Okay guys, Here we go. Gonna be a short chapter. Lifes been busy. Just trying to get something out.

Jem had a feeling Whitley was going to be alright. He had adjusted surprisingly well to the rancher lifestyle. Jem was honestly surprised he took the two guns he was given as a gift. Jem knew from the show that Whitley seemed to think physical combat was below him, but now here he was accepting two guns. So a lot of progress had been made. The only way it could get any better was if Whitley turned into a mini version of him. He knew that wouldn't happen. Whitley had too much of his own personality for that to happen. And even though he respected Jem, he didn't want to be a carbon copy of him. Which was a good thing in the end, what was the point of being alive if you were just going to copy someone else down to a tee? As long as Whitley didn't end up like his dad, that was good enough for Jem.

"So not widely publicized oath? I'm just going straight to the office?" He asked as he was talking to Winter who was his current security detail.

"Yes, the General believes it would be wise for you to meet your colleagues as soon as possible." Winter still couldn't believe what she was doing right now.

She didn't know whether to be impressed that Jem was now a highly important figure in Atlesian Politics, or be pissed off that he was technically her boss now.

It was a mixture of both.

"Yeah, I'll be honest, I don't think I'll like any of them." Jem knew that from the show they at least seemed to understand that Ironwood was going nuts.

But he didn't know if that was going to be the case now that they had taken precautions to avoid the exact scenario in the show. For all he knew they were going to be pedantic dickbags now that things were relatively peaceful. God he hoped not. Last thing he wanted to do was deal with some self righteous cockgobblers on a daily basis.

Speaking of self righteous cock gobblers.

"Today, we mourn the loss of democracy in our beloved Kingdom as Jeremiah Cotton has assumed office today." Lion Skelter said on the tv as Jem rolled his eyes.

"God, I hope someone is banging his wife right now."

Seriously what did he do to earn the ire of that reporter?

"You know, now that you're a polician you won't be able to talk like that." Winter reminded him.

"Winter if I censored myself, I wouldn't have won." He said as he may have only won by a little bit, but people loved the fact that he wasn't scared to be an asshole at times.

"My point is, it wouldn't hurt to use a bit of professionalism every now and then."

"No promises."

Winter just rolled her eyes. She knew that he could be professional when it counted. The problem was he wasn't very knowledgeable about how reporters work. They wanted to frustrate you so they could get higher ratings. So Jem was playing right into their hands. Whether or not he should care about it was up to him.

"Anyways, just promise you'll be civil with Sleet and Camilla, they're not bad people." She said as she looked over at Jem.

"And do you HAVE to carry that in here?" She asked referring to the six inch Colt Anaconda he had on his hip.

"You do know who you're talking to right?" Jem said as she rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"Why do you need to-"

"Ahem, as I recall, IF Ironwood decides to go full Stalin again, I would rather have a way of defending myself versus ending up like Sleet." He reminded his girlfriend about Sleet's head being turned into a canoe.

"I give up." She said as she threw her hands up.

Jem took a deep breath as he was outside the council chambers door.

"Well, here we go." He said as he opened the door.

Melania

Melania couldn't believe all the knowledge she had a hold of right now. Turns out the happy hunttresses had done their own kind of intel gathering on Jem since he chose to run against Robyn. And considering how much they disliked him after he beat her, they had been all too happy to share their information and their dislike of him. They didn't have any public information on where he was currently living, but they knew he had moved down to Mantle away from the floating city. They also knew he did a workout in the morning, but that he was usually carrying a weapon.

That info didn't matter so much to Robyn's band of hunttresses. But for Melania it was valuable. She wanted to know when to plan her next strike. But she didn't want to attack him in broad daylight. No, she had tried the flashy approach before, she needed to be smart this time. She thought back to her Uncle who was a Provo. ANd she knew she had to find a way to distract and cause mayhem to the point where she could manipulate events.

Currently the entire group besides her had decided to go get some food. But she was staying behind pretending she was sick. In reality she was going over the details as to what she knew about Jem's life.

"Let's see, Jem will be expecting me, so I need to find a way to make it so I'm not the biggest problem." She thought as she looked over photographs.

And then she settled on one.

"Of course! It's so simple!" She said as she held one up.

"He'll be expecting me to go after him, but what he won't be expecting is a group attack on someone else." She said with a smile as she set the photo down.

A photo of Nala sitting on Jem's shoulders.