Well, I got to admit, while I'm definately not at the old pace of multiple chapters in a day, I'm actually enjoying writing this story, its a fresh new start on something I enjoyed doing but without being too over the top. I mean sure I'm trying not to drown out everything in realism because that would be too boring, but again, can't have it go to Salem and Sienna fighting with dildos again. Because I will admit, even I can't believe I wrote that scene sober.

"Well this is gonna suck…" Nora said as she was now carrying actual gear with her.

Needless to say, Winter had not been pleased with the layout. Luckily however, Nora was able to play it off that she grabbed the wrong bag, and ran back to her room and packed the 'Actual' bag. Needless to say, everyone's moods had kind of soured because their chill vacation was now going to be turned into another old boring mission. Except for Weiss who was catching up with Winter. While the two were discussing matters ranging from fancy topics like memories of past concerts Weiss had performed at or more simple stuff like how school was going and having a blast while doing it. The rest of the teams had been feeling bored as hell.

"Oh my god, what are we going to do now?" Jaune asked as he was getting bored listening to this, and he used to love to hear Weiss prattle on about ANYTHING.

"I don't know, now they're talking about the values of old battle strategies being modernized for a present day army, I get it, its important, but who wants to talk about that all the time?" Even Pyrrha who loved learning about warrior history felt like she was going to jump out of the bullhead.

Surprisingly, Weiss and Winter were completely oblivious to the conversation that was taking place right now.

"Look guys, maybe this won't be so bad, maybe she's actually a really nice person! Weiss turned out to be nice!" Ruby said as everyone deadpanned at her.

"I mean….for the most part…." She said as she munched on a cookie she managed to sneak aboard.

Oh that was another thing, while Ruby did have all the gear that Winter deemed necessary to the mission, when Winter found her extra bag of cookies and sweets, she made Ruby take them back to her room and grab healthy alternatives.

Needless to say, Ruby had not been happy and had kept a few of the bags of cookies by hiding them under her shirt. The fact that Winter honestly expected her to eat nothing but healthy rations for this whole flight was insane. Seriously, was Winter some kind of health and fitness junkie.

She was certain you could be a health and fitness junkie but still enjoy junk food.

On earth

"Ah choo." Jem sneezed after he finished his chest day workout at a local gym as he went to afood joint to get something to eat.

He was not a fat kid, he was actually really fit. But son of a bitch, if he could just cut out the fast food and start focus on eating clean, he would be shredded as fuck by now. But at least he didn't have a dad bod, he would never forgive himself if he got to that level.

He may have liked going to the gym like any other gym rat, but on the inside he was a fat kid who loved going out to eat. It was a constant battle of fat vs fit. And it was a pain in the ass.

Jem had been back home for a bit. And well, so far things had not gone as planned. While he still had plenty of money saved up for when he left the military, and was trying to find a new job now, things had been a bit difficult. His truck had been having troubles and it was stuff that he knew he couldn't fix on his own, but evne worse, they were expensive fixes. So again, that was another problem. So now he was riding a bicycle everywhere he had to go, which brought on another problem, he was back living with his parents until he could find a place to live he could afford that was decent, but there was another problem in itself. His family lived in the boonies, so it was at least a good four to six miles away from even the smallest community. And sure, that didn't seem like a lot, but he hated doing cardio. He hated cardio when he was in the army, and he sure as hell wasn't going to like it now.

Unless it was swimming, that was an exception. In fact, anything was better than running. But that was besides the point, nobody liked doing cardio.

So as of right now, Jem had been without his truck for awhile now, he was having trouble finding work because of his lack of a vehicle because all the places he wanted to apply to for machinist positions were all too far for him to bike to and back each morning. So he was at the moment stuck working at a local strip mall gym. Which you may ask yourself? Whats so bad about that? You get to work out for free!

Well, the problem was that small town gyms like that weren't usually big or had a lot of equipment, and this particular one was like Planet Fitness, except for even poorer people. That's right, if you couldn't afford the ten dollars a month at planet fitness, then the local strip mall gym would have you covered.

And it was mostly middle aged women pissed off that their husbands didn't find them attractive anymore, or it was mostly middled aged guys having a mid life crisis trying to get in better shape. While Jem would admit, there was enough equipment in that he could get a decent workout in when he was off work, do you know how creepy it is to have a bunch of cougars staring at you? Literally the only reason they stared was because they were desperate for dick because they weren't getting it anymore. And it made him feel uncomfortable.

Because the cougars were not the ones you would see in magazines that you would want fantasize about. No, instead he got the ones who looked like different evolutions of Snorlax…life….wasn't…..fair.

After he finished his meal, he got back on his bike and started the long ride home, in reality, he knew it wasn't that long of a ride, but he was going to take it easy. And enjoy the scenery on the way back.

To be honest, he thought home would be different, but in reality, nothing had changed since he left. He saw some of the people he went to high school with going to the same old bar they had been getting into since they were sixteen. He rode by the school one time and saw that Mrs. Francois was still teaching 1st grade. How she wasn't dead or retired yet was beyond him, because she was in her 60s when he was in 1st grade. So she had to be in her late 80s by now.

"Hey Jem, how was work?" Momma said as he walked back in.

"I don't like it, I thought working at a gym would be cool, instead you get a bunch of fat cougars trying to feel you up, I can't keep doing that, I'm gonna have to get fat or something, fuck this." Jem was completley honest.

"Now you know how I felt back when I was bartending." His mom said as she dealt with the same thing.

"But come on! I mean, I'm decent looking, but I'm hardly the fitness model they think I am!"

"Jem you have to understand, when you're divorced, in a loveless marriage, or just haven't gotten any dick in a long time, you don't care where it comes from as long as its young and single." Momma said as Jem's face went pale.

"Mom…ew….." He said as his mom was laughing.

"What? I personally wouldn't know, I have your father for that."

"MOM!" He yelled as he didn't want to hear this.

"Oh come on boy, its not the worst thing you've ever heard us say, why I remember one time back in the 90s when we bought this one swing set and-"

"OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, I DON'T KNOW WANT TO KNOW!" Yep, and there was the other problem.

You see, he was the last kid to move out of his parents house because he was the youngest. But now that he was back, he had to deal with the fact that his mom and dad had no problem talking about their degenerate sex life. Not because they wanted him to know, but because they got so used to not having their kids around that they no longer had the filter from 18 to 22 years of having kids.

Needless to say, he had learned thigns about his parents that he wish he never found out. Worse, he didn't tell his parents he was coming back on Terminal leave a day early, so he walked in on them in the living room.

Needless to say, he still hadn't been in there since he got back. He also couldn't sleep in his old room because his dad had turned it into storage. Part of it was storing guns and ammo, so he couldn't complain there, but part of it was also golf clubs and random ass sports memoribilia. So again, things had been weird for him moving back.

He had not been sleeping in the actual house, instead he was living in a 1991 mallard sprinter motorhome that he got on craigslist. He got it for a very good deal, only a thousand bucks, of course he later found out that the reason for that was because the last owner had been murdered because he was a crackhead who got into debt with the wrong people.

He still wanted more though, ideally he wanted to see if he could find a nice house to live in, but until then, living in the motorhome would work. Even if it still smelled like crackhead.

After talking to his family for a bit more. He went back outside to his motorhome and did his nightly ritual of fixing and cleaning at least one part of it. The way he saw it, once he found a decent house he wanted to buy and live in, he could sell this motorhome for more than he paid for it with all the work he did on it. And use the money for something else.

He expected his truck back within a week if everything went as planned. At least he didn't have to worry about student loans anymore at least.

Overall though, his life was not that bad, sure while some things didn't go as planned, you couldn't expect everything to go exactly as you pictured it. Sometimes life was like that, you had to take what you could salvage from the situation. While he didn't necessarily want to be living in a motorhome taking a bike to work, he knew this was temporary. And even then, he still had someplace to sleep, he had good food, and best of all, he had the oppurtunity to make his life better. And who really even needed all this fancy stuff in the world.

While he used to think success was measured by how much stuff you owned, he found that people became so obsessed with collecting every little thing that was related to their obsession, they never asked themselves if they really needed it.

Do you really need to collect a funko pop version of Yang Xiao Long who did nothing but sit there as a cute display piece? No, so he had sold a lot of the stuff he had that was collecting dust not really serving a purpose.

He was not a minimalist by any standards, he simply didn't like buying things he knew wouldn't serve a purpose other than looking good in a collection. His only exceptions to that was his dvd and book collection. But even then it was just a collection of works he enjoyed and could reread or rewatch over and over again without getting bored.

What he was trying to say was even though life didn't go as he planned. He wasn't nearly as wealthy as he hoped to be at this point in his life, he didn't have a wife and kids yet, he didn't have his motorcycle. But either way, he was happy and still working to improve his life anyways. He still had so much of his life left to live, and he would be damned if he spent it being pissed off about the things he didn't have.