Okay, so one job interview down, a few more to go. We'll see if I actually get the job. Right now just trying to get my legs back for the civilian world. I've been on a few dates when I got back. Bought a gun as a present for myself for Christmas. And also bought myself a switch lite, since even though I don't play video games as often as I used to. I still want something to keep me occupied in between gym hours, reading, and work.

Jem

"I'm feeling better today." Winter said as her sniffles had gone away a bit.

"See? Vicks, soup, 7 up and saltines, the magical cure all." He said puffing his chest out in pride.

"And to think it was that easy, my father would demand the highest paid doctors in all of Remnant." Winter said remembering how her father reacted to being sick.

"Well, here amongst the peasantry we learn to suck it up." Jem joked as he would never understand how people went to the doctor for every minor thing.

He was pretty sure he established that point yesterday when he ranted to Winter, but the point needed to be driven home anyways. Who knows how it would have been if Winter was one of those types who needed to go to the doctor for every little problem. Actually now that he thought about it, if Aura was an all around defense, how could people still get sick? Or was that only for physical injuries but not actual disease? Oh why was he even arguing about this with himself right now. He watched RWBY for the action, not because he cared about the intricate details of how Aura worked.

"Aren't you at all worried about having something that may require a doctor?" Winter asked as he shrugged.

"Nope, I already have a plan that if I end up getting some really fucked up disease and have a certain amount of time left to live, I'm just going to start working on my bucket list, might as well, if I'm going to die, I'm going to die having fun." He said as Winter rolled her eyes.

"Thats messed up."

"Nope, the messed up thing was back when I was in the army, we ended up talking to each other about if you had to pick the way you were going to die, how would you do it?" Jem asked remembering those fond memories.

"I get the feeling I'm going to regret asking...but what did you come up with?"

"I was going to jump out of a plane with no parachute dressed as superman, that way its a fun way to go out, and the way I see it, its going to be quick when I hit the ground, so should be fine." Winter was suddenly really glad Nala was not around to hear that.

"...Does everyone in the infantry joke about dark stuff as much as you do?"

"Yep, its our favorite past time, right next to seeing how much money it would take to get people to eat an insect. I ate a scorpion once for ten bucks and a buddy of mine ate a horsefly for a dollar."

"I keep forgetting you're a bunch of savages."

"Not savages, just broke." He defended himself.

Anyone whos ever been a little low on cash will admit they did some stupid shit for money at one point. Granted Jem never went so far as to be one of those people who sell feet pics on the internet, but he had done some questionable shit for money. Mostly involved around eating weird stuff or animals people would never think to eat. In his defense though, you could cook scorpion the right way and it would taste delicious. It was the same way with any insects. For example, his buddy from Oklahoma told him about a caterpillar you could fry on your knife and it would taste just like french fries. Plus insects made a great source of protein for when you couldn't get real food.

It still wouldn't be his first choice, but hey, if he ever needed to eat insects to survive, he was certain he could do it.

"Nobodys that broke." Winter said as Jem just gave her a 'Wtf' look.

"First off Winter, you grew up in a rich family, and you're an officer, you get paid a lot more than the enlisted guys, again, shit gets wild when you have no money, I remember how one time I tried to make my chicken ramen taste better by throwing in sliced up chicken breast, that way I wouldn't be the stereotypical broke bitch eating ramen noodles every night." He said as he had been broke as shit before, it ain't fun.

"You're still eating ramen noodles every night though..." She said pointing out the flaw in his logic.

"Yeah, but the more stuff you add, the less poverty you're in." He defended himself.

"That makes no sense, why would more ingredients mean you're not as broke as you think?"

"It just feels that way!"

And here we saw another common occurrence between the two. Jem using poor people logic, and Winter being unable to understand what he was talking about, because she wasn't a peasant.

To simplify things, if you were to represent Winter and Jem by different branches of the military, Jem would still be an Army grunt, and Winter would probably be in some fancy job in the air force. Jem was certain of it. Don't get him wrong, he was proud he wasn't a Pog. But after visiting an air force base and realizing that they had seperate personnel to come and clean your tray off the table for you blew his mind. It was sad that he got excited over little stuff like that.

"Good lord, I can smell the poor off of you." Winter joked as she had learned to loosen up, and rather than take his logic seriously, she would joke along with him. She figured that was the best way to get him to shut up.

"All you need is a redcoat and a british accent and you'll sound like one of those snooty tea drinkers." He said remembering the time he got to meet british soldiers.

Don't get him wrong, when he met some guys from the British army, he could drink and party with them, that being said, it was also weird as hell to deal with them. He figured it was a stereotype that Brits drink tea, and yet when they went down to Louisiana for a training rotation, he saw the brits have a small kettle and a portable stove to make tea. It was the most wonderfully stereotypical thing he had ever seen.

But hey, sometimes stereotypes exist for a reason. (1)

"Wait a minute, how did we get off topic here?" Winter was certain they were talking about she was feeling better from being sick.

"Simple, we steered this direction because I mentioned how my poor person cure all worked."

"Oh yeah thats right." She somehow had forgotten about her sickness.

"Yeah I know, sometimes it feels like our conversations are just the thoughts of some ADHD motherfucker bored off his ass." Jem said as he didn't even understand how they could have these conversations.

"Well enough of this frivolity, can you please get my change of clothes, I'm sick of wearing pajamas." Winter said as she had been stuck in the same few pajamas since she had been sick.

The only time she really took them off was when she had Jem fire up the hot tub so she could take a hot bubble bath. Complete with rubber ducky. Even though she insisted on having no rubber ducky. Jem had put a few rubber duckies in anyway.

One was a pirate duck, another was a soldier duck, and another one was a sailor duck.

Winter may not have been a child anymore. But she would admit one thing. It was kind of cute while she was soaking and enjoying the warm heat of the hot tub and she saw the ducks float by her eyes. Combined with the bubbles and the epsom salts Jem had mixed in, it made for a very relaxing experience, almost like being back at a spa. The only downside was she asked for Jem to bring her hot tea, but she also demanded he blindfold himself as soon as he entered the room to give her the tea. So he had to slowly walk to the tub like he was playing minesweeper.

He suggested that Weiss could bring the tea in, but sadly she went shopping with Grandmama and Ruby.

Seriously, why was it that Jem seemed to be getting forced into these awkward situations with Winter?

The gods had a weird sense of humor that was for sure.

Back on Remnant

So after that little incident with Detroit, Ironwood had sped up research on the dust. He wanted enough to go in, grab winter and get out. He was still refining enough for the mission to retrieve RWBY and JNPR. But he had an agreement with Ozpin, he would send in Glynda to get his students back. And Ironwood would focus on getting Winter back. The trick was pinpointing the exact location where they were. Last time they had a rough guess. But thanks to new tech, they were getting closer and closer. He did the research he could with the information he had.

Turns out Detroit was over 300 miles away from Winters location. They had discovered her location at some hick town outside of some city called Rockford. Which based on the drone he sent there. It looked almost as bad as detroit. But if he thought that was bad, it had nothing on the city of chicago. He could have sworn he saw five muggings happen in the span of ten minutes based on the drone footage.

On top of that, the drone could only show them so much information. Ironwood knew enough about this world to know that the military and government of earth would be able to track the movements of the drone, so it could only fly around at night and only for a bit at a time. Which was makings things take longer than usual.

But the good news was that they were getting closer to bringing them home.

And then this whole mess would finally be over.

(1) Hey look, I'm not bullshitting with some of my stories from the army, we actually did get to meet some guys from the british army when we were doing a training rotation in Louisiana, it was when I was brand new to the army, and was the first time I had ever met anyone from a foreign military. And those guys made me laugh simply because all the stereotypes I had in my head turned out to be true. I saw those guys literally make themselves tea in the middle of waiting for a live fire exercise. It was awesome.

I've been lucky, because we got to meet soldiers who traveled to the US as part of training rotations or sometimes just random events. Like one time we got to meet soldiers from the German army who were in the US for some weird parachuting event or some shit like that. I don't now, all I know is we got to host german soldiers.

If I remember correctly, I got to meet, Germans, Brits, Aussies, and the last one was some african nation, I don't remember which one.

I will admit though, the Aussies kicked all of our asses at drinking. That was a fun night.

One thing is for sure if you're lucky, you'll get to either train with other militaries. Or most likely, there will be some weird ass public relations event, and somehow you'll meet each other like those two kids forced to play with each other at a party where you don't know anyone.