Chương 1000: Day Nine Hundred And Ninety-Eight

Dear Diary, Y'know, sometimes I gotta wonder where some things come from. Seriously, by now it's just kinda stupid of me to be surprised by how much I enjoy dealing with kids, and by kids I mostly mean little kids, post-diaper, pre-pubescent, made out of curiosity and innocence kids. Okay, yeah, my kids aren't really made out of innocence, and I'd be lying if I ever really thought they were. Even when my kits were barely out of kidney bean cabbage stage, I half expected them to start pulling some shit.

Which is utterly unfair to them, because other than 'nom, sleep, shit, repeat', they didn't do much at all. Okay, Hailee sorta did, but the only thing she did beyond that was 'stare at me', what with her having her eyes open since a few seconds after she was born. I guess maybe I'm weird. I don't like working with kids because they're 'innocent' or 'pure' or above all 'good'. Really that last one is what people seem to think out of reflex, that I've never really understood.

Kids are just little ids wandering around bumping into shit like the world's least effective Roomba. Not even 'totally ineffective', given their propensity for sticking stuff in their mouth. I guess maybe it is their purity I like, but it's not the whole 'oh, they are little angels' purity. Or if they are, it's 'biblically accurate angel' angelic purity, where anybody seeing them ought to run screaming as the kids all chorus 'be not afraid' and shit.

Yeah, kids are 'pure', but only because they haven't learned to hide their motivations. Not really. And they definitely haven't learned to hide them from themselves, how to be fuckin' hypocrites. I think maybe that's the biggest reason I feel like I might be a decent parent; my kids might occasionally be little kid sneaky, but they're not fuckin' hypocrites.

They might be as socially awkward as the Roombas their behavior once resembled, but that's just it, it's social awkwardness, not some kind of fuckin' game to get over on each other, or on those of us in the Mom Collective. Then again, outwitting the Mom Collective requires outwitting Saffron and Marie at the same time, which is way harder than any dozen and a half kids can muster.

Shit, I'm not completely clueless, and Tallulah is that weird kind of straightforward where when you try to pull the wool over her eyes, she's gonna sit there asking 'what is this wool, and why have you put it in front of my face' rather than being bamboozled. Then again, she's Overlord of Rich Man's Port, and up until I stopped The Morrigan from dethroning her, she kept that chair by outmaneuvering a whole fuckin' Court of Fae. Shit, the only one of us who might be considered 'easy' to con is Siobhan, who...

Let's face it, my kids may be little hellions, but they're not complete little assholes, and it would take a complete asshole to want to con Siobhan out of anything. I will now point off into the sky and say 'what is that interesting looking thing there' and run before anyone mentions me conning her into letting me deflower her and throw her to my wives to nom any floweration I missed, because I'm not witty enough to say 'look, air' and get away with it like Luke.

So after running the Camden Yards Freshman Cadets through their paces yesterday, I had them lifting weights and running the obstacle course as well. A few items stood out, especially after doing the same with the Phileo kids two days prior. Shit, I'm thinking of them as 'kids', and I'm pretty sure there are at least a couple who are older than me. Then again, like the man said, it's not the years, it's the miles. At any rate, I can summon up more than a quarter of the class by calling for 'Cadet Aetos'.

Fuckin' ridiculous is what it is. Also, I've got two Obols, one guy, one girl, and the girl is in fact Bonnie's younger sister. Not sure if any of the Aetos Cadets are close family to Raven. Or even to Bonnie, since Bonnie and Raven are cousins. Also, while the Alliance Academies have apparently given up on the entire 'Dan Cadets Best Cadets' thing that was going on when I got to Phileo, and most of Camden Yards is Bag anyhow, some things are not quite so quick to change.

The Yards Cadets did better on the obstacle course, but I think part of that is because they're just plain smaller on average. Not, like, Saffron small on average or anything, but I'm pretty sure that the mean height of the Phileo Cadets is a solid four inches taller than the Yards Cadets. Maybe six. Then again, Phileo's a bigger City, I think they might lean toward selecting taller Cadets because there's a certain presence to be had just by being tall, and Heroes need to be seen to do their jobs a lot of the time.

Thing is, the Yards kids also did a lot worse on the weightlifting portions of the day. Yeah, we can work against prejudice all we want, but it's gonna take a generation or so before better nutrition gets the kids out of the hole eating 'whatever doesn't move fast enough and we don't need to sell to pay rent' hit them with. That said, I wound up a little surprised when none of them fell out during any of the distance runs.

Not hugely surprised, because once I started looking I saw all the signs of the Cadets pushing through. I remember that kind of thing, where you never stopped taking the next step, because if you did the cop or the dog or the druggie or the gang 'recruiter' or the rapist, and sometimes all of those but the dog were the same fuckin' dude, would catch you. So you never stopped stepping, but each step was pulled from a little deeper inside, using whatever you managed to dredge up while taking the step before.

Yeah, every Cadet there knew that dance. Made me angry, but nothing I could or would take out on them. Shit, I'd probably have to dig up the motherfuckers who originally fucked the Yards over. Now that I think about it and remember the days we talked about Camden Yards in class, I'd have to dig in Sparta for that. Which might be arranged at some future date. Some possibly nearby future date.

But I am deliberately not thinking about that, because much like I have been so many times since I got here, while I am the heavy, the muscle, the hitter, I am also the distraction. I will find out that it's time for some motherfuckers to Find Out very shortly before I deliver doses of Find Out, I'm sure. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. At any rate, got home, snuggled my kids and ladies before settling down to eat.

When I got a look at Siobhan, I stopped, kinda stunned.

"Have you been sunbathing?" She smiled shyly.

"Yes? It's been warm out. Well, warmer. And while I can't exactly be active, I can at least get some fresh air." I smiled back, then brushed her hair back so I could get a good look at her tan. Okay, calling it a 'tan' was a bit much, but she had the tiniest bit of color, and it made her platinum hair stand out even more.

"You don't have to explain to me, Ice Pop. Looks good on you." My god she was radiant when she smiled.

"Thank you!" She is, isn't she? Yeah. You sure you're not a God of Luck. Because I've gotten lucky as fuck with the ladies since I got here. Nonsense. You've simply done your best, and been rewarded by the Fates accordingly. Pfft. Me? Get them to look up from their deep and abiding love of crack cocaine? Nah. That got me the laugh it deserved. Still, you've done well, and the ladies in your life have simply noticed and chosen you as their partner. And each other. And each other, as odd as that seems to me.

Yeah, well. You've certainly gotten your share. Because you're the best. I know. When everybody got up to the Bath, I spent some time playing with the kids while the rest of the Moms plus Isadora and Hailee spent the time soaking. The new kids joined in, and if I didn't quote go to town dunking them the way I did with the rest of the girls when we played Kaiju Mama, they didn't seem too put out when they got a little bit soaked. Okay, a lot soaked.

I wasn't really copacetic with them being called 'Boy' and 'Girl', but their sisters seemed to have decided to call them that, and they didn't look like they felt some kinda way about it, so I didn't grief my girls. I did pull them aside after toweling, though.

"So. You two like it here?" They both tensed just a little, but they nodded.

"You still wanna stay, right? Now that we've gotten that Cold Iron out of you, and you're getting healthy again?" Another pair of nods.

"Okay. You two've seen what the girls did on their doors, right?" The girl said, "yes?"

"It's kind of a tradition at this point. No rush, not pushing you or anything, but when you're ready, I'd love to see your names on doors in that hallway." The boy tensed maybe a little more, then said, "but..." I closed my eyes and nodded.

"Your names. Wanna know a secret?" They both leaned in as I waved them forward. When they got close enough I could slip my arms around their shoulders in a gentle hug, I whispered, "whatever names you pick? Those are your names. Whether they're the ones you had before because you still like them, or totally new ones because you want to start fresh. Entirely up to you." The girl said, "okay, ma..." She clapped her hands over her mouth, but I just smiled at her.

"I would be honored if you called me that. But you don't have to. Okay?" They both nodded, hugged me, then raced off after their siblings. Dreamt of my ladies making much over Siobhan and my tentacles. Like, not even in a sex way, but in a 'isn't she just so cute' way. Which is weird, because I'm not sure how a tentacle could be considered 'cute' by a non-Kraken, but here we are. Then again, I did kinda think Kraken-Saffron's tentacles were jetting sex, so I'm not judging, just confused.

If it's maybe odd that I wound up teaching Math in the Temple of Love again, rather than shifting to another Temple, I'm not gonna look too close at it. Mostly because now that the new kids could go along, the girls decided everybody needed some school time. Had to shut my own fuckin' mouth and smile, because the boy is better at math than the girl.

I mean, not objectively a math genius like Ria, and frankly Lindsey is better than him with multiplication and division, but then again she's older than him too, I think. But a lifetime of being told I'm bad at math because I'm a girl kinda set me up to bristle when I realized. Hopefully he didn't notice, and focused on how I put on the proud mama face.

I think he might be better than Alex, actually, and I can't tell if I'm a good teacher or a bad mom, because I'm tempted to use that competitive streak of hers to get her to buckle down and study her times tables and shit. After lunch, when I had them all working on what my old teachers would call 'small group study', I said, "okay, kids, I've got to do something, so just call me if you need help." When I got a universal round of head nods and affirmative noises, I Co-Located.

I looked over at The Morrigan where her face now stretched across like a yard of tentacle.

"Hey, Morrigan. You still sane in there? I mean, as much as you ever were? Blink once for 'yes', twice for 'no', three or more times for 'the devils from the cucumber patch need avocado lotion for their testicle juice'. Or just don't blink if you'd rather I just flex a little."

Yeah, it's a little hard to read her expressions, because despite the whole 'anime faces are like that because exaggerating some features makes it easier to display emotions', while her face objectively now covered more square footage than normal, it wasn't very mobile. Then again, she'd lost all of her wrinkles, so I guess from a certain very limited point of view, I'd done her a favor. After waiting for a solid twenty count while I think she was trying to glare at me, I tried again.

"Look, Lady Cassandra, I meant what I said back then, both about Redemption and just killing you if you'd rather. But I don't want to kill you just because I misunderstood you, or because you're having a bad day." I looked around and realized that The Morrigan now hovered low enough that she existed in a kind of perpetual twilight.

"Or, y'know, 'arbitrary period of time', since it doesn't look like you get much 'day' or 'night' here. Which is also something I could be willing to grant you, as a kind of reward for good behavior. I could maybe shuffle you over to where there's more day and night." Still no response.

"Just so you're aware, if I flex, it's probably gonna stretch you something fierce. Might very well tear things. Could possibly kill you. Which is why I don't want to do it unless you've decided that 'ever widening hoop' is your goal body type. So. Flex? One for yes, two for no." I seriously considered that if she'd gone completely dissociative, like there wasn't anybody home any more, it might be more merciful to end her, when her eyes slid slowly shut. Took like a ten count for them to go from open to closed.

Then the same to open again. I waited while her flounder face twitched, counting to twenty before her eyes slid closed again. When they opened, I reached out and touched her cheek.

"See? That wasn't so hard. Now, you ready to talk about shit like parole?" Over the course of the next minute, her eyes slid closed and open twice.

"Well. Shit. You want me to, I dunno, just hang around and keep you company?" Another slow double blink.

"Okay. You want me to go away?" She blinked once, and I sighed.

"Okay then. Send some Clergy to my Temple when you're ready to talk. Fuck, even if you've decided that being tentacle bling is your calling in life, but you want me to stay the fuck away from you from now on, as impossible as that technically is, send them around to let me know and I'll stop bothering you." I collapsed back to myself before I could give in to my sudden urge to yank down on her limbs just a little.

After sitting in the classroom, listening to kids grappling with arithmetic for a bit, I felt almost like I wasn't a complete piece of shit for having that impulse.