing cockpits, Lily stole a few quick glances around the camp, her feelings mixed. It was a good group of people overall, definitely, and all of them very competent pilots, but she still felt like a bit of an outsider, not having had time to truly connect with any of them on more than just the surface level quite yet. She even got some pretty cold vibes from a couple of the other pilots at times - namely Elisa, who didn't even attempt to veil her disapproval at all. If nothing else, at least it was better than pretending to be nice to her face while trashing her behind her back.<br/><br/>A few years ago, Lily would have felt very insulted and it would have really bothered her, probably even enough to provoke a confrontation, but she'd matured considerably since then. More than you'd guess just from first impressions. She'd realized a while ago that her personality was quite polarizing, so it was simply inevitable that some people would be turned off by it and she'd learned to accept that. On the bright side, only a minority of people felt negatively about her. Usually women, for whatever reason. Lily theorized that it had something to do with some kind of instinctual competitiveness, but she wasn't sure, nor did she spend much time thinking about it.<br/><br/>As for Elisa in particular, the woman seemed to have about as much personality as the BattleMech that she piloted, so Lily wasn't surprised to see the disproving looks like the one that she'd caught just a few minutes earlier coming from her. It was hard for her to comprehend why some people seemed so unwilling to enjoy life, which was already too short to begin with, with the potential to even be considerably shorter in their line of work, but perhaps they'd warm up to each other with time - not that Lily was holding her breath.<br/><br/>In the meanwhile, she figured that she could chat with some of the other girls for a bit before bed, but then Yamina and Maho both scampered off before that could happen (although Yamina did at least depart with a cute little compliment that made Lily giggle bashfully, which was uncommon for her). She wasn't the type of girl to be so easily discouraged, though, nor was she about to sit around and mope just because it was proving somewhat challenging to get to know her fellow Mechwarriors better.<br/><br/>Hers was typically the more proactive approach. Noticing that Erich had retired to the cockpit of his war-scarred Awesome, and knowing that he always left it cracked open in case anyone wanted to meet with him up there, Lily decided to take him up on that offer for the first time. After all, if she wanted to get to know the people that she'd be fighting alongside better and to feel more comfortable amongst them, why not take the initiative?<br/><br/>Lily hadn't really spoken with Erich on a personal level yet, the few and brief conversations that they'd had being limited purely to professional topics. Not altogether surprising considering the age difference, the fact that their personalities were very different, at least as far as she could tell, and that he was her lance leader on top of it all. It was always more tricky interacting with a superior or an authority figure than an equal, and it was made all the more difficult in this particular case because Lily found herself feeling just a little intimidated by the man, but then again she'd never let something so trivial hold her back.<br/><br/>After eating a few chocolate squares from her bar and wrapping what remained of it back up, she slid it back into her pocket and made her way over to her lance leader's Mech, quickly ascending to the top of the ladder. She knocked on the side of the hatch to make her presence known. "Hey boss, mind if I come in?" The question was clearly no more than a formality for Lily, since she's already opened the hatch and climbed inside before he could have had the time to answer fully.<br/><br/>"Huh. Didn't think of you as the cuddling-up-with-a-good-book kind of guy, but then again I've always liked surprises. Anyways, thought you might wanna talk about boys or something," Lily joked, hoping to break the ice as she helped herself to the most comfortable passenger seat.