Claudia listened to the Colonel's briefing stoically, fighting off the creeping feeling that she didn't exactly belong here. She'd been in elite units before, when she was still a proud soldier of the [i]Heer[/i] way back when, but she had never come across a unit quite like the one Colonel Blade talked about. Broad roles and unconventional tactics were par for the course, but the way he had looked at each of them in turn and explained that they were there for their skills struck her as odd. In Wulfram, every soldier was a link in the chain. You fought together or you would die alone. Even in the special units, it was all about the team and your roles in it, and mavericks were simply not allowed. To hear Blade talk about her and the other recruits like that, it sounded like the Rough Riders welcomed with open arms the same mavericks that the [i]Heer [/i]would have thrown out. It was a welcome change of pace, to be fair, but she still had the sinking feeling that she was out of place in this kind of unit. Flashing a salute as Blade finished his briefing and gave the orders, Claudia figured that she would just have to soldier on and see where things went from here.

“A’right [i]uberfrauline[/i], Aihara, you heard the colonel," Ross, the "cowboy", called out. "Let’s go show the munitions grubs what fun they’ll be missing, showing off our big muscles and how fire and control exercises can be used to master the art of shuffling around cans of tuna.”

"...[i]uberfrauline[/i]?" Claudia said quietly to herself as she followed after the badger. Well, at least it was better than her old nickname back at the [i]Heer[/i], she figured. Removing her own rucksack and rifle, she set them neatly in the pile after Ross deposited his own gear, perking up her ears when the Badger asked the others to take care of his guitar. She didn't know that she could have brought an instrument with her, and she had started learning to play guitar herself before deciding to join the LDF. Regretting her over-formality yet again, she came up to Maxwell, Jacquo, and Abraeven in her usual dignified manner.

"I'm sure you guys know where everything goes," she told them in what she hoped was a casual tone. "Just be careful with the G308, the safety tends to jam if you aren't careful, and I'd rather not charge into battle with a fragile club instead of a rifle, [i]ja[/i]?" Turning on her heel, she double-timed after the cowboy to find Major Brownden. Looking up at the Landcruiser that based the 101st, it took every ounce of willpower she had to not just stop and stare at the thing, mouth agape. Standing there, dwarfed by its sheer size, it seemed impossible for such a magnificent piece of engineering to exist, and yet here it was.

"Hey, [i]uberfrauline[/i]," the cowboy called out, shocking her out of her stunned amazement. "Did Wulram ever build anything like this, or at least as irresponsibly large and expensive? This can's just begging to be kicked by an airstrike or arty barrage."

"[i]Nein[/i], but they sure tried to," Claudia responded with an amused smirk as they strode up to the Major. "Given five years, maybe we make something half this size for twice as much, it goes five feet and gets stuck in the mud. [i]So ist das leben[/i]."