Chương 1027: Day One Thousand And Twenty-Five

Dear Diary, Yeah, yesterday's dinner was something else. Fall apart in my mouth bear tendies with crispy crunchy coating, steak cut deep fried potatoes with that crispy outside and fluffy creamy inside, little curds of melty cheese, and Marie's sweet and savory syrup covering all of it. Utter mouthgasm. I think at some point I'm gonna need to dig out the self-help books again.

Yeah, the ones I've got are the shitty kind that are mostly quotes from famous people about common things folks struggle with, but it helps me think sometimes. Yeah, I'm a little all over the place today. I think it's partly the incredible dinner from last night. It's also partly the fact that I helped make that incredible dinner. Like, I actually have Skills. If I remember right the whole 'Young Adult' is probably nerfing my Skills a little bit, but I've got a Skill called Kitchen Witchery.

Which is just blowing my mind in multiple ways. First that I've got Skills. I've been accumulating Skills the whole time I've been here, I think, but the old Inspect didn't show them because of the scale it was using and that whole 'nerfed into uselessness' thing. Except I'm sorta thinking that they are not in fact nerfed into uselessness, because I'm still technically a 'Young' Adult, which the old Inspect would only show as having little plus marks next to the number one.

Meanwhile, I'm teaming up with Marie to make fuckin' heavenly creations like that... Whatever it was. So after dinner Marie carried me up to the Bath. We got declared 'super silly' for kissing the entire way up, but I'm surprisingly unperturbed by that. Once we'd washed away the sweat that working in a kitchen all day long has left on us, we hit the Bath proper for a good long soak. While I floated there, something nagged at me, so I tugged Saffron over to us.

"Hey, Kitten?"

"Yes love?" She'd been floating next to Siobhan, trying to get the kid to kick, annoyed at her lack of success, but still enjoying the closeness. I pulled Siobhan, Hailee, and Isadora over as well. Nothing inappropriate happening at the moment, and I kinda wanted the aquatic cuddle pile to accrete more.

"Did you know that bit about Skills before your new Inspect went live?" She head tilted.

"Which bit?"

"You know, the bit where people younger than Adult can get Skills, but they're all nerfed to hell until they hit 'Adult' standing?" Emotions flashed across her face. Comprehension, lingering disgust at Franklin, and quickly covered shame.

"I suspected, yes, but I had no way to be certain until we used it on Isnomi." I frowned.

"Didn't you write the stuff in the dialogue boxes?" She shrugged.

"Not really? It's mostly phrasing things in ways the person Shaping the Spell can understand."

"How?" That got a chuckle out of her.

"It is a very complex Shape, love."

"No shit. I watched you do it. Still don't understand... Wait, you mean it's doing a Divination on the person Shaping it?"

"That's a vast oversimplification, but it's not fundamentally incorrect." That got me pondering for a while.

"Huh. Wait, does that mean the names of the Skills are... What, not uniform?" This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. She shrugged again.

"For common Skills, it might use a name the caster has read. For others, it might alter them somewhat." I grinned at her.

"Like I've got Thick Skin," I paused, "that reminds me, I think I need to start teaching that Shape to the Cadets." She shook her head.

"Please don't." Before I could ask why, she explained.

"Not to Freshman Cadets, at any rate. Using Skills like Swift Foot and Strong Arm will prevent them from pushing their innate Attributes as high as they could naturally go. Essentially, they will plateau sooner. It's better to teach them those after they've hit their natural plateaus." I sighed, then quietly said.

"Ah, shit."

"What?"

"I taught them to Alex." Saffron winced a little, then rocked her head side to side.

"Things could be worse. Her Shaping has improved immensely, and that would explain why. But she'll want to stop using them while training." I nodded.

"Okay. I'll let her know. Hopefully she's got the self-control to avoid the temptation to use them when she shouldn't be." At her nod, I thought for a second.

"But that's why I've got Thick Skin and you and Isnomi have Thick Skull?" She gave me a look that said I would enjoy regretting that particular reminder.

"That would be a common Racial ability among Faun. Well, one that's easy enough for us to pick up, and is trained in the same ways as Thick Skin."

"So does the name matter?" She frowned.

"Like, is your skull tougher than the rest of you?" She sighed, the frown dissipating somewhat.

"Yes. It's not entirely useless for the rest of my body, but mostly it prevents cranial trauma."

"And it makes you stubborn?" Yeah, I got dunked for that. Probably deserved it. I also got tickled until I inhaled water, which wasn't fun, but was far less unpleasant than the typically comorbid drowning, which apparently I can't do any more. I mean, none of our kids can, but I hadn't realized that we can just breathe in water. It feels weird, and I wound up way less buoyant, but the worst part was when I climbed out of the Bath and had to cough all that shit out.

Just generally unpleasant, but the tickling itself was kinda fun. Also, it was justified maybe, but I couldn't help but laugh when my tiny tyrant poked me in the side and grumpily said, "maybe." To which Murder Mittens, mid-guffaw, said, "Absolutely So." Dreamt of holding my Kitten under, observing her dissolving, realizing that her head really did go last. After the first time she got pouty until I did it again.

Dreams are weird, but dreams wherein my ladies are made of foodstuff and enjoy being eaten are particularly weird. Of course, nothing wound up being quite so weird as today. With the Cadets from the Yards I focused on weight training. Their Endurance isn't bad, and they can push way past where even the higher Endurance Phileo Cadets can, and their Agility is at least the equal of the Phileo kids, but they're still making up for lost time when it comes to packing on the muscle.

Of course, when the Cadets wound up bitching about being trained to be stevedores, I brought out my secret weapon. Weapons, really, since I managed to get Angel and Bill both to show up and do some weightlifting. When the fuckin' Mayor shows up and outlifts you, you can't exactly whine about the only people needing weight training are physical laborers. Okay, he outlifted all of them. Angel outlifted the whole fuckin' class. Fuckin' hell she's gotten strong. I didn't get into the competition. Totally not fair.

Bill bench presses weight sets. Angel bench presses small buildings. I bench press geographical features. But like I said, got the Cadets' heads in the right place at least. But that wasn't the weird part, that was just Wednesday Physical Training. Bodyguarding was pretty normal, as was Siobhan watching.

I had two of me noodling around in the same region as the kids; most of them aren't really playing things where I add anything to the mix, so I just stay close enough they can invite me or call for me if they need me. Usually with my Marital Arts book or something equally picture heavy. Yeah, I picked up some comics when I was stealing shit.

'Dark Knight Returns', because one of my old teachers wouldn't shut up about that shit. I now kinda see why. But no. The weirdest part of the day? Happened in the morning, when Marie took my hand and Co-Located the pair of us to the Kitchen. A bunch of ingredients sat there on the counters, waiting. Potatoes, yams, carrots, corn, beans, onions, garlic, leeks, chicken, beef, bear, fish, pork, all of it clearly fresh.

"Wow! What are we making today?" Marie smiled, took a step back away from the counter, and said, "Tell Me."