Chương 263: Day Two Hundred And Sixty-One

Dear Diary, I've kinda started to wonder how much of becoming an adult is shit you learn before you start adulting, and how much of it is shit you pick up along the way because stuff gets dumped in your lap, and it's too important to just say 'fuck it' and fuck the hell off. So, today I get to see how much I remember from ROTC, how much I've figured out on my own since then, and how badly I fucked up the Expedition. No pressure, right? Woke up not wanting to move.

Like, apparently this is an unavoidable after-effect of Loki doing his Soul Realignment thing. Sadly, I fear it is, at least when you've done so much damage that by rights it should have killed you. Yeah, you know me, Boss. So much stupid I can't even die properly. I'm beginning to suspect you have some other quality in play, like 'determination', 'resolve', or possibly 'righteous fury'. Those all sound like you're trying to put a good face on 'stubborn', but thanks for trying, Boss. You're the best. I know.

I mean, when I say 'didn't want to move', even my fuckin' eyelids gave me shit for opening my eyes, and my eyeballs straight up rebelled and refused to look anywhere but straight ahead. Full on ow pain ow pain ow pain fuck it mode. Fortunately, I woke up looking at Saffron.

From the fuzzy something pressed against the top of my head, if I'd been looking the other way I'd be staring into a faceful of fuzzy Marie tits, which while they're lovely and all, and surprisingly big because 'athletic tits' on a seven foot tall woman wound up being 'dayum, woman', they had way too much chance of me winding up with an eyeful of fur in my eyes. I did not need to find out what that felt like added on top of my existing ouch. Not sure how long I lay there just watching Saffron sleep.

Is it weird that with the whole 'perpetual uncontrollable cycle of zero focus or hyper-focus, no in between' I always wind up hyper-focused on her in these moments before she wakes up? I've got this weird adult intuition that says something about my feelings for her, but that can't be right, because I'm obviously focused on her because she's gorgeous and cute and mine all mine. Except when she and Marie are going at it, which is just hot as fuck because they're both mine, right?

Or when Isnomi needs her, but she's mine too, so that's okay, right? Too much thinking too early in the morning, so I just appreciated the scenery before it became terrain, because there was no evidence of Isnomi in the room, which meant she'd decided to spend the night in her toddler bed with Mister Kraken. Eventually my vigil was rewarded by Saffron's adorable boot up sequence; when her eyes finally slid open she smiled and said, "good morning, my love."

Then she kissed me as a quiet growl from above resolved into, "Yes." Turns out not even 'they're totally hot' pre-activity endorphins overcame my body's refusal to move. So Saffron and Marie both wound up effectively staying scenery from me, even after Marie rolled me over on my back. So weird, not just how satisfying slow and gentle can be, but how utterly titillating being terrain can be. My own personal Lewis and Clark left no acre unexplored, if you catch my drift.

Okay, that's really not fair to Saffron and Marie. Identical twin Sacagaweas? Except they're not really in any way identical. Fuck it, endorphins sufficient to minimal movement, achievement get. So when Isnomi made 'moving around' noises in her room we decided it was time to get our asses up and in motion.

Okay, time for the two of them to get up and get all three of our asses in motion, what with 'standing upright' still being a challenge for me, and 'moving from lying down to standing upright' well beyond what I found myself capable of this morning. Instead, I let Marie lift me and set me seated on the foot of the bed, where Saffron handed me my cane to keep me from toppling forward onto the floor. Bit by bit they dressed me, Isnomi again taking care of tying my shirt in the back.

Not sure whether it was a nice bow or a Gordian monstrosity, but it kept my shirt on.

"Thanks, Menace."

"De nada." Guess she picked that one up from Marie, maybe? Meh, Marie was a way better second influence than me in any case. Saffron stepped us down to breakfast, and once more got food in front of us before the doors properly opened. I guess it helps to be boinking the boss Maid. Or, y'know, being boinked, as seems to happen more frequently of late. Not that it was ever infrequent, really. So since 'sitting upright' seemed to be a challenge for me today, the menace took over Tabitha-feeding duties.

One scoop of eggs for the menace, one scoop of eggs for me. One sausage for me, two sausages for the menace. One spoon of eggs for the menace, one sausage for me. I think she took a perverse kind of amusement in just shoving the whole sausage in my mouth. Made me wonder about whether we ought to talk to Viktor Aetos. Yeah, I've been told I've got a one track mind. By fools who don't realize how many pointless side-thoughts I can have at once.

After breakfast, Isnomi decided to accompany Marie for the day doing Marie things. At a guess she'd wind up carting most of the day, but for now she just tiptoe-toddled along beside Marie. Saffron came around the table, put her hands on my shoulders, and stepped us both to the classroom. Oddly enough, the same one we'd been in Sunday, only Marshall duBois sat there with his hands interlaced across his belly, chair tipped back to lean against the wall.

"Good Morning, Marshall." Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. At Saffron's greeting, duBois tipped his chair back forward, his eyes opening as he did so.

"Good Morning, Cadet Aetos. I take it from Cadet Diaz' silence that she's still not up to gracing us with the melodious tones of her voice today?"

"I'm afraid not, Sir. Still, she can hear just fine, and I'm sure she'll let us know if there's something she disagrees with or needs desperately to know. Right Goof?" It took the combo-pack of spicy breakfast endorphins and spicy wake-up endorphins to make my jaw move, but I managed to drawl out, "ayep." DuBois asked Saffron, "I'd heard she was in a little better shape than this?"

"During our Devotional day yesterday we visited her Patron and he helped heal some of the damage she'd done to herself. But if last time he had to do so is any indicator, it will take her a few days to recover from the treatment." The Marshall flinched a little, probably because mention of Devotional Days reminded him of whose High Priestess Saffron was. Weird to think that he saw me as some kind of protégé, maybe even a surrogate daughter, but saw Mimic as a big scary thing that goes bump in the night.

Still, even if he had a kind of superstitious unknown love-hate relationship going on with me and my alter ego, he wasn't a coward, and he did right by his City when he could.

"So. Does your Patron... Does Mimic still favor Phileo, now that we're not at war and the plague has passed?"

"She does, although she may need to expand her horizons now that Phileo is part of a greater alliance. Calverton, for example, seems much more in need of divine intervention and assistance than Phileo at the moment." DuBois looked a little put out by that, but not, like, pissed. Just not liking the new reality or status quo. He immediately improved my overall good opinion of him when he said, "I can see that. I hope she doesn't forget about us, though." Saffron smiled serenely at him.

"I assure you, Phileo and Camden Yards are never far from her mind. In a very real way, she considers Camden, and by extension Phileo, her home in this world." I'd say something about you putting words in my mouth, but that might keep you from putting other things in my mouth later. Beside that, it has the additional virtue of being true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know me so well. I do indeed, my Goof. Apparently the Marshall was satisfied by that, so he started asking her questions about the Allied military.

What with him being technically in charge of at least twenty percent of it nominally, and a hell of a lot more than that in actuality, I guess he had a need to know. She answered honestly, as far as I could tell, and it painted a less than pretty picture. Levies, Volunteers, and Soldiers were almost all called away from some other kind of work, so the longer we kept them in the Army, the more the economy suffered.

Normally that wouldn't be a big deal, apparently, what with Heroes being so fuckin' effective at things like 'monster hunting' and all the stuff that you'd normally activate a Battalion of whatever to go deal with. Thing is, while Phileo's five hundred had survived everything more or less untouched, something like half of Calverton's Heroes had died or been crippled by the plague.

Ninety percent of New Amsterdam's Heroes had died in the war, which meant by my hand, and all of the remainder were soul damaged, again by me. That meant our surviving Heroes were gonna wind up putting in a lot of overtime, and Phileo had most of the surviving Heroes. Basically, we would need to keep some of the Army active, if only to back the Heroes up doing shit where ordinary troops could do something meaningful.

Hell, even if they were going after some kind of beastie that only Heroes could fight, having a single unit of Volunteers along could let them leave their supplies in a camp and not worry about some shit like bears or wolves stealing it all while they fought. People started wandering in while the Imperator and her Marshall talked. Every time someone came in, the Marshall looked down at a clipboard on his desk and nodded.

Finally, after another student came in, bringing the total up to twenty students, all of whom other than Saffron and I looked like Senior Cadets, the Marshall stood up and addressed the class.

"Welcome to the redundantly named 'Strategy and Logistics'. If you're supposed to be attending another class, you really want to leave and go there, because you sure as hell don't want to stay here if you don't have to." A student across the room raised his hand. When the Marshall nodded, he asked, "why redundantly named, Sir?" The Marshall shot him a crooked grin and said, "because almost every bit of Strategy has to do with Logistics.

Technically the course also covers Grand Tactics and Diplomacy, but even there the maneuvers and decisions are either informed by Logistics or wrong."

"Wrong, Sir?" The Marshall nodded decisively.

"Yes. Wrong."

"Could you give us an example, Sir?" The Marshall heaved a sigh, although I could tell a lot of it was for show.

"Son, most of this course is going to be examples. But to get us started, let's look at the two most important military campaigns in recent history, one of which almost all of you participated in. Next class we'll go over the other big event that you all participated in, the fight against the recent Plague, which was entirely Logistics based, since plagues generally don't give a shit about tactics or diplomacy." For his part, the guy who'd asked the question just nodded and said, "thank you, sir."

The rest of the day was kinda weird, since the first part was a review of shit that I'd taken part in the decision making, whether it was putting a guy who was otherwise a civilian in charge of our supply chain, or figuring out how to make a temporary bridge usable by troops, or mass production of our new Crossbows.

The Senior Cadets who had participated asked a bunch of questions about how and why General Lancaster had made certain decisions, most probably the ones that seemed really counter-intuitive to them at the time. Funniest part was every time the Marshall explained something? He either called on Saffron at the end, where she'd say something like, "that agrees with what General Lancaster told me, Sir," or once, "actually, General Lancaster told me his reasoning was different, but that makes sense as well, Sir."

Not once did Saffron bring up the fact that she was the Imperator, and neither did Marshall duBois. Funny thing, I'm not sure how many of the Senior Cadets really grokked that the Cadet Aetos-Diaz in class with them was the Imperator. Yeah, they'd seen her get tapped as a Hero-to-be, but I guess it's tough seeing someone that much younger than you being the Head Bitch In Charge. The weirdest part of the day, though? Listening as Marshall duBois reviewed and critiqued my campaign against Calverton.

Turns out he liked most of what I'd done, especially a couple things where I'd changed my mind mid-campaign. My favorite quote? When he said, "The Expedition Commander's best Strategic decisions were those adapting to the current situation rather than assuming any fucking thing in this world remains static for long." Fuck. My inability to remain focused on a task for more than a few minutes was now a Strategic Asset. Who knew?