Chương 1082: Day One Thousand And Eighty

Dear Diary, So many weird things about this latest fiasco. I mean, not weird in the basic sense. Honestly, it's pretty, I dunno, banal is the word, I think. Just pedestrian shit. Seriously, since I got here I've been dealing with multiple different flavors of Evil. Most of them inspired by the fuckers on Olympus or their Thinking Brain God™, Odin, but all of them have clearly been some kind of awful. Murder of an infant as petty revenge. A war because Ares is scared of the dark.

A plague because Apollo's aim is shit. Was shit, I'm pretty sure he's a better bow than an archer. Not that there's any consciousness in that bow of which I'm aware. Slavery and normalized rape. Lust for power so strong it defied Death. Greed great enough to swallow empires. Hunger for Souls that bound a City to an endless cycle of destruction and rebuilding. Blind rage at disobedience and lack of fear. Violent reprisal for preventing a rape.

Shit, the only thing I've dealt with that wasn't some form of Evil was Jack and Adrienne, and even there I had to put Florida back together and weld it back to Atlantis. That is not exactly 'pedestrian' or 'banal', even if it's not Evil. But... Pirates. Yeah, yeah, I know, recording companies would have you believe that pirates were the bane of all civilized folk everywhere, but the fact of the matter is that at least in the West, Pirates were constitutional democratic republicans in the truest sense of the words.

Pirate ships had charters that every pirate aboard signed onto, and they had votes on everything that wasn't covered by the charter. Thing is, they were into democracy and constitutions in the time of Monarchs and Oligarchs. Yeah, I did a paper on it back in the day. Got an F, because I didn't cite my sources properly, not to mention not saying how bad pirates are. Should have read the room better, I know, but I didn't know at the time that my History teacher was a retired Coast Guardsman.

So yeah, these guys might not be angels or anything, but their motives aren't exploitation or destruction of Souls or anything wacky. They're just tryna make some quick cash. I mean, they picked the absolute stupidest target in the world short of the Black Dragon herself, but from what I've learned over the past day, the Sneaking Tentacle is slightly different from her sisters.

Where the rest have been retrofitted with cannon like the Penetrating, the Sneaking not only doesn't have any Cold Iron aboard, she's outfitted solely with crossbows deliberately designed to resemble ballistae. Shit ton more hitting power, even without the Enchantment enhanced ammunition, but along with that 'no here and now high tech weapons or armor', she's also got her stealth and disguise enchantments, so those poor bastards thought they were gonna hit a lightly armed merchantman.

I guess what I'm saying is that I thought I'd mostly either be sitting this one out or called in as a weapon of last resort. Then I had a conversation today with my Kitten where she disabused me of that. So after Tallulah's arguably justified outburst, she moved to step away, only for Saffron to stop her with a word.

"Hold." Tallulah frowned, but nodded.

"Your reason, Imperator?" Saffron just smiled serenely.

"We have no reason to believe any of your hulls or sailors were involved. The captives will only become more pliant with more time in the brig, so you can still confirm their identity once our holiday is complete." When Tallulah still seemed unconvinced, Saffron gently added, "rest, Overlord. Rest, recover, and allow your justified wrath to simmer, to ripen." Tallulah wavered until Saffron convinced her with a simple, "we are safe. This is not beneath your notice, but it is beneath your haste."

At that, the thought that rushing down to Rich Man's Port, or maybe to the Sneaking herself, of letting some rando pirates disturb her holiday, was beneath her, Tallulah took a deep breath and let the tension flow out of her with it.

"I will supervise the interrogation."

"As is right and just and good. Yet, should they not be a rogue from Rich Man's Port?" Tallulah's expression soured the tiniest bit, but she nodded to Saffron.

"It is an Alliance issue?" Saffron nodded, smiled, and held out a whole fuckin' olive tree when she said, "and our Overlord, who is both the Headmistress of our Naval Academy and our expert on piracy, privateers, and all related matters, ought be the one to head our response, no?" If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Yeah, I've got three of them now who have scary assed grins when they're roused.

"Let it be so." I was a little surprised when Siobhan echoed, "let it be so." I looked over to where she was holding Aoibh to her breast, and discovered that there are in fact four of them capable of scary assed grins.

"What's got you so fired up, Ice Pop?" She looked incredibly prim, then said, "they attacked my ship." All the High Priestesses in the conversation smiled, a smile of shared sisterhood that somehow excluded me. Not in any kind of mean way, just... I was the Goddess, and they were all High Priestesses. I mean, I was Dad's, but I wasn't my own High Priestess.

I'm not even sure that would work, and amazingly I managed to not give in to the sudden urge to try it, because I did not want to give myself the world's biggest time space brain wedgie. At any rate, Karen just murmured, "not yet," and all of them smiled warmly at Siobhan as she blushed. Not long after that we all packed up and walked back to the Homestead proper, getting in just after dark.

We hadn't really done any fishing today, and I wanted to stretch the cold cuts until at least tomorrow, so Marie and I made omelets. Not even cheap stupid scrambled eggs, but proper omelets with cheese and veggies and meat in them. I mean, I made some with more veg and less meat for Lindsey and Ria, and some that were almost pure meat bound together by egg for the kits, but still, everybody got their own omelet, and the kids seemed happy with them.

Got everybody through the showers and into the Bath for a soak, then dried them off and got them down to bed. Okay, in the middle of drying them off, Girl and Boy came up to me; most days I only dried off the smaller girls, while the bigger ones helped each other out, but today the two of them came up and stood there waiting their turn until they stepped up. Boy let Girl go first, but she seemed really hesitant about something.

"It's okay, you guys don't have to let me dry you."

"No, no, we... You used to do this for all of them?"

"Yeah. Kinda wish I still could, but... Kids are meant to grow up, right?" I did my best to hide how much it took me to say that. I mean, I believe it, but I never thought it would be this soon, or hurt so right. Girl just nodded, then said, "but you never did it for us, and..." She trailed off, and after I'd gotten her nearly dry, I prompted her with, "you want me to?" She nodded.

"Then I will."

"There's something else," Boy added, super hesitant. I just raised an eyebrow.

"Well? What did you need." I'd finished Girl, who waited while I dried Boy off. He's older than Davey was when she had her twig and berries, like definitely grade school aged, maybe middle school aged, but he's still a kid. Still my kid, so I just dried him off. Midway through me toweling his hair, he murmured, "uh..." I froze, listening.

"Names?"

"Okay, yeah, what about them?"

"We... You said we could pick any names we wanted?" I nodded, even though he couldn't see it. His sister could, though.

"Yeah. I mean, if you pick something obscene or profane we might have to discuss why. Vulgarity's probably out too, even if it would be hilarious." Girl smiled when I said that, as did Boy when I uncovered his face.

"Could you..." He dropped his gaze, staring at his feet. At that point, with me looking at him, Girl whispered, "we want you to pick them."

"You... You want me to name you?" They nodded.

"Both of you?" More nods. I held my arms out, "I would be honored, kids. Absolutely." They glomped onto me. Things might have gotten a little weepy. Of course then Girl said, "so what are our names?" I froze.

"Uh... Okay, names are important, so can you give me a little bit to think about it?"

"How long?" I shrugged.

"A couple days, maybe? I want to get them right." Girl frowned.

"Don't forget about us." I chuckled.

"Tell you what, if you think I've forgotten, tell Isnomi to remind me."

"Okay!" After that we all got down to bed, snuggling in and sleeping. Dreamt of my ladies lazing about, floating around in my Maw and watching some best of reels on the big screen. Today we spent another day sunbathing. Midway through the day, as we lay there, I sighed and said, "so weird, not being part of solving the latest Alliance wide problem." Saffron looked over at me.

"Whatever gave you that idea?"

"I'm kinda overkill on normal Mortal pirates, aren't I?" She rocked her head side to side.

"Well, yes, if we were just planning on killing them all."

"Not that I'm unhappy with the idea of not killing them all, but..." She smiled, and I noticed Tallulah smiling beyond her.

"Your power, especially should you enjoin your Kraken to assist you, outweighs that of any normal, Mortal crew of even perhaps fleet of pirates by so much that you may be able to incapacitate them without killing them."

"Uh, what are we gonna do with a bunch of captive pirates?" At that point Tallulah drawled out, "you seem to have found good use for mine." Saffron just nodded.

"Alliance shipping is off limits, as is any shipping of our close friends, like Boltophsberg, Compton, and Muscogee." I blinked.

"Aren't the other Cities, I mean the Europan ones, gonna have something to say about that?" She smiled serenely and nodded to Tallulah, who again lazily said, "likely, to which we will reply, 'remember the House of Orange'." It took me a minute to remember that the House of Orange had gotten their asses kicked so hard by the English pirates that they had to flee to Atlantis. Before I could open my mouth, Saffron cut in with, "so, wouldn't you prefer to be our friends?"