Okay guys, I wake up everyday and I thank god that I don't live in either New York or California. I know I live in Illinois which isn't much better but damn I'm so glad I'm not in NY or CA.

Seriously those two are legit competing to see who can screw their people over more.

To those of you who do, you have my sympathies.

Anyways, as for this chapter, I was having a little difficulty because once again, its a filler chapter. And next chapter I'm going to start getting more into what happened in volume 3.

I'll be honest, I've been debating what to do with this story simply because I'm already almost a 100 chapters in and I'm not even to where I was in Chapter 50 of the original out of place. I know one of my goals was to slow down the story when I first started, which I did, but dang it just feels weird.

NOW, I did have a crack idea, which was for Jem to accidentally end up running for the council of Mantle during the whole volume 8 fiasco and shit. But that just seems too dumb.

That and even if Jem did that, he would probably end up trying to sink his own campaign simply because 'Fuck this, I ain't going into politics!'

Anyways, this chapter is going to be the last one I write about Jem's militia group and any of that BS in Mantle or Atlas simply because I want to get back to the chain of events that leads to the destruction of Beacon and shit like that.

Also, just going to throw this out there.

No Jem will not be able to fight on equal ground with Cinder. At least not without a SHIT ton of training. So any villians he fight would have to pretty much be foot soldiers or grunts because hes simply too outclassed by huntsman even though I'm having him keep his good luck semblance.

Winter was looking forward to this trip to the Vytal Festival. Ever since Jem had started his militia. It had been weird around the house. Obviously they were still dating and they were still going strong. But she couldn't help but feel that it was awkward for her to be dating a man who was essentially an anti government group while she was technically also a part of said government group. She didn't really figure that part out yet. The whole situation was confusing as hell. And to top it all off, Jem's community outreach group was just growing and growing each day. Jem was right about one thing.

"Give me a few months, and I think we can have it up to a 1000."

He was at least up to 1200 people now.

She should have been impressed. But she couldn't help but feel it was ridiculous. All he did was show people how much fun it was to shoot guns! How could people bond over that?

She thought only Americans were that gun crazy.

She rolled her eyes. That was behind her now. Jem could have his little militia group. Even though he still hadn't come up with a name for it. Nala absolutely loved it when Jem would tell stories from their little training seminars. She groaned at that memory. She had her own moments with Nala where the girl proved she could be a bit of a 'girly girl' when it counted. But then she would have her time with Jem where one would realize she really was 'Daddy's girl'. She had accepted that, because that was just normal father/daughter behavior. What wasn't normal father/daughter behavior was the fact that Jem had got her listening to speakers like Jocko Willink and David Goggins at a young age.

Seriously, she was far from being the overly feminine types, but she didn't want her adoptive daughter to turn out like Jem and be looking for varmints in the woods to shoot. She knew she was exaggerating when she thought that, but it was a real fear of hers.

Her thoughts turned to horror at what Nala could grow up to be.

"Hey Pa! You got any more of that gator stew!" An older version of Nala said as she had a fat dip in her mouth and a beer in her hand.

"Nah, Little girl! We gots to go and keel us another!" An older version of Jem said as he smoked a fat cigar.

"Well sheeet, old man! Lets get going!"

Okay she was just being stupid by thinking they would end up swamp people, but her point still stands.

The thought of Nala being full blown redneck scared her. She shook her head of the thought. That would only happen in a crack fic.

"Oh, this is just what I needed." Winter said as she was relaxing in the recuperation area of the ship they were on. It included a Sauna, which was just what she needed.

"Hi Hun." Jem said as he walked and sat down next to her.

"Hey babe." She said as she nuzzled into his shoulder.

"Amazing how quick you relax now that you're technically off duty." He said as she smiled and held him close.

Normally she wouldn't appreciate being around a sweaty Jem unless he was working out, but the sauna was an exception.

"You would not believe the amount of trouble the council has been giving the Atlesian military about trying to put down your little rebellion." She said as Jem slowly stroked his thumb across her hand.

"They're still riding you about that? I thought you said they couldn't force you guys to get involved due to the laws of the land about that?"

"Jem...you of all people aren't seriously expecting the government to actually leave people alone are you?"

"Well when you put it like that, No I don't. But you already told them all you knew, what are they so paranoid about? They hiding something? Something even more secret then you know the whole maidens and relics thing?" He said as she shrugged.

"I'm just gonna say its some political bullshit and leave it like that. Don't spend your time trying to understand political logic, you'll have an easier time trying to convince New Yorkers that chicago style pizza is the best." She felt like cuddling, but now was not the time for that.

"Would you do me a favor and rub my shoulders for me?" She asked as he nodded.

Jem thought his own government was paranoid. But this was nuts. In a world where monsters were on the outside of the city, you think it wouldn't be a big deal for citizens to own weapons. He rolled his eyes at that, Winter was right he was kidding himself if he thought politicians were different in any form of reality. But luckily they had no issues back in Mantle. He just figured they were afraid because the government didn't like the fact that people could take their own safety into their own hands without needing to rely on the people they elected in. He didn't think it was anything to worry about. After all, Mantle had the happy huntresses in the show, if anything they were more of a paramilitary force then his little group. He grunted a bit in irritation. He really needed to come up with a name for them. Along with a bad ass insignia. He sure as hell was not doing the punisher skull. But either way that could wait. Right now he had to focus on helping Winter relax.

Backrubs were the one thing he was good at.

"Man its weird not doing this on a dude for once." Jem said as Winter opened one eye in annoyance.

"I was feeling just fine until you said that." She was trying to sink into the pleasant feeling she was getting from her sore muscles being caressed.

"Its true, most of the time I charged five bucks to do this to guys in my unit." It was one of the ways he made extra money.

Take a bunch of dudes with back pain and little money and say you'll give them a short back rub for five bucks? That was a steal.

"Are you sure you were in the military and not a pride group?" She asked as the more he talked about it, the more she thought he was part of a gay support group.

"Nope, its just when you get a bunch of dudes in the woods alone with each other, they'll start acting gay as a joke."

"That just sounds like a porno idea."

"To be fair, that was the point, you make it as weird as possible, and suddenly you're not so pissed off about all the swamp ass and running around in the middle of summer with a plate carrier and the rest of your gear on." It was a natural stress reliever.

"None of our soldiers do that." She had been with the Atlesian military for years, and she had yet to see a situation like that.

"Do their suits have air conditioning?" He asked as she thought about it.

"Well, they do have a feature which regulates body temperature which is optimal for-" She was cut off by Jem.

"Well no wonder they don't do anything crazy to get through the day, if they had our equipment and no internal AC in their armor, they would do the same thing."

"If you say so." Winter personally didn't believe it.

Jem meanwhile was starting to wonder if it actually was gay.

He rememebered one incident where it was about 98 degrees out and humid as hell, and their field departure time got delayed and they were pretty much just camping and waiting to leave. So they started taking clothes off until they were just wrestling in ranger panties.

He stopped for a bit.

"Could it?" He asked himself.

"Naaaahhhh."

Not gay, camaraderie.

Melania

Melania had felt dead to the world the last few months. She would go to work and pay her bills. But that was the extent of her time exposed to the outside world. Ever since she had found out the horrible truth in this world. She had done nothing but work, eat, sleep, and train. Her new weapon had arrived from the blacksmith, and she had been training with it non stop with a combatives instructor close by.

She had lost everything when she found out her kind was not welcomed in this world. And training helped take her mind off of it.

She paid a retired huntsman to unlock her aura. And while it did give her a boost, it wasn't anything significant. It just made her stronger than the average civilian in this world.

But it was okay, she didn't need to fight a huntsman. She just needed to subdue one man.

And that was Jem.

She would find him.

And she was going to take what was hers.