Falling Through Time: Basking in Firelight: Book 2

We're All Mad Here

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Warnings: Beginnings of a battle. Dead bodies. Gunfire. Explosions. The works. Oh, and posturing, cause naturally.

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New recruits for the rebellion flooded into the ranks practically overnight. Apparently, Jefferson and Hamilton had quite the impact. They were rather proud of their work. But now they were no longer free to run off and do whatever they wanted, they had new recruits to train. They were split up by state and sent to their respective leader. Jefferson got the most because their stunt had been pulled in Virginia, so naturally, most of them came from there. He certainly had his work cut out for him.

There were extremely few from the western states for two reasons, one, they were so far away from the real conflict, and two, not that long ago, the nation split in two, much like the first civil war, but instead of north and south, it was east and west. The western states were their own nation now. The Eastern states liked to pretend it was still all one big nation, but it wasn't. There was the Western States of America and the Eastern States of America. They weren't very united anymore. So Jefferson was thankful for the few volunteers that did show up from places like Texas and Arizona or Idaho or anywhere over there. If they were being entirely honest, the United States actually split into three. The Eastern States, the Western States, and the Independent States. The W.S.A and the I.S.A were rather well off, it was the E.S.A that was having trouble.

But it was also hard to find a place to assign the people that came from outside the E.S.A since everything was pretty much set up by states, there wasn't person leading that state. They usually just got assigned to whoever got the least amount of new recruits.

Jefferson watched as his regiment took apart their guns and put them back together again. Every single screw came out before it went back together. That was the rule. Soldiers had to know their weaponry inside and out, that way if it jammed or broke on the battlefield, the soldier could deal with it accordingly. That or just snatch up a new weapon off a fallen body. Either way, you have to know how your weapons functioned before you even thought about wielding. Plus, it was important to disassemble guns every now and then and clean them thoroughly.

He also had to test their skills, see who had a natural knack for what and who could barely be called a soldier. Sadly, most of them had absolutely no idea how to properly handle a gun. Jefferson had to go through all the safety procedures of when handling weaponry before they could so much as look at a target.

When they finally weren't waving their guns around and trying to accidentally kill each other, Jefferson let them take a shot at their aim.

They all sucked.

Well, not all of them. There were a few that could actually hit the target, but there was one that grouped their shots tightly right in the fatal areas. "What's your name?" Jefferson asked. He had gone over the list of names of new recruits last night, memorizing each new addition, but he didn't have faces to put them to yet.

"Margarita, but everyone calls me Peggy."

"Peggy? You wouldn't happen to be a Schuyler, now would you?"

"Proudly, my brothers serve under General Hamilton. I feel bad for him, they're all a terrible shot."

"You know who's a terrible shot? Aaron Burr, couldn't hit a thing at that rally, so he just started chucking grenades."

Peggy laughed.

"So how did a New York woman like yourself end up in my Virginians?"

"Oh, I'm not really part of your men, sir, I just saw how terrible they were doing when I was walking by and decided to show them how it's done."