For Mai and Jake, the week seemed to go on as normal though for the both them, each faced some individual challenges.

Mai's lack of "Seven" was the first problem. Although she was only in a coma for roughly a day or slightly less, she had requested to be cleared for duty ASAP. She had a feeling too that Lorenzo would have done the same. For him, it seemed there was no rest for the weary or wicked.

That had reminded her of her Helldiver commander, Caulder, before things changed.

Either way, without "Seven" keeping her in line, Mai's behavior was that of depression. Sure, she was much more talkative to the other pilots outside of training now but inside, even more so with the simulations, Mai seemed to have some disregard for safety. In a sense, that's what had happened on Joppa when she had thought that those two remaining Cruxi were going to...destory her. She "pushed" Seven out and went crazy and went on one last reckless assault before she went out.

It was because of this that some or perhaps all the pilots, from Mai's view anyway, were showing more concern than when she was letting "Seven" do most of the normal stuff around base and in combat. And she was sure that since Jake was here, they were more than aware of her split-personality problem.

Still, she did follow protocol when ordered so it wasn't like she was constantly causing problems around base.

Jake, though, had his "mixed" bag of affairs. Jake had no trouble with the squad leader Katya in his view. Though he did have to stop the rhymes sometimes since it did tend to bother her. Still, he did help her with planning strategies and enemy information during sim runs so in terms of cooperation, he felt he was gaining her trust to some extents. Jason and Serah were a "mixed" bag so to speak. While he did have fun sharing and listening to their kinds of music, Jake had sensed that neither fully trusted him. Probably due to how much he had already known of them before even meeting him.

He was from a "Recon" division so yeah, making friends tended to get rough in that regard. At the same time, he knew that "unity" was needed in this squad so he did his best to help.

From Sigma and Iota to Mai's unstable personality and helping other squad members like Katya and Ariin's unique condition, Jake had the busy week.

Then this day came when he and the others were called by Captain Ritsu to the briefing hall. Mai was rather surprised about the "child" but she knew better when she saw her rank on the uniform.

For Jake, though, he knew Squad Sigma was going to get some attention but wasn't expecting THESE new additions. Another thing he had tried to do during the week was to talk about their last battle at  Leviticus. Despite all the collateral damage there, he had told the squad members that they none the less repelled the Cruxi so the squad would be probably getting some "special attention" at some point.

But these three...even Jake knew better than to be too nosy while they were around.

Needless to say, Jake didn't ask any questions so he kept to himself.

Mai did the same too but her mind wondered on the little girl who was now her superior. Mai knew some of the things that were done to try to win the war with the Cruxi...from the Helldivers division to what Sigma, Iota and their sisters went through...experimentations with frameworks...

What was that little girl forced into to get to this point? What did SHE endure to wind up here in the war?