Today was tuesday July 10th and Maxine was looking forward to the soldiers finally entering bronze stage. She still kept her essence armor on whenever she taught them. She didn't feel safe for some reason without it. The soldiers were just as excited about today as well since she had informed them their training would end today.

However Maxine's good mood was dampened somewhat since General McKenzy decided to retire rather than be forcibly reassigned yesterday. He was almost eighty years old afterall.

General Jones had yet to introduce himself to Maxine. She had hoped that he was too busy getting up to date on everything to bother with her. However regardless of that, he would eventually ask to see her. She wasn't looking forward to that encounter. 

Maxine's attention was drawn away from her inner thoughts when Amanda walked in. She looked furious. Maxine had never seen her this angry before and it upset her greately. However she didn't have to wonder long as she started to walk towards Maxine. 

"General Jones wants to see you after you are done here," Amanda said as soon as she got closer.

"Alright," Maxine said, "I take it he did something to piss you off?"

"Yeah, the prick treated me like I wasn't even human," Amanda growled in obvious anger. Maxine had never heard Amanda to use such vulgar language before and realized just how angry she was. 

Maxine let out a sigh. She already knew about people that thought cultivators were not human. However she never thought such a person would be put in charge of keeping track of them. She wondered if anyone even bothered to check to make sure that he wasn't prejudiced in the first place. However Maxine didn't care too much about it as long as he didn't threaten anyone Maxine cared about.

"I wish General McKenzy was still around. He was a dick and he could have fucked that asshole over," Maxine said jokingly to lighten the mood and Amanda immediately started laughing uproarously. When Amanda had finished laughing, Maxine said, "Now let's get started. I don't want to be here any longer than I need to be."

"Alright," Amanda said.

The soldiers quickly grabbed the essence cores that were provided and begin to cultivate. It took an hour and a half before all of them had entered the bronze stage. Maxine carefully described how to form essence armor. She didn't expect many of them to get it right away. It required a person to spread essence all over their body instead of one spot. Like she had expected, only a couple of them were able to do it. Maxine went to them individually and walked them through it. After they had all formed their essence armor, Maxine got a good look at all of them. The style of the essence armor varied amongst them, but the color remained the same dull grey. It was the color essence naturally took when it didn't have an attribute. Maxine gave them all a nod of approval before dismissing them for the last time.

Maxine didn't waste any time as she left the warehouse and went straight towards the office that used to be occupied by General McKenzy. She made her way there and saw that the officers along the way looked far more grumpy than normal. General Jones didn't appear to get along very well with others.

After Maxine walked into the office, General Jones gave her a disgusted look. "Get seated," he said coldly. 

"I prefer to stand," Maxine said just as coldly back. 

"Suit yourself," General Jones said as he put away a file into one of his desk drawers, "If it were up to me you would have an explosive collar around your neck to keep you in line. However since it isn't, I will rescind all of those priviledges that my predecessor allowed you. You will no longer be allowed to roam the base without an escort of some kind. I also do not have the same level of tolerance for your insubordination that General McKenzy had and you WILL obey every order I give you if you know what's good for you. Is that understood?" Maxine didn't like this man to begin with. Now he was treating her like one of his disobedient soldiers. Is he trying to piss me off?

"Go to hell. I am an underage civilian and you have no right to order me to do anything," Maxine answered venomously. 

"You are absolutely correct. I can't order you to do anything. However what I can do is make life for your mother quite difficult by filing child endangerment charges against her. I am not exactly sure why General McKenzy didn't do it himself, but he conveniently left me all of the evidence I need to put your mother behind bars," General Jones said with a smile, "If you don't want that to happen, you will do what I say, freak." Even though Maxine was still angry at her mother for covering for her father's abuses, she was still family and when he had threatened her mother, it had pushed beyond what she would tolerate from anyone or anything.

"Go for it and see what happens," Maxine said coldly.

"What?" General Jones said with a surprised expression on his face. Apparently her answer had gone against his expectations.

"I said go for it and see what happens," Maxine repeated herself as she expanded her shadow to cover the wall behind her. She allowed the angry golden eyes of her Shadow Wolves to appear within it. However that only seemed to anger General Jones instead of scaring him like she had thought it would.

"I will not be fooled by your illusions, freak," General Jones said angrily, "Knock it off if you don't want your mother to go to prison." Maxine felt insulted that he hadn't even taken the time to look through her file properly. She knew General McKenzy would have left some kind of record of the abilities that she has revealed thus far.

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"Do not mistake me for Amanda. I have the power of manifestation and those beasts behind me are my creations," Maxine stated as her Shadow Wolves stepped out of her expanded shadow, "I am not some weak little girl that you can intimidate to do what you want and the next time you threaten my mother, I will kill you. That is not a threat. It is a fact. If you doubt I have the conviction to go through with that, just look at what I did to those russians. Now unless you have something to talk about that doesn't invovle pissing me off, I will be leaving and if you know what's good for you, you will leave me and anyone related to me alone." General Jones grit his teeth as he glared at Maxine with obvious rage. After she returned her Shadow Wolves to her shadow,Maxine left his office. She knew he might try to retaliate against her later. Fortunately he didn't seem to be as intelligent or thorough as General Mckenzy and that made him appear as less of a threat than he could be.  

After leaving the base, Maxine went straight to the hospital to see her mother. However she noticed something odd when she got there. For some reason, the spiritual mark she had left on Silky's mind was inside of her mother's hospital room. She was confused and quickly made her way up there. It became more apparent that Silky was there when she heard the nurses talking about her little arachne as she walked passed them. When she opened the door to her mother's room, she saw Silky standing beside her mother's bed and looking at her mother's arms that were encased in plaster. How the hell did Silky know where mom was being treated? She didn't remember telling Silky where her mother was. However, her question answered itself when she saw Amanda seated in a chair at the far side of the room. 

"Grandma, does it hurt alot?" Silky asked. 

"Not right now, but the doctors have got me on some strong painkillers," Maxine's mother said as she glanced at Maxine walking into the room. Maxine was surprised that her mother was letting Silky call her grandma. However Maxine didn't want to interrupt them and walked over to Amanda.

"Care to explain why you brought Silky up here?" Maxine asked her.

"I didn't. I was on my way to visit your mother when found Silky about two miles away from here. She was asking everyone in her path where her grandma was being treated," Amanda said with a fox-like grin on her face, "She somehow realized I was your friend and asked me to bring her to see her grandma." Maxine knew exactly how Silky knew that. She still possessed the sense of smell that a spider does and must have picked up Amanda's scent off of Maxine's clothes at one time or another.

"Maxine," her mother said to get Maxine's attention and gestured towards Silky, "When I asked for grandchildren, this isn't what I had in mind, but Silky is a treasure regardless. I am surprised you hadn't introduced me to her sooner" Her mother was smiling and Silky started to show a big smile across her face sinc she got called a treasure. 

"I was going to after you got out of here, but it seems Silky beat me to it," Maxine said as she looked at Silky, "You should have told me you wanted to see your grandma that badly."

"I am sorry, mama, but I really wanted to see grandma," Silky said while tears threatened to flow in all four of her eyes, "Are you mad at me?"

"No, I am not mad at you. I know how worried you were for her," Maxine answered Silky as she ruffled her hair, "But next time tell me when you do something like this. If I had gone to your nest before here and couldn't find you, it would have scared me to death." Silky lowered her head as if Maxine had been yelling at her instead of gently scolding her. Maxine was happy that it was that simple to tell Silky that she had done something wrong without having to be mean about it. 

Maxine turned back towards her mother and saw an apprieciative smile on her face. "What?" Maxine asked.

"Nothing, nothing at all," Maxine's mother said.  

"Um, okay," Maxine said while feeling a bit confused, "Did the doctor's say when you will be getting out of here?"

"Another month or so. They want me to be able to use my hands before they let me out of here," her mother answered which elicited a happy cheer from Silky. However Maxine wasn't happy to hear that at all. She had expected her mother to recover much sooner than that especially after Emily had come by help speed up the process. 

The four of them talked for awhile longer before Maxine noticed that a small group of people had started to gather outside of her mother's hospital room. They were undoubtedly trying to get a good look at Silky. Maxine decided that it was time to take Silky back to her nest before the small crowd outside of the room got any bigger and said goodbye to her mother as she led Silky out. 

Silky had insisted on holding her hand on the way out of the hospital and they were greeted by a mob of reporters when they exited the building. She knew that reporters would appear her as soon as she got out of the hospital with Silky and did her best to put up with it. What's alittle more popularity going to hurt now everyone knows who I am? Anyways the more popular I am the harder it will be for General Jones to mess with me. Silky was almost as popular as Maxine herself and the little arachne seemed to enjoy all of the attention as she was all smiles. She did her best to avoid answering any questions directed at her.

However Maxine came to a realization as she finally freed herself and Silky from the reporters. It was that she couldn't take Silky back to her nest. If the anyone found out that she was letting Silky stay out in the woods by herself, it would make her look terribly bad. She hated having to think about things like this. She had prefered it when everything was simple. However she wouldn't have to worry about it for too long. The next beast essence horde was alittle more than a month away. Unfortunately it would be alot bigger and more widespread than the last one and it would form far closer to Patrick than herself. Just thinking about that particular essence beast horde brought back some horrible memories. In the previous timeline, she had been forced to watch both of her parents being torn limb from limb by essence beasts during it. Fortunately she had the power to stop it from happening this time and if Patrick had trained her former self, Maxwell could as well.

Maxine was glad that she had told General McKenzy about it before he was replaced and if General Jones had any sense, he would have the soldiers she trained to start training others themselves to prepare for it. Unfortunately, the essence beast hordes would appear every three to four months for the next two years and each subsequent horde would be bigger than the last. After that, the hordes would appear less frequently, and their overall numbers would become more consistent. However in the old timeline, any semblance of government had been ground into dust by the end of those two years and only a few dozen fortified cities remained. Hopefully they would do better this time. Maxine wasn't going to take that chance. She was going to do her best to increase everyone's combative strength and the number of abilities they could use before the next essence beast horde arrives.