Four hours after knocking her out so she can get some sleep Amelia wakes Sierra up with a cup of tea in hand.
"Rise and shine honey, time to get ready for initiation."
Sierra reluctantly gets out of bed and puts on her combat uniform before graciously accepting the tea. She takes one sip and looks around.
"'Alright, so I need my parasol, extra ammunition, scroll, and…..what else?'"
Amelia grabs a black metal cylinder off the workbench and tosses it to her.
"Don't forget this, you'll need it down there."
Sierra catches it and puts it in a leather pouch on her right calf before grabbing her other things and finishing her cup of tea.
She ties her hair in her usual twintails, laces up her boots, and heads out the door, her black and red camouflage doing its job poorly to break up her outline in the snow, but Amelia knows it will work in the emerald forest, which is at a lower altitude, and thus has no snow currently.
Amelia watches from the upstairs window as Sierra boards a bullhead and flies off towards Beacon.
POV change, Kimberly.
Having debriefed and put in equipment requests Kimberly heads to the base hospital, meeting up with Dawn at the entrance.
"Hey, how's she doing?"
Dawn waves her along, towards an elevator. "She'll be fine in a few days, it's already started healing over and she's on crutches, but she's having phantom pain, and the drugs made her kinda loopy for the first few hours."
The doctors move out of the way when they see Kimberly coming, one of them even takes the courtesy to call the elevator for her, and receives a nod of gratitude in return.
"She's ready to get back into the field, but she's going to need physical therapy so she can get used to the prosthetic." Dawn explains as they wait for the elevator, then the doors open, and they walk in before Dawn hits the button for the second floor.
The second the doors close Kimberly sighs. "I'm having all the tanks mount their ERA plating and cages, this can't happen again."
"I agree, are you going to put the point defense systems on too?"
"Yes, I've got the feeling this isn't the last we've seen of the aggressors."
The elevator dings, and the doors slide open to reveal a quartet of paratroopers dressed in black, who all move out of the way when they see Kimberly.
"At ease everyone, carry on." She says as her and Dawn walk out, the smell of disinfectant overpowering everything else.
They walk down the hall to the end and turn right into the last room, where Christie lays on the hospital bed, her leg wrapped in Gauze.
"Heya cap', good to see you!"
"Hey Christie, you're looking like you're on your last leg, how you feeling?" Kimberly pokes fun at her while she maneuvers to sit down in a white cushioned chair.
"I feel great! Matter of fact I think I might be able to get a leg up on you now!" Christie laughs back, eliciting a groan from Dawn.
"Very funny, all joking aside how do you feel?"
"Well, the doc' says I'm already healing it over thanks to my aura, but it still hurts like hell sometimes. If I use a peg leg I should be able to go back to fighting in a week or so, but the prosthetic won't be ready for a month at least."
"Oh great, just what I need, a pirate in the tank. If you take up drinking rum before seventeen hundred hours I'm gonna pull you."
Christie snaps a lazy salute. "Aye aye captain."
Kimberly rolls her eyes and sighs, the camaraderie was the thing she cherished the most among her crew, but it led to constant joking around and teasing.
"I've got new Merkava's on the way, so stay in shape, but don't push it, no running around. I'm having modifications made to ours once we get it combat ready."
This catches Christie's attention. "Modifications? Like what?"
"Classified."
Christie pouts, sticking out her bottom lip and giving Kimberly her best puppy dog eyes, but her commander remains steadfast, and scowls at her in return.
"Not telling, you'll find out when they're done."
"Damn it."
They sit in silence for several minutes before Christie yawns. "Well, if you'll excuse me, using my semblance this much has really worn me out, I'm gonna go to sleep."
"Alright, you take care. Let me know when you are released."
"Will do."
Kimberly and Dawn leave the room and head back to the entrance to the hospital, where Kimberly's HMMWV is parked.
Much to Kimberly's surprise Dawn climbs in with her, giving a predatory grin that gives her goosebumps.
"What? I'm going home, you're in the wrong vehicle."
"No I'm not, I'm going with you, I believe we have something to address."
"...we do?"
"Yes, we do." Dawn' voice changes to a rather raunchy tone, and she licks her lips sending another wave of goosebumps rolls over Kimberly as she starts the engine and drives up the road to her house. "May God help me…" she mutters under her breath.
Time skip- four weeks later. 1300 hours.
Having since been discharged from the hospital, Christie hobbles around the base on crutches with Kimberly and the rest of the team as they make stops to check in on other crews that had been affected by the ambush, especially that of Razor three, who had lost their commander. But they had quickly rallied behind the death of their comrade and set about converting their new Merkava to hold an autoloader for the main cannon, so they could operate as a three person crew. The conversion process was expensive, but Kimberly volunteered to pay for it out of her own pocket.
The turret bustle was elongated and the roof raised slightly to allow for more ammunition, since the fire rate of the main gun had increased, and thus so would their ammunition consumption. The autoloader was personally designed by the loader, and Kimberly immediately approved the design for production on new Merkava's, designated as Mark four specials. There was a bit of a learning curve with the new design, but it functioned exceptionally well, and was incredibly reliable.
Kimberly's Merkava had received multiple upgrades of its own, namely an upgrade to the power plant and a new point-defense system that had just exited the prototype stage. The plow on the front had been added as per normal, and the roof-mounted machine guns had been replaced with the same weapons that had been on the previous tank.
"It's gorgeous! It's like a work of art!" Christie cheers, excitedly hobbling over and pulling herself up onto the front hull.
"Christie don't hurt yourself."
"Yeah I know, I'm just looking at this new system."
Christie crawls up onto the front of the turret, and looks at a small honeycomb-like pod on the right side.
"Wow, looks like it should be better than the last system."
"That's because it is. It can stop an RPG at twice the distance than the last system, and if we push it we can even stop a barrage of rockets from Atlas paladins."
Christie slides down the front of the tank and grabs her crutches when she reaches the bottom, jumping on one foot a couple times before getting the crutches under her arms to steady herself.
"Alright, let's head into town, I've got some shopping to do, and we'll stop by the cafe to get the cripple her salmon."
"I'm not a cripple!" Christie yells, jabbing at Kimberly's ankles with one of her crutches.
"Your crutches say otherwise!" Dawn joins in the teasing, staying just out of reach.
"You guys are assholes!" Christie whines, putting her crutch back under her arm and hobbling towards Kimberly's HMMWV.
"You love us!"
POV change- Jackson
"Our apologies Ozpin, we've been dealing with a rather difficult situation." Jackson and Amelia sit down in front of Ozpin's desk, a pair of guards wait by the elevator behind them.
"So I've heard, my sympathies for the fallen. That brings me to the reason I've called you here, how goes the search for miss Rose?"
Jackson jerks his thumb at Amelia. "She's the one to ask, those reports don't get up to me."
Amelia jabs him in the ribs. "We have our best teams working on gathering intelligence, but so far they've been laying low, trying to find anything, last report was that they'd stumbled onto something, but they don't have any definitive proof yet."
Ozpin gently swirls the cocoa in his cup while he thinks. "I see…Well, If you need any assistance please let me know. I'm almost certain Qrow would gladly help in gathering information."
"That reminds me, do we have any information on the whereabouts of his sister?"
"I'm afraid not, it's like she disappeared off the face of Remnant."
Amelia twirls a lock of hair in her fingers, slightly frustrated with Raven's disappearance years ago. "We'll find her eventually. Nobody stays hidden forever."
"And there's also the subject of the red zone. I have reason to believe that Salem is planning something."
Jackson looks nervous, and shows it by fiddling with a coin in his hand. "I don't know Oz, last time we tried to take pictures we got shot at with SAM's. I really don't want to go through that again."
Amelia scowls at him, pulling out her scroll and tapping on it several times.
"The Blackbird will be ready in the morning. We leave before dawn. If you're gonna chicken out on me honey then I'll take Neo."
Jackson grumbles, but doesn't protest, meanwhile Ozpin refills his mug and sits back down. "Thank you. That is all I needed to talk about. However if you'd like to stay for coffee and chat like old times you are more than welcome to."
Amelia shakes her head, closing the scroll and slipping it into her pocket. "Perhaps another time. I have equipment requests to do." She stands up and firmly shakes Ozpin's hand before walking into the elevator.
Jackson leans back in his chair. "I'll take you up on that offer, I'm caught up on paperwork until she finishes processing those requests."
Ozpin smiles while he retrieves a second mug and fills it with cocoa from a coffee pot. "So, how's the family?"