Sam was sat at the dinner table of the Misfit household today, tending to some of the ethnic food she'd made as she waited for the rest of the gang to get back from the patrol. She was thankful her sis had taught her how to cook before they both joined the PLA, but she didn't think she'd be using it for anything outside of maybe cooking for her husband.

The likelihood of getting married to anyone, however, was exponentially low at this point, with the only respite being cooking for basically the entire Private Military Company that was now the Misfits. Seriously, they'd even registered it as a god-damn company in the name of the Councilor and they were this close to getting Ads on the VNN.

She sighed, shaking her head, then set the table, each seat receiving a bowl and the cutlery necessary. She made sure everyone had a choice between chopsticks and basic silverware like spoons, forks and knives, so as not to cause issues. She was, after all, the sole woman who could actually use damn chopsticks without poking her eye out.

Vicky was also in the house. Surprisingly enough, she was baking the bread for the meal, with the two of them quietly working beside each-other as they made their respective parts of the food. The Romanian platoon's sniper and Victor's sister was, for all intents and purposes, just as calm and collected as Vic tended to be.

That was to say, she was about as big of a dumbass as him at times.

Still, she could never not appreciate having her around. Victoria was akin to her own sister in some ways. She was smart, shrewd and sometimes liked to play people against each-other, though she had never done that to friends. In fact, Sam was pretty sure one of the many reasons none of them ever got arrested was her. The others were probably Robert and X, with the latter being the biggest surprise in that regard.

Regardless of that, Sam also found in Vicky a good friend. One that could've made for a great sister-in-law, Sam thought, but alas. She spoke to Vicky, "Y'know, I never thought you were the type to bake," before turning to face the girl after she set the table. Vicky pulled the loaf of rustic-looking white bread out of the oven, put it on a cooling rack and dusted her hands of flour.

Then, she said to Sam, "A little skill I picked up while working the kitchens in the orphanage. Same way Vic picked up electrical work to help the Priest fix stuff. And some engineering skill," with a smile. She approached the girl, taking the white handmark-covered apron off and dusting it off to remove the flour, before stating, "I never thought I'd see you cooking."

"Someone in this household that isn't Saila has to," She joked, grinning, which got a laugh out of Vicky. She then sighed and said, "For real, though? Mom taught me when she wasn't off on some clandestine op for the PRC. And my sis capped it off with some basic knowledge on how to use a knife for other stuff."

Vicky snorted, "Yeah, that makes sense."

"You ready for that mission tomorrow? At the Pier, y'know?" Sammy then asked, shifting herself a little to the left to let Vicky cool the bread a bit with a wind Dust Crystal. While it wasn't the dumbest use of a resource she'd seen, it was honestly something to see basically magic in a can be used to more quickly cool off bread. Romanians were nothing if not inventive with their problem-solving.

Vicky replied, "Well, considering I'm gonna be playing the part of the Sharpshooter, yeah, I'm fine just sitting on my ass, doing nothing with my sniper rifle as we go on in to clear the place out," with a smirk on her face. Sammy rolled her eyes and chuckled, then checked her phone, noting that the gang should've been back from patrol.

"Do you still like Vic, by the way?" The female twin asked, causing the girl to nearly double over and fall. With a healthy red in her cheeks, she turned to face Victoria, who was smiling a little as she told her, "Cute. Don't know what the hell you all see in Vic, but I can't exactly complain bro's got so many possible wife opportunities."

Sammy blinked, shook her head and replied to that with, "You do realize you tried to set him up with a teenager, right?!" as she recalled that Yang did, in fact, also have a crush on Vic, "I'm not one to usually question your decisions about your twin, but holy shit, Vicky, have some brains with you. This place still has a shitload of laws against that kind of stuff."

Vicky sighed and shrugged, "Yeah, yeah, Paul and Paula berated me enough about it. No need to add fuel to the fucking fire, nenorocito," and she scratched her cheek as she finally managed to cool the bread enough. She started cutting into it. Sammy rolled her eyes, then took two steps back, surprised as the Romanian Sniper handed her a slice.

Taking it, she nodded in thanks, then said, "Also, don't call me a… Bastard or a bitch?"

"Bastard," The Romanian quipped as she sliced more slices for the meal and put them on the table. The Chinese officer shrugged, bit from it, then blanked for a moment. She swallowed, looked to Vicky and looked like she was an inch short of dropping to her knees and praising the Sharpshooter/baker as her new goddess. She told Sam, "Heh, glad you like it. Old recipe…"

Sammy couldn't help herself. The moment she'd looked away, the girl had scarfed down the entire slice and two more. When Victoria had turned to see, she burst into laughter at all the crumbs on the girl's mouth, before gently pushing her away from the table. The two laughed together, with Sammy saying "ish wud!" with her mouth full and nodding.

"Uhh… We interrupting, girls?" Vic's voice came from behind Sam, causing both of them to blank. They both turned around to face the patrolling units returning, with Robert rubbing his temples as he looked at the developing situation. Saila was giggling in her usual quiet way, while Vic, Paul and Paula stared. Hass, behind them, poked his head in and sighed deeply, shoulders sagging.

The entire 'family' piled in for dinner, with the last one in being Alexei. Alexi, the Bulgarian, meanwhile, commented, "Something smells like unethical practices and Communism," as a joke. He had seen the Chinese food sat on the table and chuckled when Sam threw a spoon at him. He grinned and said, "Oh, come on, it was a good joke."

"Veritably Bulgarian of you," Soshkin joked, grinning.

Paula took her gear off and set it down nearby as she said to Soshkin, "I think it'd have been more Bulgarian to steal a car, but that's just my opinion," which caused the man to snicker, while Hass rolled his eyes and snorted, too. He looked at the Hungarian female twin, then raised his brows at her. She shrugged, grinning.

"Hey, I'll have you know…" Stoyanov left a dramatic pause, then smirked and said, "I like bikes," garnering laughter out of the crew. Proud that his joke landed, the man walked over to the fridge with Robert and both of them picked their respective drinks out. Robert had grabbed a familiar red can, while Alexi had grabbed a beer.

Saila grabbed the sleeve of Sammy's shirt, tugging at it, to which Sammy replied, "Yeah, sure. Don't overcook it, though," making the girl smile. She pulled out some sort of frozen cake from her backpack, much to everyone's surprise, then set it in the oven and let it thaw out thanks to the residual heat and all that.

"So, we've got an op upcoming tomorrow," Vic started as he sat at the table first. He watched the others sitting down, then inquired, "Anyone wanna say a prayer before we start eating, or…?" as he looked at the arrangement of Chinese and Asian-style food made by Sammy. He knew Sam had made them because these were apparently a priority for the Lee Matriarch to teach her daughters.

"Nah, bro. We're good," Vicky snickered as she sliced into the obviously rustic bread, which had somewhat cooled since being pulled out of the oven. The oven itself was cooling, too, but considering how fresh it all smelled of bread to the group, not to mention it mixing quite well with the sweet, sour and salty scents of the food on the table, it was all still very fresh.

"Fair enough, heh. Just saying, since we got them with us," Vic joked, motioning to the Americans in the room with his hand while grabbing a slice of the bread baked by his sister with the other. He winced as Vicky hit him over the hand with a spoon, but still took the piece of bread while glaring at her. She stuck her tongue out and he did the same, causing her to laugh.

"Thanksgiving ain't exactly here yet, bruh," Jim voiced, meanwhile, as he poured himself some sort of noodles and soup from a pot. It was red and stung the nose, meaning Sam must've used some hot ingredients. He appreciated a woman who could cook with spices, considering he himself was born out of a Latino family.

"Doesn't mean you shouldn't say a prayer for good fortune tomorrow," Paula spoke jokingly as she used her fork to grab a few Tempura shrimp(An oddly Japanese dish for a Chinese woman, the Hungarian girl thought). She added, "Who knows what we'll run into over there," and she bit into one and smiled at the taste, giving the cook a thumbs up. Sam nodded, proud.

Alex Ryan(the PJ) chuckled, "Amen to that, heh," before grabbing some bread and some shrimp.

"I'll make sure to make a Peking Turkey instead of a duck if we do decide to celebrate Thanksgiving," Sammy snickered as she picked out a bit of each type of food in the pseudo-buffet. The others laughed at the joke.

"The Chinese, always stealing from everyone else," Hass decided to join on on the jokes, despite his own Chinese heritage of family members still on the mainland. He told her off, "You stole ships and jets from the West, stole the PLA's training regimen from the US Armed Forces and now you're stealing out god-damn turkey."

"Pff," Sam snorted, then replied, "Hey, you wanna be the best, copy the best," with a shrug to add upon the dramatic effect. Yet again, the team laughed a little at the quip, with some of them pouring themselves the hot soup, too, after seeing Jim almost burn his entire internal structure tasting it. Sam looked at Jim and chuckled a little as she saw him all red in the face, like he'd been hit by mace.

He seemed to calm down and smile a little, too, but a coughing fit soon hit as the soup must've traversed the esophagus, depositing some of the spicy flakes she'd dumped into that thing. She giggled, watching the man down a glass of soda while Robert found himself a seat. Honestly, she did drop a lot of spice.

Unfazed was the Texan Marine, however. He quipped, "It's why you motherfuckers really did copy everything off of us, down to your Marines eating fucking crayons," while wearing a grin on his face as he ate from the soup.

"You'd know, Texas Man. It's like your favorite dessert," Sammy chuckled, causing the man to snort.

"Heheh," Soshkin snorted, then shook his head. Turning his head to Hass, he spoke, "I guess I now see what you meant about the Misfits, brother," almost as if it was both an insult and a compliment. And, honestly, it was kind of both that they were as Hass had described them. Built stupid, but a tight-knit group.

"We're all built a little moronic," Hass chuckled, then looked around at the table, at all of their comrades, only being able to really crack a smile as he realized so many of their own were back. Even friends of his who hadn't been around with the Misfits, like Aleksandr. It gave him hope some others would be here, like Nicole…

The good one, he thought.

"You are genuinely one to talk about that, Avery!" Robert snapped at him, turning to face the young man as the others started laughing. He barked, "You're one of the main reasons I had to pull you all out of a bunch of bullshit I wouldn't have had to deal with otherwise! Shit, I think you're the reason the CIA sent their Guard Dog on us!"

"Ha! Yeah, true! Remember when Hass actually leaked a document to the War Thunder forums?" Sammy laughed aloud. Soshkin stared at Hass, who shook his head, then pointed at Victor. Sammy looked over at Vic, who seemed to pause as he tried to remember it. Vicky snorted, covered her mouth and Robert rolled his eyes, annoyed.

"I think that was me, actually," Vic mumbled. Admittedly, he had, but it was for the TR-85M1, the Romanian MBT that they were going to ditch anyway come 2020. They'd already bought the new Abrams MBTs to replace them in their tank Division by the time of the UN Intervention in the Russian Civil War, so they were rolling into Russia while armored to the core.

"Definitely couldn't have been me," Paul quipped as he ate some of the soup and remained rather impassive, though his own cheeks glowed red. He continued, "I played World of Tanks, then swore off games like it when Wargaming started fucking us over," as he recalled the events that led to them leaving in his mind:Premium tank Pay-2-Win crap.

"You still whaled on that game, Paul. Not for lack of me and mom telling you off about it," Paula chastised, chuckling a little as she ate a few of the noodles the soup came with. Vic smirked, though he, too, recalled whaling a little on War Thunder, what with buying the 'Click-Bait' and the TURMS because he was impatient about getting to the top.

"It happened once, okay? And I haven't done it since, even on Gachas," Paul replied, crossing his arms.

"You play Gachas?" Jim, Hass and Alex all asked at the same time, with the Pararescue catboy's ears twitching, causing Saila and Sammy to snort. Alexi, meanwhile, ate his soup calmly, remaining quiet and listening to his friends just chat. Though he didn't really know what he could add to the conversation.

"... From time to time. I like the stories for some of them," The Hungarian male replied, shrugging.

"And it ain't like he's the only one. He introduced me to a bunch of them while we were still home, like Girls' Frontline, or NIKKE," Vic snorted, lifting up his phone from his pocket and looking over the games. He sighed and shut them off, sliding his phone back into his pocket as he ate. Vicky, noticing this, decided to speak…

"Hell of a time trying to get him off of those, I'll tell ya. Least he wasn't spending his Salary on them like Paul."

"Nope… Only on groceries and rent whenever we apparently got off-duty leave," The Romanian man replied, leaning back into his chair. The two twins nodded to one-another, having shared the burden of having an apartment in the Capital for the sake of having somewhere to go whenever they got some sort of break.

"Oh, right, you guys were staying in an apartment when you had leave," Sam recalled, too, considering they'd talked about it before. They'd had the place since they were eighteen, courtesy of the military money. She asked them, "How was that? Y'know, sharing a place? Was it multiple rooms so y'all had some privacy, or…?"

"Studio apartment we partitioned with Curtains and soundproofing so I wouldn't have to hear whatever bro was watching," Vicky grinned, garnering chuckles out of Saila and Sammy while the boys gave pats to Vic, the man glaring at his sister. She stuck her tongue out at him, maintaining her grin like a proud little weasel.

Victor, however, decided to get some payback for that little breaking of the sibling code. He told the group in a deadpan, "You're saying that as if I'm the one who was watching porn at full volu-" before Vicky almost jumped at him, covering his mouth and causing the entire group to laugh heartily, much to VIc's amusement.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP…" His sister spoke through gritted teeth, aggravated.

Aleksandr had a moment's pause, then stated, "This does bring up a good question…" and his gaze swept around the table. He asked them, "How do you all think people back home will react to us still being alive, if some sort of magical doohickey ever lets us go visit Earth again? I mean… Remnant is nice and all, but…"

"... Well, we lost our lease on the apartment, so the Landlord's probably thrown our shit out already," Vic replied as he cast a glance over at Vicky, who seemingly did not want to think about it at the moment, understandably enough. Neither did Vic, really, but, honestly, they could just move the stuff over to Remnant.

"Mom would be somewhere between ecstatic and terrified…" Paula mumbled, looking at her brother as the realization struck.

"Yep…" Her twin nodded, shifting a little uneasily in his seat.

"I think my family will be glad they finally get someone to boss around that isn't each-other again," Robert snorted a bit derisively, though that'd be omitting the fact that even he missed those morons. They were still his family regardless of how much he shit himself over it, he thought to himself as he scanned the room.

"At least you'll be able to restock your Coke supply with authentic stuff," Hassan joked and got a laugh out of Robert for that. He then paused for a moment to think about it and mumbled, "My family… I think my sister's gonna lose her shit, honestly. Knowing how I was when Alexei passed and all that… Man, is it weird at least three of us have twin sisters, though," and he cast a glance at Vic and Paul. Their sisters chuckled.

"Ain't that the truth," Soshkin chuckled. He looked at Sam as Saila tugged her sleeve, seemingly surprisingly calm. She turned toward him and smiled, then sighed and sat back down to eat, seemingly missing someone dear to her already, but in her thoughts. Maybe it was her supposed long-lost twin, Anja, maybe it was someone else.

"Saila says her folks and team will probably be incredibly happy," Sam explained to take the attention off of the Finnish girl as she got to eating. She then thought for a moment about her own family, murmuring, "As for mine? Well, I know my sister's gonna lose it," then she shrugged. Hui-Fen was definitely gonna freak.

"This is if we ever get back to Earth at all," Robert replied, causing the entire room to ponder the idea that they might, in fact, never get back home. While it wasn't a bad deal, considering that, if they got home after years, so many things might've changed it wouldn't even have been easy to reintegrate, but also the fact that most of them were here made it hard to split the family.

"Way to bring down the room," Alex Ryan commented, unbothered still.

"Shut up, Catboy," Robert snidely answered, which caused Alex's ears to droop as he glared at the man. Robert grinned, then downed the last remnants of his coke before he turned back to eating. Classic team banter, Sam thought. She hoped Alex wasn't gonna pounce on and scratch the guy now. That kind of stuff was reserved for Anja.

"Heh. Relax, Alex. It's fine," Vic told Alex, looking at him. He sighed deeply as Alex seemed to calm down, then stated, "Rob's not entirely wrong, either. It's not gonna be easy to find any way back, if it even exists," as he looked around the table. The food was starting to cool, going by the fact that the smell was getting less potent.

"I know. But hey, we got here somehow. Maybe we'll get back some way, too," The pararescueman replied, looking around the table. Robert seemed to pause, then shrugged at that moment, not voicing the fact that he was telling Alex he was right. Everyone else, meanwhile, looked at Sam, who sighed and shrugged, before she spoke again.

"Focus on dinner, people. We can talk about a plan of action for the raid afterward…"


With the girls

While the Beacon squad was having dinner, the girls were preparing their equipment for tomorrow's operation, with Vesna herself loading armor-piercing rounds into her magazines. Thankfully, manufacturing rounds wasn't as hard of a process as it would have normally been, so acquiring ammo for all their guns was quite easy.

She watched Katja approaching, her HK-416 rifle now loaded. The Polish girl with lilac eyes set the rifle aside and sat down beside Ves, smiling a little as she said, "Y'know, I still think he's gonna like these…" before pointing at the top of Vesna's head. Ves chuckled a bit, before looking at her magazines. Kat stated, "How are you doing?"

"I'm alright…" Vesna replied, sighing and looking at the one bakelite magazine in her entire kit before sliding it down into her vest. She mumbled, "I think…" before pointing the rifle up to make sure she wasn't aiming at anyone and peering through the holographic sight. She nodded in approval, set the weapon down and leaned it against her leg.

"You look a bit better than when we met here again," Kat asked, still particularly concerned, "Getting enough sleep?" all because she knew how much shit both she and the others had gone through in the War. Lita had also mentioned a few disconcerting things regarding their lives as women in the Russian military, too. At least when it was just the two of them in the apartment, with Ves being away.

"Da…" Her fellow blonde replied, still as calm, but standoffish about the matters as ever. She told Kat, "Don't worry," before sliding a few more magazines into her vest and setting them in place well enough. She hit the vest, making sure the ceramic within one of the few vests who actually worked right was still working right. Thankful to find it was, she set the vest aside and checked her helmet, RATNIK headset and com system.

"Fair… Figured the War would've…" The Polish girl started, then paused as her own memories of the conflict flashed in the back of her mind. She mumbled, "Y'know, nevermind," before removing the magazine from her HK416 and pulling back the bolt to remove the bullet, leaving the bolt hold-open in place so she could look down the barrel, making sure she'd cleaned it properly.

"Why did you join the ranks, by the way?" Vesna decided to ask instead, figuring out it was better to continue this train of thought for a bit. She looked at Kat, asking the surprised girl, "Fight for the Ukrainians despite all your peoples' arguments, I mean… Was it the nationalist in you, was it you wanting to kick Russian ass and make your family proud, or…?"

Kat hummed, then smiled, "A bit of all of those," then she confessed, "It was also about finding you girls and getting you all home," while pointing the plastic PMAG magazine that was loaded with AP rounds at Vesna. She'd went in trying to save some of their comrades, probably for the same reason as Paula.

"Oh?" Their favorite redhead Chechen, Ayesha, quirked a brow up as she walked in, setting aside her Grach pistol.

"Yeah. Defections were possible, so I figured if I saw you, realized it was you and was leading a squad or something," The Pole shrugged, genuinely honest. She set her rifle aside and continued, "I could get you all to Svoboda Rossiya. Save your lives… For Vic and the guys to be alright and all," before she saw the smile on Ves's face.

"It would've been nice. I think they even had better rations in the Legion, but…" Vesna replied, smiling sadly, "You know how it is," and, on the speaker system they'd bought, 'Gruppa Krovi' started playing, the quiet strums of the Guitar and the small additional synth drums easing the girls' lives a bit as they prepared.

"Sadly. Hey, at least it all collapsed kind of after Bakhmut, so you all weren't stuck in the middle of one Urban Hell…" The girl mumbled, then visibly shuddered, her eyes widening, "God, fuck that battle…" before her hand went to her boot, where a combat knife resided. Vesna noted the single speck of blood on the handguard, rust-colored and long dried.

"I remember turning a corner and finding one Azovite or another here or there, pissed off as hell at us," Ayesha chuckled as she set her rifle down and began to disassemble and clean it thoroughly. She was laughing, but the memories of the city were still fresh. The streets, destroyed by artillery and tanks and continuous combat, the bodies, the gunfire and tracers at night….

"Thank the maker, we made it out of there," Lita hummed as she set down the GM-94 she had been carrying with her and pumping the pump to unload the high-caliber grenades. A flash of memory hit her, then she told them, "Reminded me a little of sweeping for mines in in some Kosovar towns back in the day," as she smiled.

"OH, yeah, fuck that! Hah!" Katja laughed, rubbing her face. Pulling out her phone and opening up some old photos from back then, she said, "We joke about Bosniaks and their landmine issues, but Kosovo was a literal hellscape! God, I remember when Pali nearly fell ass-first into an old, rusty knife the Serbs left behind!"

"Heh, or that one time we all waded into an open field while blatantly ignoring the rusty 'Mines' sign off to the side…" Vess giggled… Then realized that was not that funny.

"I think that was a nightmare you had, Ves," Kat mumbled.

"Oh. Right… I remember it now," Ves whispered, shuddering a little.

"Oh, but Vic did wake her up from it, heh," Ayesha teased, smiling. Anja chuckled a little beside her, with Aye continuing, "I think that was actually the first time he hugged you," which caused Vesna to blush. A few giggles filled the room from the other two girls as they prepared, with Ayesha smugly reloading her magazines. She got a light slap on the shoulder from Vesna.

"We had some good times there, didn't we?" Lita spoke, smiling softly even as she remembered her boy issues back then. Truth be told, they all had issues with forming normal fucking relationships that were anything but standard friendships. It was basically just the Misfits being their namesake, with their entire lives in KFOR being more akin to a RomCom without a proper ending.

"As good as it got, honestly," Ayesha smiled a little, the AK mag in her hand clicking as she put roudns in. She spoke softly, "Getting together at night for campfires and making s'mores, living in the same base, making Rob age a thousand years with all our shenanigans," and she chuckled a little as she remembered the MP.

"The fact we got assigned an MP and a CIA agent because of Sammy and us…" Vesna giggled at the thought. Robert and X were polar opposites, too. Whereas Robert was a complete buzzkill at the worst of times and just not interested in dating anyone or anything, X was the kind of tease that made the group surprised she was even allowed to be CIA. Then again, she did do her job well while also having fun.

"Robert was the boys' fault," Ayesha and Lita corrected her quickly and in unison.

"Da, da, I know… Just saying," Ves shrugged, smiling.

"He got along with us, so…" Kat added, smiling, too, while Anja gave a thumbs up, though she seemed to be in her own thoughts now, reading through a magazine. She and Saila remained the two weirdest of the bunch, all girls thought as she flipped the page to the next target. Anja, meanwhile, still wondered if Saila was alright.

"You said you saw him in Krakow, right?" Lita asked, leaning back into her seat, "After you came back from the Volunteer job?" and she stared right at Kat. Honestly, it was unsurprising. One of them was making sure US troops in Poland were behaving and the other was just coming home from fighting as a Volunteer in another country.

"Tak. Just before the Nuke flash-fried us both," The Polak nodded, loading a mag into her rifle.

"Yikes…" Vera whispered as she walked in, Saiga hanging off her shoulder. She set her bulletproof vest to the side and sat next to Ves, checking her magazines one more time, including the strange skeletonized drum magazine she was gonna be using for most of the battle ahead. Or so she hoped, anyway. Most of the shells were blue and uncapped, showing the slugs within.

"Oh, hey, Vera. How ya doin'?" Ayesha turned to the girl, a bit surprised, same as everyone else. Vera smiled at all of them, though that uneasiness each of them had about the girl and how certain things seemed off was still there. She was uneasy, too, but she wouldn't tell anyone anything unless she was forced to, rather obviously.

"Existing for now. Got my Saiga loaded with slugs," She replied with half a mouth, lifting the gun.

"Never actually got to ask ya how being a Spetsnaz is. Must be nice, having access to some of the best gear in the Russian arsenal, eh?" Kat joked, smiling. She chose to keep playing the 'everything is cool' game despite knowing Vera wasn't exactly alright. Best to keep the environment friendly. She'd come out of her shell when she wanted to.

"It has its perks," The woman quipped, then cast a glance back at their green-haired compatriot with the grenade launcher as she was loading rounds with an aqua-colored tip into the tube. She asked, "Lita, what the fuck are you loading?" completely dumbfound as she noticed the rest of the belt was a mix of normal thermobarics and that stuff.

"Ice grenades. I custom-made them specifically for the grenade launcher," Lita replied calmly, gently sliding some of the ice grenades in her belt, one after each thermobaric. The entire room metaphorically froze as they watched the petite girl that was their explosives expert and famed Captain Price LARPer work.

"... Thermobarics and ice bombs. Talk about swift change in temperature," Ayesha quipped, chuckling.

"Replenishment, plus ease of use and pragmatism," Lita shrugged as she set the last of the grenades in her belt, then picked up her Kalash to work on it. She told them, "You blast one White Fang suka with a Thermobaric, they evaporate. You hit'em with an ice grenade, they might just live long enough to tell you what you wanna know.

"Brutal, but nice," Vera gave a nod of approval as she checked and made sure her drum magazine would work properly in feeding the Saiga. She nodded approvingly, slapped it back into place, then looked at Vesna to see the girl's concerned stare, one she was trying to hide behind a smile. The dark-haired Novikova shrugged.

"Agreed," Echoed the voice of the sole American in the squad, as did the audible sliding of shells into her favored weapons tube. Nicole walked into the room, pushed a strand of blue hair out of her eyes, then continued loading double-ought buck into her SPAS-12. She slung the shotgun over her shoulder as soon as she was done loading it and deposited it beside other weapons in prep.

"Y'know, I think this is the first time I see a SPAS-12 in real life," Ayesha quipped as she set her own AK nearby the assembly area and loaded her pistol. She crossed her arms, examining the Italian-made combat shotgun with some degree of reverence. Reverence that Nicole had noticed. The blue-haired girl snorted.

"Say what you will about Italians, but they make some beautiful weapons," She then said as she pat the gun.

"Agreed," Ayesha nodded approvingly. While she wasn't happy that Nicole was dating Hass, or at least seemed to be, she was at least glad that their usual weirdo found someone like her. And they had the shared experience of Afghanistan, so she couldn't exactly get between two survivors of the Sandbox. And, hey, Alex got a new buddy.

"I want to shoot it at one point," Vera quipped, looking at the nice frame of the gun.

"If I get to fire the Saiga, sure," Nicole quipped back, smirking.

"Glad to see we're already making friends," Vesna spoke, a genuine smile on her face. It was rare to see a group of girls just get along through honesty, but they weren't really normal women at this point. Depending on who was asked, they were either better, or worse. Usually the latter was only said by other women who weren't military, though.

"Hass told me about you all rather thoroughly. I've honestly kinda always wanted to meet you since, but our previous life wasn't it," Nicole spoke, smiling a little as she looked at each of them and recalled the boys, too. She did actually like them, regardless of what she figured after Hass had told her how Ayesha acted around him.

"Lucky us we met here," The Redhead herself nodded awkwardly.

"Indeed… Shall we pack and head to sleep?" Lita inquired. She saw everyone else give their nods of approval and knew full-well tomorrow was gonna be one long night op to encounter that Schnee Dust Company freighter and its unwanted guests. Doing one final check of their gear, each girl walked to their respective sleeping space and called it a night…