Chương 583: Day Five Hundred And Eighty-One

Dear Diary, I know what I said yesterday about just being too damned tired to give a fuck. I also stand by the fact that I'm too damned young to be too damned old for this bullshit. But I think along with knowing all that, and flipping both of those adult flags in one day, I've also realized that they're mistakes. Don't get me wrong, they're understandable and, maybe once in a while when shit doesn't matter, acceptable mistakes.

They're certainly not the kind of 'mistake' that most of the Gods here and now make, like 'accidentally' raping somebody, or 'oops, I did a genocide'. They're the kind of mistake you make when you've been awake too long and you go to get yourself a glass of soda, and you pour the last of the soda from the bottle into the glass, and throw the glass in the trash and sit there staring at the bottle in your hand. Don't look at me like that's never happened.

I did that shit at least four times back in the day, and at least once I wasn't high or anything. So yeah, sometimes mistakes are just that, and when you're fatigued as fuck sometimes those things happen more often. Weird part, I'm wasn't feeling tired physically. Like, I wasn't about to fall over, or pass out, or anything else like that, I was just... tired. Oh, fuck. I just realized. Depression.

That's what depression is, when you don't have anything that ought to making you feel that fuckin' fatigue, but mentally you feel like you've been awake for a month and nothing matters. Shit, I know being sick can make that worse, and sure as shit actually being tired in any way can do it as well. Because that's what it is. Fatigue. I hated it whenever somebody would say 'oh, we all get a little sad sometimes'.

Motherfucker, depression isn't sadness, and if somebody thinks it is, I wonder if they've ever really been depressed. Like, shit, I've been sad. I've been hurt. I've grieved. None of that shit is depression. Depression is that motherfucker that makes you unable to grieve, to feel pain, to feel sad. If you're feeling sad, you're not depressed. Fuck, now I know why I fucked up, and it doesn't change a fuckin' thing, I still have to fix it. If I can.

Sure fuckin' tempted to wait for duBois to get back and let him deal with it. Not gonna, but I'm tempted. Got home last night after watching a curiously subdued class running the obstacle course all afternoon. Didn't really need to do a cool down run, but did some stretching to make sure nobody tightened up in any kind of bad way. Told a couple Cadets to hit the Infirmary after dinner, because I didn't like the way they were holding themselves. Then flopped back into my chair in the dining room at the Homestead.

Saffron showed a second later, took one look at me, and walked over to slide onto my lap, arms going around my neck.

"What's wrong, love?" I shrugged.

"Nothing, as far as I can tell. I mean, I fucked up a little today in class, but nothing super critical. I'm just..." I shrugged again.

"Depressed?" I nodded.

"Well then." She leaned in, body against mine, warm and soft and wonderful as she breathed a little singsong into my ear.

"Time for your two concubines." Fuck, it really did kinda work. Like, not perfect or anything, but shit, dopamine is dopamine. I smiled kinda sadly at her, because some part of me still felt like I didn't deserve rewards after my shitty performance in class today. Of course, right then Marie set a plate in front of me.

"After." The plate had a gargantuan steak in the middle. At least an inch thick, and the size of my hand with fingers stretched out. Roast vegetables surrounded it. Onions, carrots, what looked like a couple cloves of garlic, and...

"Holy shit, are those potatoes?" Like, little potatoes, the ones only maybe two inches around at biggest, but... potatoes? My Kitten grinned at me.

"Marie thought you'd like them. By this time next year we should have plenty for everyone." I looked around, kinda guilty, and she just laughed.

"I meant for the Alliance as a whole. Everyone here has at least one or two." I looked around again as I started carving at my steak, my mouth already full of the smallest of my potatoes. Uh, are we missing some women? Saffron laughed.

"Your friend Silk is being entertained in North House by some of the women interested in his, ah, masculine skills." As I savored my first bite of steak, I thought, kinda surprised you didn't invoke prima noctis or some shit like that.

"I would nev..." I interrupted her with a bite of steak, and we both lost a little time to appreciating Marie's cooking. He is pretty, though, isn't he? Oh, yeah. Like I said, surprised you don't want to give that bike a ride. She looked deep in my eyes, swallowed as suggestively as possible, then said, "I'm not ruling it out as a possibility. But then, I'd been thinking of inviting Lachlan and Carruthers over for the occasion." I snerked, snorted, and full on belly laughed.

When I got some control over myself, with Kitten savoring her second stolen bite of steak, I said, "Damn, Kitten. Three horse hitch, huh?" Her hands slid down south of my Mason Dixon line, and she swallowed, leaned over, and breathed, "four," into my ear. Fuck, straight through my brain into my lady bits. Which, what with her toying with my shapeshifting, were a little less ladylike at the moment.

"Okay, okay, I think my depression has been beaten into submission by application of excessive horniness." She shook her head, picked up another bite of steak, and fed it to me with her fingers.

"When have I ever been satisfied with beating my opponent?"

"Uh, what are you gonna do then?" Her Grin made me forget about everything else in the world.

"Beat your depression until I'm satisfied." Yeah, not supposed to go in swimming for at least half an hour after eating. Between Saffron, Siobhan, and Marie, definitely didn't get to the Bath in half an hour. Maybe an hour and a half. I'm not really sure, because I wasn't, strictly speaking, conscious when we all arrived at the bath. Marie showered me down while Saffron and Siobhan coyly took turns cleaning each other off in plausibly deniable ways.

I kinda wanted to return the favor for Marie, but she just hoisted me into a princess carry and carted me off to the Bath. Fell asleep as Tallulah arrived to talk with Ria and Saffron. Dreamt of my ladies floating around the Maw on inflatable chairs shaped like themselves. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Woke up the following morning, the center of a floating island of ladies and women and kids.

Woke up early out of habit, but spent a few minutes just enjoying the heat of the water leaching all the aches away from me before I dropped away to get to work. Marie brought me not only the expected spicy eggs, jalapeno scrapple, and sausages, but a perfect waffle, gravy syrup, and a small breakfast steak as well. Pulled her over the table for some Mittens kissing before I tucked in, and definitely stayed Co-Located longer than normal to savor every bit of that amazing flavor.

When everybody'd gotten lined up, I called out, "good morning, Cadets! Today, since Marshall duBois has yet to return from his extended diplomatic assignment, I've decided to begin working on your actual fighting techniques." That got a sort of half hearted cheer from some of them. Citron looked way too smug, so I said, "unfortunately, as I'm not all that great with normal physical blades, and my archery skills are so so at best, that means I'm gonna be teaching you hand to hand today."

One very insistent hand shot up.

"Yes, Cadet Hildegarde?"

"We spar today?" I sighed and shook my head.

"No, Cadet. Today you'll be learning technique." Her face fell, a little bit of mulishness coloring her expression.

"Sparring starts next week, if and only if everyone has mastered the basics to my satisfaction." Holy fucking shit the look she shot around her to her fellow Cadets should have been illegal. Like, she didn't say anything, but it was very clear that anybody who didn't meet my standards by the end of the day would face the Wrath of Hildegarde.

"At any rate, for days like this, whether we're working on technique or actually sparring, warmup and stretching is even more important than normal. So let's start the day with a nice invigorating run!" That got the expected perfunctory groans, although even the least hardy in the class had hit the point of being able to finish a warmup without falling out. After that I set them to couples isometrics.

I might have been a little cruel, possibly because I wasn't thrilled about what I was gonna have to do before lunch. I paired Hildegarde and Citron up, then hovered over them, giving them very stern looks whenever their 'assistance' looked like it was about to push past 'stretching' into 'dislocating'.

Once everybody had warmed up, I taught them the one thing that had to have saved me more stupid injuries than anything else duBois ever taught me, except maybe, and I stress maybe, the whole bullet time dodging thing. I taught them how to fall. How to spread the impact, how to redirect it, how to roll back to standing as quickly as possible. How to just straight up roll and tumble and get the fuck out of dodge without getting up if getting upright wasn't possible.

"Yes, Citron?"

"Doesn't this presuppose someone will knock us down?" I smiled at him.

"You think nobody will ever knock you down?" He shrugged.

"You think you'll have a sword and nobody will ever be better than you with your sword, not enough better that you'll wind up on your ass?" Credit where it's due, he thought about that for a second. When he spoke, I'm not sure how much was entirely foreign humility, how much was sorely needed realism, and how much was Hildegarde literally growling at him from just outside arm's reach.

"Heir Lancaster is, I think, better than I with a blade. Even without his Mana Blade..."

"Slayer."

"Even without Slayer, I think he would best me. But... I think I'd more likely be dead than knocked off my feet, at least if we were dueling in earnest, to the death." I sighed and shook my head.

"Yeah, well that's the thing. If you're gonna get better, you gotta practice against someone better than you. If you're practicing, you're gonna wind up on your ass rather than dead. Hopefully. But if you haven't learned how to take a fall, how to take a hit, you're gonna wind up injured for real. Even odds it'll be something that slows down your progress.

On top of that, I cannot count the number of times I went up against someone in the same league of ass kicking as me, but because I knew how to take a hit, take a fall, and roll with the punches, I wound up getting back up rather than taking a dirt nap." I thought about that for a second, then maybe let my brain drift a little.

"Yeah, at least once both of us knew that, and I think the only reason I won was because I was more used to getting my shit pushed in than him. So both of us wound up lying there on the ground, doing our best to do unto one another."

"What happened?" Hildegarde asked. I shrugged.

"I shattered his head between my thighs like an overripe melon." Citron winced, and I realized from the tingles coming from Hildegarde's direction that I'd just added an additional reason for her entirely unnecessary Hero Worship.

"Metal." I gave her a look.

"Where did you hear that?" She shrugged.

"Thrall slang. New. Since your battle against Johnson." By the time we broke for lunch, we'd covered falling, kip-ups, making a fist, and taking a hit. Before I dismissed them all to lunch, I called out, "one thing before you go. Yesterday I was dismissive regarding Cadets Citron and Hildegarde and how their behavior endangered and negatively impacted the training of their fellow Cadets. I apologize for being a less capable instructor than my own mentors here at the Academy.

I'll do my best to do better going forward." At that point I couldn't keep up my serious face any longer, grinned, and said, "I mean, I'm gonna fuck it up. Have you met me? But I'm gonna do my best to do better anyhow. Which is all I can ask of any of you, and all I do ask of any of you." I scanned the crowd, seeing most of them looking more than a little shocked that I'd apologize to them, but not upset shocked.

"Go get some lunch. Citron, Hildegarde, hang back please." The two of them stopped, and I considered it a minor miracle that rather than Citron's original haughtiness and Hildegarde's habitual belligerence, both of them looked a little apprehensive. I also noticed Vickerson pause and turn back before she went through the doors; I nodded for her to get gone, and she went. When the doors closed, I looked at the two of them until they slipped to something resembling Parade Rest.

"Okay, you two. I get that for whatever reason you've decided that you're each other's nemeses." I paused, play acting at thinking; I'd decided what I was gonna say long before this.

"Y'know, in my first year I had a nemesis here." They both perked up a little at that.

"Yeah, that was some dumb shit. He and I did more to screw ourselves out of actual learning than I've even really realized by this point. Like, yeah, he was a dick, but when he and I were both involved in something, neither of us was learning. We were too busy fucking around trying to fuck up the other one." I gave them a meaningful look. Citron sighed, then nodded. Hildegarde, who'd been glaring at him, rolled her eyes and did so as well.

"Okay. You guys seem to get it. You're both very promising. Both of you," I said to pre-empt Citron's interruption.

"But do not misunderstand. No single Cadet is worth fucking up an entire class of thirty two." Both of their hands shot up. I sighed.

"Hildegarde first this time."

"You were." Citron's hand dropped.

"No. No, I wasn't. Y'know why?" She shook her head.

"Because way back then? In my first Season? I wasn't 'Tabitha Diaz, Patron Goddess of the Alliance'. I was just 'Tabitha Diaz, eternal fuckup who barely made the Academy'. I grinned at Citron and said, "I had a lot more in common with her than with you at that point." When Hildegarde snickered, I turned to her and said, "d'you know who my 'nemesis' was?"

"No, Ma'am!" Of course then she spoiled it by muttering, "nor where he's buried." I rolled my eyes.

"He's not dead. In fact, because we both eventually realized that we made better rivals than nemesis, we've both wound up in a lot better places than we were back then. So where as nemeses we kept each other from really excelling, when that relationship evolved into a rivalry, he pushed me to become Commander Tabitha Diaz, who wound up Champion and Patron Demigoddess of the Alliance. I wouldn't have been able to do any of that gnarly shit at the Walls if I hadn't spent weeks before it training with him.

And he went from being a spoiled, arrogant dipshit with his head so far up his ass it impaired his use of his arms to being Heir Laurence Lancaster, Champion of Tabitha Diaz, who slew Ares' High Priest Garland in single combat."

"With Slayer, that..." I cut Citron off.

"While Garland wore full plate of Cold Iron." Citron must have been related to the Lancasters in some way. Or maybe it's actually a recessive Dan gene that lets them do that anal kumquat look.

"So. You're Cadets. Not kids. Not children. I expect you to act like it. No more bullshit that endangers your classmates, yeah. But I'd really like it if you could maybe pull your heads out of your asses long enough to stop getting in each other's way as well." Funny, Hildegarde managed that kumquat look pretty well her own self.

"Figure it out, Cadets. But for now, go get lunch. Dismissed." Yeah, I think next time Menace says she wants to be an adult I'm gonna tell her about this. Adulting sucks.