Chương 345: Day Three Hundred And Forty-Three

Dear Diary, Okay, if today was the result of me even tangentially pondering my ability to do something other than Choose Violence, I'm gonna go find the anthropomorphic personifications of Fate and Choose to visit some really creative and deliberately unpleasant forms of Violence on them. Seriously. I'm trying to learn and grow as a person here.

Maybe reconcile the kinda shitty deal that I am in fact the first and only person with the will and ability to stand up to the constant waves of bullshit flowing toward humanity and say 'no, this will not stand' with my own belief, learned from watching preachy Kid's Shows, that violence is Always Wrong. Which objectively I know is utter bullshit, but try telling that to my inner moppet who wants fuckin' Elmo to be proud of me and shit.

I'm well aware that any pride the red horror had for me disappeared, probably some time around yeeting my supposed virtue out the window to steal the beta key for a closed beta from some nerd whose name I don't even remember. Fuck, I don't even remember the name of the fuckin' game at this point. It just wasn't that memorable, not unlike my first internally close encounter with a penis-haver. Oh. Fuck. I think I just leveled up my adulting.

I was thinking just now how so many of my intimate interactions back at Eastside were, at the very best, satisfactorily conclusive. Then I thought about Saffron and I falling to aggressively awesome antics last night and my brain spontaneously connected it to one of those after school special neo-Puritan preachy crappy movies, one where the 'moral' was 'sex is for sharing with someone you love deeply, after marriage'.

Which, if you just base shit on 'quality of resolution', my shit has gotten way better since finding someone I'm genuinely in love with. Someones, even. Post nuptial nookie has, in fact, not suffered in the slightest from the whole 'oh, we can have it any time we want it, so why bother', although that might be because of my whole 'well, I want it right now' thing I've got going on.

Which, just for transparency's sake, hasn't gotten any less insistent since I got my super athletic new body or got in tune with my inner ravenous tentacle beast. Okay, I know I've said this before, but that is definitely the title of my leaked porn tape.

'Leaked'.

'Who leaked it?'

'No idea, says here somebody with the initials TD.' So yeah, I just realized that there are times when my personal experience is going to agree with some asshole whose position is antithetical to my own. Which is maybe why older people seem a little jaded to younger people, because they get how somebody could wind up with their head up their own ass. I mean, I've never really been an altruist, but I totally got where they're coming from. Admired them a little bit even.

Like, they think the world should be a certain way, and they're gonna make it fuckin' so. But with that one realization, I get where somebody could get kinda creeped out about someone that stupid stubborn, especially if they've never experienced anything to the contrary. Shit, I don't know if I should adjust my outlook based on this or not.

I mean, fuck, based on my own personal experience I should tell Menace to wait until marriage, or at least until she meets somebody who cares enough about her to, y'know, make sure everybody involved goes ping before they go to sleep. Or at least somebody who has enough self respect and skills to make sure she gets off before they call it a night.

Fuck, my brain has now reminded me how much I got all skeeved by the dads who would hire a professional for their sons' first time, but fuck on a stick, at least with a professional you can take them for a test drive, then rent them for your kid once you're sure they're worth the price of admission. Shit, I'm actually considering having a conversation with Cherry and Maurice around about Menace's thirteenth birthday, just to make sure she doesn't go doing my flavor of dumb shit.

Hell, Saffron's flavor of dumb shit wasn't much better than mine. I don't think. Fuck. Kitten? Yes, love? Isnomi's dad. Was that your first time? In point of fact yes. Was he any good? Are you seeking to compare yourself to my past lovers now? Since there is, in fact, only the one? Oh. No. My first time sucked, I wondered if yours did too. Damn. I was hoping to inflate your ego a little. I chuckled. Not worried I'd engage in some childish counter-inflation? Even mentally I could tell the Grin had come out to play.

Oh, love. I thought you'd remembered that your mouth cannot become nor make someone pregnant. I mean, I could just, y'know, blow you up like a balloon. To forestall any arguments regarding your diaphragm strength relative to my Kegels, I haven't let you inhale since some time just after dawn, so I'm not terribly afraid of that. Spoilsport. You love it. I do. Thanks, Kitten. Any time, Goof. So according to Furtim, we're not likely to see any more Trolls, at least from their Centuria.

When I took over from them this morning, I hopped the two of us over to chat with Swanson.

"Hey, Seneschal Mine, how goes?"

"Mostly down the Army's gullets." I frowned, as serious as I ever got.

"Are we having food issues?" He shrugged.

"If 'Admiral' Pesce returns within four more days, we'll be fine."

"He's a solid guy, ran our supplies all through the war with New Amsterdam. Even if I did give him the title to make sure he could steamroll any interference, he's earned it. So we only have four days of food?"

"No. Closer to eight, depending on how many more Trolls we add to our force." That reminded me.

"Oh, Furtim says we won't be getting any more from his Centuria. All but like ten of his Legionnaires are accounted for, and those probably lit out when they saw us to let the rest of the Undead know we're on the way."

"Or they're waiting for an opening in our line in order to spread their curse behind our lines." Furtim gestured at me, and I translated.

"If they're that coherent and they're not on our side, they're fully converted, and won't be rejoining us. So your food bills ought to stay static." Stolen novel; please report.

"Unless we take casualties."

"That's why we're gonna take this slow, to make sure we see any ambushes before they happen and kill off our troops." Furtim gestured.

"Oh, I think he's got a point; they got ambushed by Hole Spawn, and that means we shouldn't see too much before we hit the Hole; that should be a day or two before we get to Calverton." Swanson nodded.

"That make sense, although you're correct, we need to clear everything to make sure we're not ambushed, nor that our Thralls... er... non-combatants? Are attacked while most of our fighters are in Calverton." I thought about it for a second.

"Can we speed things up enough to get to the Hole a day early? So we have a day before the final push?" He shuffled a few papers, read some things.

"I don't see why not, assuming our spearhead can advance faster?" I grinned at him.

"You got it, Admiral." Each of me in the water Co-Located into two, and I redoubled my clearing efforts. At first I thought it weird that the fleet dropped some sails rather than adding some, but when I asked the dude steering my Troll boat, he told me they'd been using the sails more for station keeping than propulsion.

I might have felt some kinda way about that and wound up Co-Locating again to get forty eight of me zigzagging through the Bay at breakneck speeds, counting on the overlap of my search pattern rather than low speed to spot anything. I realized my error when one of me straight up disappeared in a blinding wave of darkness and pain. Literally on that former; the last thing I saw was nothing, which was incredibly weird. Kitten? Slide back like half an inch?

I opened my eyes after she shifted and confirmed that yes, if someone literally covered my eyes, I saw nothing but darkness. Yeah, I could have just covered my eyes or some shit, but where's the fun in that? Of course a dozen of me Translocated to that spot to see what I'd initially taken to be a log swimming back toward the seabed. Baybed? The bottom, where the muck and plants lived. All of me took turns swimming in and past, slashing at the thing with my swordstaves, Mana Blades extended.

This did not, unfortunately, turn what looked like catfish big enough to have eaten me in a single fuckin' bite into sashimi. It thrashed a little, and I'd put little grill marks across its skin, but nothing more damaging than a shitty tattoo.

Still a little pissed about the whole 'ate me painfully' thing, not to mention getting a tiny bit of a feedback headache, I dropped the Mana Blades and made closer passes at the thing, careful to come in from its rear quarters to avoid that big fuckin' mouth that kept snapping at me. Unfortunately, that just pissed it off more, because despite my speed, I couldn't get a proper swing in underwater, or its scales were a lot more durable than they ought to be.

I closed from all sides, keeping one of me at each cardinal point in case it tried to run. Bracing my feet against the bottom, grabbing at its fins, getting leverage however I could, I shoved the blades of my swordstaves through the thing's hide painfully slowly. Eventually one of the blades finally got through the skin, sinking in until my hand slammed into its scaly hide.

It convulsed, and the four of me watching in the distance saw its previously undisclosed wings unfold and engulf two of me on each side, slamming them forward and into the spines sticking out through its fins. Each of the other four of me was slammed into the silt at the bottom by a short, heavy claw extending from underneath its body.

Leaving the poisoned mes stabbing at it with sword staves split to double my stabbing power, since the fucking thing had decided to keep me pinned on its spines, and the venom burning its way into me was not something I wanted to bring back to healthy mes, I collapsed all four of the silt-stomped mes into the me to the north.

At which point it turned to that me and, without ever letting up the pressure pumping poison into the four of me still stabbing at it, opened its mouth and spewed a cloud of rotting acidic gunk at me. That me backed up and, after a moment, as my vision faded, collapsed into the me to the east. It turned the cone of gunk toward that me, but at that point I said, "fuck this noise" and Translocated that me home to the office. Saffron looked up from her coding desk, but I just shook my head.

"Just need a quick bit of help from our son." Before it could do anything else, I collapsed the me to the south to the me to the west, getting its attention while backing away and toward the surface. After like thirty seconds, it ran out of shit to spew and just chased me, mouth open. The four of me stuck to its spines were fading fast, so I prepped a Stabilize as I ran, collapsed them into me, and hit myself with it.

Never thought all that fucking around using Stabilize as a marital aid would have a practical use, but here we are. I also didn't think I'd be losing fucking ground to a goddamned catfish of all things, but as I got close to the shore I realized that the shoreline did not, in fact represent safety. Yeah, if I angled back toward our boats Skasn would be there with his big trash spikes, but this thing hadn't been exactly slow, and I didn't want to see what happened if it spewed that shit all over Jotnar Grandpa.

Thankfully, right about then the me back in our room was ready, and I shot to the surface. The big assed Dragon catfish followed. I turned, slowed, and growled out, "smile, you son of a bitch." Then the me in the office Translocated above it, and I collapsed the me in front of it into that one. It leapt into the air, mouth open, looking to do unto that me as it had done unto the first me. That's when I shot it point blank in the mouth with Vulcan.

I'm not sure exactly how he managed it, but I swear immediately after impact the thing expanded like a puffer fish. It also shot backwards, although how much of that was the impact of Vulcan's bolt and how much was it spewing innards out not just through its mouth, but through its eyes as well. So before I could react I found myself falling through a fountain of rotting, awful smelling gore. Even better, I think some of it was burning despite everything being drenched. Oh, god. Kitten, could you come help? WAIT!

NO! Don't! Her worry washed over me. What's wrong? Fuckin' Dragon Catfish. Wait. Oh, shit, I think this is a fuckin' Hole Spawn. Right about then I slammed into the water, which incidentally put The Dress' boots' spike heels right through the thing's skull. I decided that was enough of a connection and Translocated me and the thing to where I figured Skasn would be. Be careful! Stand off and shoot it with Vulcan, do not attempt to feed yourself to it! Already done, Kitten.

I'm not in danger of anything except never being allowed indoors again. I looked up to Skasn and called out, "hey, is this thing a Hole Spawn, or what?" He turned to face me, and his immediate reaction of plunging his ski pole through it confirmed my guess. It also squished more gunk onto me.

"Thanks! I'm gonna go patrol more." Why do you need help again? Our son has moved on to spraying me with the world's most disgusting money shot. Can't you just collapse back to a clean you? I can, but he'll still be coated in this crap. Fuck it, he deserves it. I collapsed back into the me on the deck, only to find that the filth coating me managed, somehow, to fucking follow me. This isn't fucking fair! I hate fucking Hole Spawn! That... seems to be the general consensus, love.

I'll see what I can do, but it might take me a bit. I spent the rest of the afternoon Co-Located into sixteen of me, zig zagging through the water, trying not to vomit too much. When sunset hit, I stepped back to the water just off the prow of my Troll boat. The Trolls gave me a wide berth as they headed out to patrol. Meanwhile Marie appeared on the deck, holding one hand out beside the boat.

I stepped up and grabbed her hand; a moment later I landed in the suite bathtub at Lancaster House, which already had been filled with steaming water reeking of Marie's honey-spice soap. Saffron and Marie both stood armed with brushes. I lay Vulcan down in the water, because if an afternoon in the Bay hadn't dissolved him, a little bathwater wouldn't, then reached for Saffron whining, "I need a hug."

"SIT!" My ass hit the floor of the tub before I realized what I was doing. Luckily, I missed landing on Vulcan. Unluckily, the tub was enameled steel, not unlike a the ones back in the world of Eastside.

"Ow."

"STAY!" I didn't move, but I sure as shit pouted as the two of them advanced on me, Saffron playing squire to Marie, who assaulted me with long handled brushes. Instead I just whined some more. If you really want to know how bad the reek was, after the whole day stinking, as I sat there obediently letting Marie scrub me down, when Saffron took pity on me and crooned out, "My Goof Is Such A Good Girl," pressing my after market add on Mood Improvement Button, I couldn't help my response. I started sobbing.

"Not. Worth."