James offered the smallest of smiles towards the Stranded when she reached out and took the ration bar, mumbling a thanks before she started munching on it.  Well there was at least one bright spot about being crashed here if it meant being able to forge better relationships with the Stranded.  Yes, despite being Stranded himself, it was being Stranded and his official joining of the COG that made him realize the self-destructive ways that his former people were living.  James understood the hate that the Stranded held for the COG, especially the part about blowing their whole civilization to dust with the Hammer of Dawn, but what was the point about dwelling on it?  Whether people believed it was good - it stopped the Locust - or bad - it killed the majority of humanity's cities and populace -, James knew that the survivors couldn't be doing the blame game.  The Locust were still here and they didn't care about humanity's issues; they were going to kill Stranded and Gear alike.  It was best to at the very least work together and focus on the here and now.<br/><br/>Going the independent route didn't save his father.  Or his twin.  Or his sister.  Going with the united route with Operation Lifeboat and conscription was, however, saving his mother and his baby sister and keeping him better fed and armed then he had ever been before.  And there was the very big plus of being able to finally kill Locust rather then run from them.<br/><br/>He hoped that a simple sharing of a ration bar would bring this woman towards a more united path.  How her gaze softened when it fell on him certainly made James believe that it was helping.  But the hate and anger that bled into her voice upon speaking to the rest of them kind of dampened it just a bit.  And it also reminded him of the dangers that they were in.<br/><br/>Glancing over at their wounded CO who was being helped by Andrea, James decided to be the one to key their comms and he looked up to where he suspected one of their squad members were currently perched. "Frost, everything still clear up there?  I don't remember the Locust being the shoot-and-forget type."<br/><br/>James looked back at their destroyed and smoking Raven, and then at the destruction that the crash had caused.  Yeah, this wasn't going to be hard for the Locust to spot at all.  And going by standard operating procedure, this would be where the Locust started converging on what they would see as a slaughterhouse with nothing but dead Gears and any surviving ones being easy pickings to satisfy their usual bloodlust.<br/><br/>"Since we're all standing," James continued, taking it upon himself to state the obvious, "I think that we better think about getting out of here.  We still have a mission to do." He looked to the Stranded girl. "As much as you may hate it, it's probably best if you run with us as well."<br/><br/>Even if he had a soft spot for Stranded, James wasn't going to give the specifics of their operation to her.  At least not just yet.  As much of a bad start as this mission was, they had to find that treasure trove of theirs.  And softy or not, he was certainly<i>not</i>going to reveal the presence of what could possibly be their life line to a Stranded girl who may decide to blab to the rest of her friends and have them selfishly take everything for themselves.  Too many lives depends on those supplies.  Two of them being the most important things that James still had on this entire blasted world.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>