Chương 128: Day One Hundred And Twenty-Seven

Dear Diary, Day by day I come to regret my lack of brain-to-mouth filter more and more. Okay, apparently it's part of what's gotten me Saffron and Marie, so I can't regret it too much, but still. So after yesterday I answered Lancaster Senior's question with, "Siege Weapon.", he nodded, then waved me back to train with one of the spear units.

I might have pushed them a little hard, but I scored them two sandwiches each at lunch time by blatantly trading on my connection to the ladies making the delivery, so I don't think they hate me too much. I even got a rush of brains to the head after lunch and didn't pick the pace back up to 'murderous' until after they'd had around two hours to digest. Retching might have been involved by the end of the day, but nobody puked up lunch. See? Your girl can learn.

Learn to be a sadistic bitch, but that's still learning, right? Anyhow, after dismissing them for the evening I stumbled on back only to find we'd been 'rewarded' with steaks for dinner. When I saw Marie rolling up with ours, I skipped out of my seat and interrupted her.

"Hey gorgeous, are those steaks well done?" She just shrugged.

"Like, are they brown in the middle?" At that she got a booger look and nodded. I leaned in, waving her down until her mouth hovered near my ear.

"It's okay. Totally not your fault that some of these folks don't know how to treat a good steak. Could you bring me and Saffron rare ones? Maybe do the same for the rest of the table?"

"Rare?" she growl-whispered. I nodded, low-key reveling in the feel of her fur against my ear.

"Rare, like still pink or red in the middle. Not uncooked, just warm and pink rather than brown and tough." She made a speculative growl, then nodded, straightened, and walked off to deliver her current cartload to the gobbo table. When I got back to the ROTC table the others gave me weird looks. Angel straight up glared at me and growled, "why are we waiting on our food again?" Then her stomach let out a growl even louder than that. Not surprising; that much muscle must take hella calories to fuel.

"Do you trust me?" She just gave me the best 'really, Diaz?' look I've seen in a while, then shook her head and tossed me a loaf of bread. I took the hint, made insta-toast, and handed it back for her to start crunching her way through. No idea why she didn't butter it, but different strokes, I guess. Fifteen minutes later Marie rolled back up and delivered us each a nice steak, along with a few trays of Salisbury steaks for the table at large.

When Angel took a bite out of hers, she gave me a look, chewed, and swallowed. Meanwhile I was taking my time with mine, tearing off big pieces, but then chewing them until the flavor was gone before swallowing. Once Angel had her mouth clear, she said, "how did... why does this taste better?" I shrugged, swallowed, and said, "jerky should have spices, and steak should have juices." She gave me another look, but nommed her way through her own steak.

Weird unspoken cannibalism vibes aside, she seemed like she enjoyed it. Bill loved his. Saffron wound up losing half of hers to the Bottomless Pit known as Isnomi. Instant Karma hit me while I was laughing at her, because the menace took that opportunity to nom the rest of mine, too. The only two who didn't appreciate the rare steaks were Bonita and Fred; rather than forcing Marie to make more runs, I just had them hand over their trays, Mana Bladed their steaks into little cubes, and handed them back.

Raven looked at Bonita and asked, "aww, did you need Momma to cut your steak up into bite sized pieces for you?"

"At least I don't have blood all over my chin." Raven took that opportunity to take another big bite of her steak, smile as wide as she could, and squeeze the meat against the inside of her teeth so the juice sprayed out and dripped down her face. I'm not normally weak stomached, but that skeeved me just a little, and Bonnie's comment had annoyed the piss out of me already.

"By Loki's sumptuous equine ass, can you two please keep things civil long enough for the rest of us to finish eating?" Raven gulped her chunk of meat down not unlike her namesake and said, "but you never finish eating?" Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

"Your point?" Right around then my head filled with my Patron's voice. My sumptuous what now? Oh, please. Tell me it wasn't extra enough that Svadilfari would and did have to fight for it. Fair point. Fred chimed in, "thank you for cutting my meat, Momma!" Before I could even reply to that, Angel, Bill, and Saffron chorused, "thank you for our steaks, Momma!" I headdesked, forgetting for a moment that my plate still had a liberal coating of steak juice and gravy.

I sat back up, blinking, only to have Isnomi straight up lick my face clean while I spluttered and everybody else laughed. When she finished, she hugged my face and said, "da gu, Mama!" How in the living, ever-loving fuck did I wind up Team Mom? I mean, seriously, how the fuck did that happen when the team includes an actual, bona-fide, pushed a small human out of her hoo-hah Mom? Meh. Maybe my mystic mom magic might mess up my lime green motion. After we got back to our room Marie swung around for bath time.

After we'd all toweled off, Grandma swung around because she'd been missing Isnomi, and carried the menace away wrapped in a towel for a sleepover with great-Grandma. The moment the door clicked shut, Marie and Saffron made it very clear that it was party time in the Aetos-Diaz cell, and I was the party favor. Oh, no! Anyway. The whole hillside lake dream has been getting progressively weirder and more annoying.

The psychedelic tadpoles have made their way up the wannabe stream running under me, and now along with poking at the bits of me in the water they're doing the same thing to my undercarriage. Which might have been interesting if they'd been in 'sexy feels' mode, but just got weird since they seem pretty devoted to 'kiss it make it better' mode. Still, it made the generally itchy situation over by the rocky bits a little more tolerable.

I know, you're thinking, 'if the rocks are itchy, why don't you just move away from them?' I sure as fuck was, until I woke up and remembered that it's a fuckin' dream, and who the fuck knows what happens why in there. Hell, I barely understand what's going on in my head while I'm awake; you expect me to figure it out when I'm asleep? We all woke up to a bedraggled runner who completely ignored my lack of clothes to mutter out, "Cadet Diaz?"

"That's me."

"Hero Lancaster would like to see you at your earliest convenience."

"Shit. Okay. Thanks for the message." She'd already turned and left the moment I acknowledged my new orders. I shut the door and turned to Saffron.

"Hey Kitten? Could you do me a favor?" She groaned, expressing her thoughts on waking up in general. I walked over to the armoire, leaned into the Workshop, and called out, "son, can I have a moment of your time?" He popped up right in front of me, I valiantly didn't piss myself when I flinched, and he replied, "of course, Mother dearest!" Too much perky much too early in the morning.

"Do you have two pieces of wood I can borrow? Like, twelve inches long, one inch wide, eighth to quarter inch thick, one springy, one not?" He looked thoughtful for a second, then asked, "are you going to break them?" I shook my head, "I'm not intending to. So, y'know, something decently strong." He nodded, "just a moment." He disappeared, then popped back up holding two school-ruler-sized pieces of wood.

"Those look perfect, son. Thank you." He handed them over and I did a quick test; one flexed nicely, the other bent about as much as Vulcan's bolts. I reached out and, after thinking about his likely reaction to having his head patted, just lay a hand on his cheek.

"They are perfect. Thank you again, son." He got a freaky wide-eyed look, then bowed at the waist and said, "anything for you, Mother dearest." I stumbled back into the room, grabbed my cold iron coins, and walked over to the desk. Marie sat on the bed, massaging Saffron's shoulders. Saffron sat on Marie's lap, eyes closed "Okay, I need you to help explain Trebuchets to Lancaster before breakfast."

"Leonard or Laurence."

"Leonard. Why the fuck would I get you up early and forgo canoodling for Laurence." She cracked her eyes open to slits and said, "fair point, but that means I have to come up with something cleverer than 'fuck you, Cadet Lancaster'. What the fuck is a trebuchet?" I sighed, "that's the toughest part. I really don't know that much about them." She managed to growl out, "so tell me what you remember." I grinned halfheartedly.

"I can show you this time. I remember this from a cross-class lesson once. Science and History." I held the springy ruler against the side of the desk with like ten inches sticking up over the edge and said, "catapult." Then I held one of the Cold Iron coins at the top, pulled the ruler back, and let go. The coin flew across the room, bouncing off the padding near the bottom of the opposite wall before landing on the floor with a thump. Saffron growled out, "that is a terrible excuse for a catapult. Go on."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, just remember this is an even shittier excuse for a trebuchet." I lay the stiff ruler down atop the desk with maybe two inches sticking off the side. I set one of the coins on its side atop the end of the ruler on the desk, then climbed up onto the chair, then the desk. I held the third coin directly above the end of the ruler sticking out over the edge of the table, then said, "trebuchet," and dropped the coin.

The coin hit the ruler, lever things happened, and the other coin narrowly missed my face before bouncing off the ceiling, the far wall, and the back of Marie's hand. Somehow Marie managed to catch it with the backs of her fingers before it slapped Saffron in the side of the head. I watched as her eyes slid open, her mouth curving into the Grin as they did.

"I'm sorry, beloved. Unless it's earlier than I think, Lancaster will have to wait a bit for his explanation." Eep. Guess I'd failed to realize that particular bit about showing Saffron an entirely new type of siege weapon. Ammosexual wife for the win?