It's not where you're from that matters, but where you are and where you're going.
Markus: "You're back already? Sorry about earlier."
River: "Nothing to be sorry about, it wasn't your fault. So, what happened that made me so weird? A lot of things, actually. Some medical laboratory in the Lightning hoods territory researching the fine details of gene manipulation and cloning. I was born in a vat there from a Frankenstein collection of genes from a ton of different sources to see what worked and what didn't, for what end purpose I don't know.
They deemed me an aberration and I later learned that they took a vote on whether or not to- ... euthanize me, out of fear that other corporations might not see their project as a necessary evil like they did. At any rate, they kept me around, for some reason. I suppose to remind them of their failures, or an attempt to salvage the only living thing they had managed to conjure up. Eventually they gave up on me, put me in a cryogenic freezer.
I don't know how long I was in there, at least two years in the ice, maybe as many as forty. Eventually I was thawed out and broken out of that nightmare lab, by one of the engineers who had worked there fled and took me with them, gave me a second chance. We fled to Eriwick, and she married a salvager, and we lived quiet, simple lives on the river, outside the reach of the Lightning Hoods. Almost a year ago, Captain Sal killed my adopted parents, and has been looking for me ever since. And now you can see why I'm a little bit crazy, can't you?"
"Wow. Just... wow. Yes I can see why you're a bit crazy. Now I just have more questions. What do you mean by aberration?"
"There are some things best kept in the dark, where nobody can use them as a scapegoat. We've already been idle too long, they'll have an ambush waiting by now. We have the Kalmar now though, so we could make another ship. I'm thinking a blockade runner would serve us nicely."
"A helicopter?"
"Why not? I like the sound of a compact gunship that we could land on the cruiser."