Chương 1076: Day One Thousand And Seventy-Four

Dear Diary, I'm really struggling with myself not to feel guilty about Siobhan. I mean, seriously, she's the Healer. She's also... Okay, I was gonna say the voice of Reason, but let's face it, that's pretty much Tallulah and Saffron both. Not that Siobhan's not smart, but the two of them have the whole Reason thing in spades. Very nerd. Much logic. Very rationality. Wow. Yeah, Marie and I provide the wacky for the hijinks, Saffron and Tallulah make sure the Rube Goldberg actually functions something like a machine.

Siobhan is, if anything, our voice of wisdom. I'd say 'Moral Compass', but that's really not accurate, because that's my job, and it's one I'm not gonna fob off on anybody. Wow. I said that. I actually said that, and while I'm kinda surprised as shit, I'm not actually gonna take it back or try to sugar coat it or put all kinds of caveats around it and shit. I'm the Moral Compass. The buck stops with me.

I mean, yeah, I'm the Goddess here, the one people look to for that, so it just makes sense that with people listening, I need to think about what I'm saying. I need to take responsibility for my actions. I mean, okay, I already kinda had that in mind with Agency and Consent and Consequences and shit, but I have to pay attention not just to what I do and why I do it, but what people are gonna think. I'm not talking about caring if they judge me. Fuck that noise.

No, I gotta worry about the fact that like it or not, I'm a fuckin' role model. People are gonna look at my actions and assume that I'm the one to model their own actions on. Yeah, I've put it in my Doctrine that they're supposed to think for themselves, told my High Clergy to do as they will, sure. But here's the thing, a lot of people need exemplars. They don't want to lead themselves all the time. They want to follow.

I'm not saying that in the 'they will all follow me', followed by a tyrannical laugh kind of way either. But... I'll use myself as an example, because why the fuck not. I love thinking, pondering shit, wondering what's right, what's wrong, and what's left. My brain just kinda goes there when it's at loose ends. If I'm not doing something I need to think about, and sometimes even when I am, my Mind naturally wanders to pondering shit. Usually heavy shit, but sometimes just weird shit.

Thing is, and this is the important part, or really important parts, first of all I am occasionally pondering the ethics of a situation entirely different to the one I'm currently in, even when the situation I'm in has some ethical dilemmas I ought to be hashing out before I do irreversible shit. Secondly, there are definitely times when my brain just kinda overheats and gets all sweaty like I've just done some heavy working out all day long, but with my brain, and I need to rest and relax.

Shit, sometimes I need more than just the mental equivalent of a night's sleep. That would be why I totally get why Siobhan wanted what she wanted, to just let go and let me force her brain into screen saver mode. So yeah, I'm a pondery type and I get tired of that shit and need a break. Folks who have neither the talent nor inclination for pondering may occasionally want to say 'I'm stumped, tell me what the right thing to do is'. I get that.

I also appreciate those folks more than the ones who do the 'I'll follow my gut' all the time, or worse the ones who do their thinking lower down, because that way lies fuckin' Zeus. Both in the sense that I'm pretty sure he uses his own cock as his Moral Compass and that dumbasses doing that are likely to wind up skewered by said cock. So yeah, I'm the Moral Compass for the Alliance. Shit, I'm pretty sure I've got some, as in more than one and maybe more than a few, Worshippers from Muscogee and Boltophsberg.

I might even have some from Compton by now, I'm not sure. Assuming they're actually paying attention to my Doctrine or my Clergy, who better be at least trying to get familiar with said Doctrine, more power to them. Shit, I'm pretty sure Panther has no idea about my Doctrine, but he seems the steady sort who thinks about his ethics anyhow. So I'm the Moral Compass for what amounts to an entire section of the world. No pressure.

I joke, but here's the thing; I am uniquely qualified to say 'fuck someone pressuring me to do the wrong thing and call it right'. The few people with emotional levers on me don't use them that way, because they're the main ones who use me as a Moral Compass.

Yeah, now and then they ask me to do some nominally shady shit, or shady adjacent shit, but we all recognize that said shady shit is not, in fact, me saying something is Moral, but me saying something is so fuckin' tempting that so long as it's a gray area or remains in the Bedroom and Maw, I can be bribed. Fuck it, I said I'm the Moral Compass, not that I'm a good one. I'm just gonna be the best I can and if I fail... I pick myself back up and try again.

Spirit of Aaliyah aside, Healer that she is Siobhan knows better than to ask for 'fucked senseless without pity or pause' when she's not fully recovered. So while I feel maybe a little guilty for not, I dunno, Assessing her and double checking, she's a big girl and took that risk on her own. And after all, her considered opinion was 'worth', so I'm not gonna beat myself up about it. Learn from it, yeah, or try to, but not abuse myself any more. Wow. I'm officially putting that off for later.

The fact that I just realized that I do, in fact, abuse myself. At any rate, I hit the kitchen late yesterday and cooked up a quick and dirty bisque for our Darling. Because she'll eat that to bursting and it's got the protein she needed to recover from the blood loss and injuries. Sat her on my lap and spoon fed her while Aoibh nursed.

I think maybe somebody pointed Marie's brain at my diet from back in the day, because while I loved me my tendies then and now, as I fed Siobhan Marie kept leaning over and popping nuggies in my mouth. Of course, Marie had done Marie things. At least one of those nuggets was a chicken nugget, yeah. Not just rough cubed chicken breaded and fried, either, but some kind of savory chicken pate that had been battered and fried. Really, really good stuff. Not just chicken, either, though.

Some veggies, but again not chunked breaded and fried, but pureed, seasoned, battered, then fried. There was definitely some red meat, although I'm not sure if it was beef or venison or bear. Then again, she popped several of each into my mouth. I think. Fuck it. Nuggies good. Marie awesome. Siobhan filled with soup. Of course, midway through the meal Saffron tugged at me, Co-Locating me under her butt, and had me feed her nuggets.

I didn't feed Marie or Tallulah; in the former case she was focused on making sure the kids didn't turn the Dining Room into a gigantic food fight of some kind, especially a sauce-enhanced food fight. In the latter case Tallulah didn't seem to know what to make of the nuggets. I mean, she ate them, but the look on her face the entire time just screamed 'what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck'. Not, horrible bad, just paradigm alteration by foodstuff.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. I took pity on her, hopped to the kitchen, found some bread, and toasted some thin slices up. When I brought that to her, she started using those toast slices as edible utensils for the nuggies and sauce.

"Thank you," she muttered, blushing.

"It's okay, T. You looked like you were struggling." She snorted.

"My Goddess is a Deity of Change. I ought learn to accept it." I shook my head.

"Nah, T. I get it. You've been doing things a certain way a long, long time. Between that and not seeming like somebody who Revels in Change naturally, I think you're doing fine, just by trying. Pushing your own boundaries. Learning. She pulled me over and hugged me.

"Thank you, Goddess." I just looked at her until she smiled softly and said, "thank you, Tabitha."

"Any time, T." Siobhan definitely enjoyed the Bath as much as I did tonight. We soaked way longer than normal, and eventually everybody just kinda drifted off to sleep. Right as I was almost dreaming, I had a sudden thought. Kitten? New kids are drown proof? For a while now, love. Thanks. Dreamt of the ladies rushing around my Maw in pairs. Weird, but no weirder than any other night, really. Woke up and nudged Siobhan.

"You coming today?" She laid a palm over Aoibh's exposed ear and groaned.

"Will you...?" I snorted.

"Not until you've gone the full eight weeks, Darling." She pouted.

"I meant do your best to help me recover faster?" I leaned over and kissed first her forehead, then Aoibh's.

"Sure, Ice Pop. Need you ready to go in ten, though." So today was the last day before the Season Break, and my Camden Yards day. If the Cadets from the Yards didn't lift nearly the weights that the Phileo Cadets had, they definitely passed any reasonable standard for 'trainee hero'. Really, the weakest in the class wasn't any weaker than the weakest in Phileo; some of the Phileo Cadets just had the muscle mass and size to push a lot further.

Of course, when it came to the distance run, they positively smoked the Phileo Cadets. Impressive, what with the Phileo Cadets doing two fuckin' marathons in a day. Funny thing, the Camden Cadets didn't really add much distance, they just cleared it a lot faster. Even funnier, they didn't use that extra time for dunking and flexing on the obstacle course or doing more lifting. Instead, they spent the rest of the time... Okay, the Phileo Cadets cheered Siobhan on.

The Yards Cadets, for all that they'd been a little cool to the Obvious Dan Girlie in their midst, respected her trying to push through the whole run even through obvious injury. And by 'obvious', I had to replace her robes with slacks when she bled through them. Not a lot, and it closed up with Healing, but enough to win some sympathy and grit points from the Cadets. Enough that once half of them had finished, at least one of them was always near me, asking me...

Well, honestly, I can't remember half of it, because it was just so much bullshit. What I was doing for the Solstice, whether Siobhan was really the Healer for the Ladies' Dorm at the Phileo Academy, whether she was really an Archmage, how she'd gotten injured, just anything they could think of to distract me. While the ones still running would scoop Siobhan up and carry her as far as they could before they thought I noticed. They are not helping me. Not really. Yeah, I know, but it's kinda sweet.

Which, y'know, means you're helping them along the path to being Heroes, Darling. Yeah, she stopped squirming nearly so much after that. Just after lunch Saffron stepped up next to me. The Cadets, who'd been running the obstacle course and trying to figure out a way to help Siobhan without any of them winding up in the obstacles, definitely started flexing on the course when they saw her. Jumping halfway up the net, taking two hurdles at a time, all that good shit.

"Are you busy, love?" I shrugged without looking away.

"What did you need?"

"The Marshall and Lord Lancaster would like to get the after action report out of the way before the break." I thought about it, then shrugged.

"Okay. Don't expect much in the way of super elaborate answers." Which is how I wound up standing up in front of the three of them, with the others who'd participated in the Maenad Rescue waiting in chairs around me, giving my summation.

"Tallulah scried on a unique object in the Spartan Maenad prison. I Translocated to the location she Scried on and opened a Scrying Portal, at which point Sarah, Marie, Laurence, and Karen stepped through the Portal. Each of us went directly to our assigned cell; I neutralized," it had been so long since I got to use that word, I kinda missed it.

"three Spartan guards, presumably Heroes, during the run there. I neutralized another two guards, presumably either Heroes in training or newly promoted, based on their age, then removed the Maenad from her restraints, carried her to the Portal, and tossed her through. I then assisted Laurence and Karen with getting their assigned Maenads to the Portal and tossing them through.

Each Maenad had some amount of Cold Iron embedded in their person, which caused additional injuries, but by denaturing the Cold Iron we ensured they would be able to auto-Revive at sunrise. Once all Maenads had been recovered and all other participants had returned to Phileo, I destroyed both the Scrying marker, the cells, and the foundation of the building they were in before Translocating back myself." The Marshall chuckled. Lenny just frowned with that Lenny kumquat look and said, "Laurence?"

"He is my Champion, which makes him one of the most formidable single combatants capable of Translocation in the Alliance, Sir." He sucked his teeth, then said, "not Larry?" I smiled at him.

"I thought it added just a touch of formality to the proceedings. Lenny." He sighed and shook his head.

"I knew it was too much to ask that you'd matured. Tabby." Something that on a lesser being might have been a grin chased itself across his face, then he said, "how did the...

'Scrying marker' get into the facility?"

"No idea, General." Saffron cut in at that point.

"That would be High Priestess Madeline's work, General." At that point my part was done. Honestly given how smoothly things had gone on our end, most of the meeting seemed to be a very oblique way of bringing the two finest military minds of the previous generation up to speed on some of our innovations. Like the Scrying markers, which were really just teeny, tiny enameled pins with unique runes scribed on them super, super small.

Not even slightly Enchanted, which meant detecting them required seeing them, and New Yorker syndrome is still a thing here and now. Or the Scrying Portals, which I think both of them might have known about before, but not that we could make them strong enough to functionally filter out Cold Iron, so long as the person with the Cold Iron didn't need the body part the Cold Iron was attached to. Lots of little things like that.

I watched as the Marshall's eyes danced with visions of all the clandestine mayhem we could wreak, and Lenny's face just got tighter and tighter. No explosions, no surrender on his part, but he realized that this was absolutely not his kind of warfare, and it was also ridiculously effective and leveraged our strengths against the enemy's weakness. When I finished up there, it was almost sunset, and Siobhan had just finished her run. I turned to the Cadets and announced, "okay, Cadets.

Three important things before you head off to your Summer Break." They all perked up.

"First and foremost, I want you guys to know that yes, I saw what you were doing with Siobhan." Some of their faces fell, some tightened, but most got that look that let me know if I stopped speaking, I would be assaulted by ten different versions of 'you see, what had happened was'.

"Second, I get why you were doing it. You saw somebody in need, somebody who isn't a Hero and honestly, given her nature, might never be, and decided to help. Which, frankly, is absolutely in the best tradition of Heroes, the tradition we're trying to foster throughout the Alliance." Yeah, kinda fun watching the Cadets trying to figure out if that meant they were out of trouble or not.

I saved them the mental effort by saying, "so, given that in the instructor's opinion, upholding that tradition outweighs any potential nefarious deeds or 'cheating' that occurred, other than letting you know that you are not yet quite as subtle as you think you are, it will not affect your grading. Which, since each and every one of you managed to meet or exceed the minimum standards expected of Alliance Cadets, you all pass. Have a good Solstice!"

Yeah, that got a cheer out of them, not to mention all of them carrying Siobhan on yet another victory lap. Am I a Mascot now? Hey, looks like more fun than being an Attack Dog. Ah, well. So long as it's helping the Cadets. Woof.