Chương 1063: Day One Thousand And Sixty-One

Dear Diary, Okay, I want this made completely, utterly clear. I do not deserve my ladies. Not at all. The same goes for Mom and Dad. Like, just to be clear, I don't deserve them. They totally deserve my ladies. Which, I guess maybe that's my role in all this, to connect people who deserve each other. Like, even me, in the sense that some of the Deities here and now deserve me at my worst. Okay, maybe not quite that. Me at my worst is, like, Conrad without the class, style, or artistic merit.

Me at my worst is The Morrigan, or the Mother of Water Panthers, or the 'desecration of a corpse before death' that happened with Lyssa. Of course, I'm trying to be completely honest with myself about myself, and that sometimes requires being completely honest with myself about other people. In this case, The Morrigan has literally had generations of Crow women striving to meet impossible, ever changing standards, not to mention turning a little girl to ash because she tried to do a good thing.

The Mother of Water Panthers literally ate entire nations at their height. Meanwhile Lyssa... I'm not gonna say 'she was attacking my kids' and use that to excuse me doing what I did to her, but she was literally the incarnation of rabies. Of violent, psychotic rage. She shoved that shit into everyone at the Homestead. Me included, I guess, which would put her squarely into 'fuck around, find out', or 'play stupid games, win stupid prizes' territory. Huh. I guess that's both good and bad.

Bad, that she didn't really put anything in me that wasn't there so much as call forth what I'd been keeping under wraps. I've always been able to come up with all those bloodcurdling threats, and at some point here and now I've gotten the power to put them into action. I think the first time with that might actually have been Diana, because while I did some messed up shit before then, it was mostly spontaneous, in the heat of battle kind of shit. No, wait, King Shitdick. Gregor Gormsson.

I tortured him to death multiple times, and in case me putting Diana on the list of 'sick shit I've done' didn't make it clear, Reviving him afterward doesn't make that better. At any rate, it's not warm and fuzzy knowing I've got those kind of impulses inside of me. Fuck, I think I used to blame them on Mimic, but I can't do that any more. Shit, that might have been one of the biggest reasons for my crash and burn after Yule.

I can't really remember if I spelled that out to myself then, but that definitely hit me, that all of those horrible thoughts and threats and deeds might be intrusive, but they aren't invasive. The call has always come from inside the house. Even if, y'know, Lyssa happened to hack my phone to make it ring that time. Thing is, while it's not great knowing that I've got those tendencies, it's good knowing that the only time they've come out recently is when Lyssa taped the button down.

The only times I've brought them into play, other than Gormsson, is when something threw me into such a rage that I couldn't control myself. Each of those times, the ones I remember, were the ones where one of my kids was in danger. Huh. I think maybe when I told folks that the kids are my excuse to stop holding back, I might have been talking less shit than previously advertised.

But my point is that I don't do any of that shit just because I'm stressed, or upset, or anything other than 'children in mortal danger' levels of shit. Not that I don't have the impulses, but that I've learned to control them. Maybe even direct them, although I dunno about that. It's not like I've started making horrific statuary out of people who deeply deserve it. Yeah.

Yeah, I think The Morrigan deserved it, as did the Mother of Water Panthers, and I'm totally gonna withhold judgement on Lyssa because of that aforementioned fuck around, find out; play stupid games, win stupid prizes clause. From what I'm given to understand, there are maybe some others who deserve that level of shit.

Zeus comes to mind, what with him being a serial rapist who is also head of 'The Pact', or the alliance of Deities who have kept Infant Mortality up near fifty percent instead of down in the sub-single digits where it belongs. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. I'm pretty sure Aphrodite doesn't deserve me at my worst.

Shit, I'm not sure she deserves to die, and I'm increasingly convinced that she wants me to do the deed because anything less than me perma-ending her, and Ares will find some way to bring her back. I gotta talk to her about that at some point. Maybe Saturday. Not sure. Definitely not today, though. Because I'm still kinda reeling both from my recent fuckup, and from how my ladies and Mom took care of it without me even realizing. So yesterday I spent training Cadets in the Yards.

Nothing amazing, nothing horrible, just another day of gains for the Cadets with more speed and grit than raw muscle power. I mean, I've been working on their Endurance as well, because I've come to the realization that grit isn't exactly what Endurance means. While any one of those Cadets have more grit than the Phileo and Newark Cadets put together, their Endurance doesn't show it, because 'grit' isn't 'how much you can shrug off', it's more about being able to function even when you ought to be in the ground.

Which is important; it's one of the things I've had to instill in the Newark Cadets and hone in the Phileo ones. But just because you can keep going with injuries that should have killed you, that still might when you let go, sit down on the sofa, and pull out your guitar to play for your wife while she makes dinner, doesn't mean they won't actually kill you. Just that you can finish the mission.

The Camden Yards Cadets aren't sickly or anything, but they definitely are showing some of the long term effects of food insecurity and poor health care. The former of which is sad in a town with Drivers' guaranteeing everybody eats, the latter is just criminal in a world with Magical Healing. But I'm working on that. Mostly with lots of distance running and lifting, because they need more Strength too. At any rate, got home, had dinner with the fam, this time without interruptions.

Pasta with a selection of sauces. One cream, alfredo I think, one butter, one vegetarian tomato, one meaty tomato, and one that I think was pesto based. The pasta itself was weird little mutant trumpet shapes. Tasted fine, looked weird. Kids didn't notice, I don't think. Dreamt of the ladies doing some complex choreography. Like, practicing it over and over and over. They even got one of my tentacles into the act. Only one, which was weird, but still kinda neat.

Woke up in the morning, had breakfast, took the kids to school. Had to put my foot down, Aoibh is nowhere near old enough to start learning math. The evicted bean has yet to do anything but eat, sleep, and shit, which despite its similarity to my pre-Isekai existence, is not yet enough to learn counting, Arithmetic, Variable Equations, or whatever Saffron teaches the advanced kids. Speaking of advanced kids, Ria got all dolled up today.

Not sure why, wasn't gonna question it, because sometimes you just wanna look pretty. Of course, Ria's sense of 'pretty' varies from some of her sisters pretty drastically. Kinda funny, I think the only one who would agree would be Alex, who doesn't want to look 'pretty' in the first place. My little Sidhe girl came to school in her armor. Full length chain dress, which as noted is shiny, shiny titanium alloy.

I had no idea where she'd gotten them, but she had some neat bracers, the kind of things you could use as shields when wielding a spear two handed. She also had a helm that looked a little like the one that extended from Menace's tiara. Everybody likes to look pretty now and then, and nothing ever made me feel quite so pretty as people acknowledging when I dolled myself up, so I snagged her before she wandered off to study Mor-Mimic Equations with Saffron and said, "hey, kiddo. You're looking really pretty today!"

She just smiled shyly and said, "thank you, Mama!" I tapped one of the bracers and said, "these go really well with your armor." Her face lit up and she gushed out, "thank you!" before glomping onto my leg. When she came up for air a few second later I felt some kinda way about not asking where she'd gotten them, because her next words were, "you always get me the best presents!" I plastered on a smile and ruffled her hair. Okay, ruffled the top of her head where the titanium steel cap protected it.

"Thanks, kiddo. Time for you to get to class."

"I know! Thank you again, Mama!" Kitten? Yes, Goof? I take it you're responsible for getting Ria those accoutrements for her armor? I felt the warmth in Saffron's voice when she replied, you, Tallulah, and I. Even if you weren't consciously aware of it. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. Mom took care of the cake? She did. Between teaching, Madeline's misadventure, and Aphrodite, I think you've been more distracted than usual. I don't deserve you guys.

Yeah, that got me a thwap to the back of the head. You most certainly do. You've earned your place in each of our hearts time and time again, Goof. Now, your students are waiting. Don't care how much they tell me, it's still hard to believe I deserve a family that would cover for me when I miss one of my daughter's birthdays.