Chương 600: Day Five Hundred And Ninety-Eight

Dear Diary, There are times when I wish I had better control over stuff like my ADHD. I think everyone who has it to a degree that it affects their life and has had the opportunity to experience non-ADHD thought processes, either vicariously through close friends or directly through drugs, knows what I'm talking about. At least I think they do. I might be wrong. I'm told Autism is a whole assed spectrum, and based on some of my neurospicy friends back in the day, I think ADHD might be too.

At one point the stars aligned and I managed to get some medication that kinda worked to help me manage my ADHD.

And by 'help me manage', I mean I could remember shit that I wanted to do when it was time to do it, instead of stressing over it every time I thought about it for hours, days, even weeks beforehand, then completely forget what I was supposed to do when it came time, only remembering after shit was so far in the past it didn't matter, or maybe when I got a really nasty 'where the fuck are you, bitch' text from somebody I was supposed to do whatever with.

For like two weeks, from the time the shit kicked in to the time I went to order my refill and got told that the insurance company wouldn't cover it and I slipped into a depressive spiral, I got shit done. I mean, not as much as when I hyperfocused on shit, but, and I cannot stress how much of a blessing this was, I got the shit I wanted and intended to do done. Seriously, I'd gotten all the bad advice about ADHD that neurotypical people hand out like candy on Halloween.

'Get a planner'.

'Make lists'. Develop habits'.

'Maintain schedules'. Then my personal favorite, 'just stop being lazy'. Which, as you might imagine, works as well as telling a chronically depressed person 'just stop being sad'. Thing is, all those things work for neurotypical people who are just, y'know, disorganized.

But when your brain does a combination of 'do not allow certain actions for no good goddamned reason' and 'randomly deny access to random memories', in the 'do not let you remember you had something to do, let alone that you were supposed to do it today' sense, none of that shit really helps. My old place in Camden was a graveyard of planners. Nice ones. Cheap ones. Pretty ones. Ugly ones. Big ones. Little ones.

Some of them I'd buy, go straight home, and write down my plans for the next day, or week, or even once a whole month. Important shit that had to be done, all written down. I lost it the next day. I mean, I found it again, three weeks later, after all of the 'will fuck me over if I don't do them' things were already fucked up beyond recovery, but as you might imagine that didn't endear it to me, and it wound up denting the fuckin' wall when I threw it.

So yeah, I'm sure all those things work for neurotypical people. Good for them. I've matured to the point where I can say that and actually mean it. But for me? Not. Helpful. The right medication, the stuff that made my brain release the right chemicals at the right times to let me function like a 'normal', or at least neurotypical human being? Holy shit that stuff was awesome.

I mean, I've heard some people say it eventually makes them feel like they're not 'them', but I think we've all noted that I'm not my favorite person, so I might have seen that as a side benefit. Thing is, as I mentioned in there, hyperfocus is a thing. A thing that put me into a kind of superhuman overdrive even back in the day when I was nothing but an almost feral human street rat from Camden. I still get like that now and then in the here and now.

But the problem with hyperfocus and hyperfixation is that it's totally, utterly, completely outside of my control. Yeah, it's like a superpower, and a pretty awesome one if it can turn a sort of bright kid into a learning machine that goes from knowing nothing to being able to debate college students coherently on their major in under a week. But the reason it's not is purely the random nature of it. I once spent a fuckin' three day online bender learning about butterflies.

Not even, like, butterflies from the East Coast of the USA. Fuckin' Asian Butterflies. I think I was tryna figure out what kind of butterfly was in the 'is this a <whatever> meme', but I could just be rationalizing my completely irrational behavior. So yeah, the reason I'm kinda stuck on that today is because I really wish I could turn hyperfixation and hyperfocus on at will, learn the fuck out of Bears, Dire Animals, and the Great Lakes.

Instead of being the one nominally in charge, yet entirely incapable of making an informed decision because I am not, in any meaningful way, informed. As the light faded from the sky, I turned to Chloros and said, "good job finding this! Definitely got lucky this part of the ice is so clear." When she raised an eyebrow, I waved to the obviously cloudy ice a couple dozen feet to either side of us. She smiled.

"Forensic Shaping trick, combined with this ice being newer than the stuff too far to the sides. Not sure I could have gotten that stuff this clear." I nodded.

"Good work, then. I'd say some pithy shit about making your own luck, but 'good work' seems to cover it, y'know?" She laughed.

"Yeah. Thanks, Ma'am." I sighed.

"Of course, this means we've got to check at least three directions to find where that thing came from, and without some luck we still won't find it."

"Three?" I nodded, stepping us back to the shoreline as I did, because 'on the ice of Erie at night' wasn't a place I wanted to be when 'underwater kaiju bears' were a thing that existed.

"Three." I waved the other Cadets over. When they got there I continued, starting with an explanation.

"Okay, Cadets. Chloros found a Dire Bear print in the silt under the ice. It looks to match the size of that thing that tried to attack the Homestead, and it pretty clearly broke the ice coming out from under it. That means we have to try to find out where it went in. As soon as it's light enough to see things properly, Chloros will double check to see if she can spot any other tracks, just to make sure it didn't dip in here and come right back out.

While she does that, the rest of you split in two groups and start searching the shoreline for signs it passed through. This thing was huge as shit and not tryna be stealthy, which is how we've been able to track it without our tracker friends. No offense, Chloros."

"None taken. They're better than me at the tracking part."

"If there's no sign that it dipped under right here, I'll have Chloros join one of your two teams, and I'll head for the far side of the lake. Might get lucky and it just cut straight across or some shit like that." Brown raised his hand, and I nodded to him.

"If there might be more of those things around, should we split up?" I sighed.

"Good point, but if there's anyone nearby more capable of fighting one of those fucking things than the seven of us, that's news to me. And we can't fight it, can't even distract it from potential civilians, Alliance or otherwise, if we can't find the fucker." I went silent for a moment, then waved Brown down when he started to speak.

"Can any of you Shape Direct Message or Private Message?" Brown chuckled a little, and when I nodded to him, he said, "I was going to suggest a Direct Message link between the groups, Ma'am. We all know how to shape it. Private Message... I don't think any of us have the, ah, familiarity with one another to maintain that kind of link for any length of time." If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Ryan cleared her throat.

Then blushed, but didn't look away, as she said, "Cadet Chloros and I can."

"Patty!" Chloros squeaked. Then she sighed.

"Yeah, we can." I shook my head.

"Look, ladies, I dunno why you're so shy about being up in one another's business. We all heard it, even if you were discreet enough we didn't get to or have to watch." Ryan shot me a lopsided smile.

"It's not quite about sex, Ma'am. It's about intimacy." O'Brien barked out a laugh at that, but I just nodded.

"I know the difference. For what it's worth? That's exactly what the Academy's and Phileo's policies encourage. Not that I learned that until recently myself, really." At O'Brien's confused look, I felt the need to maybe explain a little, to do some Mentoring to, I dunno, earn my pay or some shit like that.

"Do you know what makes people fight?" I swear I almost lost it laughing when he thumped his chest and said, "honor!" I didn't, and I coughed real loud to get his attention back on me when Aetos did.

"Yeah, maybe some people. Sometimes. But the thing that will make just about anyone stand up and fight like hell even when they absolutely know that the fight they're going into has already been lost? Love. If someone you love is behind you, danger will not get past you until you are several steps past being 'dead'. You will fight like you have never thought you could, endure shit that you know has already killed you, just to buy your loved one the slightest bit more chance to survive."

I watched as Ryan and Chloros shared a look. Before anybody could interrupt, I said, "that's the whole trick to why the Sacred Brotherhood never lost. When the person right next to you holding the line, fighting, is someone you love more than life itself? You will fight like a fuckin' incarnate God of War to defend them, and they will do the same for you.

So yeah, it might be a little bit of a cynical way to make our Heroes better at the dangerous parts of Heroing when the Powers That Be encourage Cadets to catch feelings for each other, but y'know what?" I waited until right before they spoke, and finished with, "when you've got two incarnate Gods of War each doing their best to kill the fuck out of anything that threatens the other, they're both that much more likely to come out of the deepest of shit alive."

By the end of that, everybody but O'Brien was nodding along, picking up what I was laying down. Hell, even he looked speculative. Which, if it meant he'd be cultivating a deep and meaningful relationship purely out of a desire to keep his own ass slightly more intact at some point, would still wind up maybe keeping some other Cadet in one piece, since he didn't seem like an actual sociopath. Just a bit of a macho jerk.

"Okay, find a good spot and settle in. You know the drill." They did. They also maybe let Ryan and Chloros have a little more down time together, which I didn't understand until the following morning. I felt some kinda way when I realized that the thing that would let them maybe fight like hell if they ran across a Dire Bear was also the thing that meant they had to be in separate groups to maintain communication. Meanwhile I worked with Brown to set up a Direct Message link.

Not as good, not as close, more a shitty walkie talkie than the implanted cell phone that I had with my ladies, but still enough for me to let them all know if I found the bear, or for them to tell me if one of their groups did. We also set up a thing where he'd ask me something every couple minutes, and if he didn't check in, I'd come back to them in my biggest hurry.

If I didn't respond, they were under orders to run like fuckin' hell back to the Homestead, because anything that could take me out without some kind of noise wasn't something that the six of them were qualified to even slow down; they'd need Saffron and the ladies to even have a fuckin' chance. No joy on more bear prints. Or, really, no joy on it entering the water here. We found three prints, all of which looked like it had walked up to the shoreline and just shoved its way through the ice.

The two groups split up at that point, Ryan going west with Brown and O'Brien, Chloros going east with Aetos and Mackenzie. I nodded to both groups, then started stepping across the frozen lake. I wasn't going for maximum speed. After each step, I hopped into the air a couple times, looking for those 'less cloudy' patches that hinted the ice had been broken recently.

I'd had Chloros demonstrate the Shape for me, and I was confident that even if I couldn't replicate it, I could Mana Blade a hole big enough to dive through, and swim to the bottom to check for footprints. Really hoped I didn't have to do that. Hypothermia wasn't an actual danger any more, but nobody likes being so cold their nips get so hard they hurt. Some time around mid-day I started getting nervous.

No bad news from either group, and Ryan was letting Brown know the status of Chloros' group before every check in, but something just, I dunno, felt like somebody was watching me. I stopped stepping forward in a straight line, instead doing a kind of random zig zag forward across the ice. Every time I Translocated, whether to move forward or to hop upward for a better view the feeling got worse.

I shoved my Blend up a bit, and things got a little better, but I had to drop it down a bit when Brown missed my reply and got a little panicked. I let him know I'd replied, but he might have missed it because I was tryna be stealthy. After that I moved forward Blended, dropping it to reply whenever we checked in. Some time well after noon I reached the far side of the lake.

I hadn't seen anything resembling a breach point for Kaiju Smokey, so I started hopping back and forth across the lake shore, hopping to treetops to scan for less cloudy patches. That awful ugly 'being watched, balefully' feeling never went away. I also didn't catch sight of a giant black tower with a big fuckin' eyeball on top of it, even when I hopped to M-Space to look. Only difference there was Erie not having a crust of ice over the bay to my northwest.

I hopped over there in the Mortal Realm and spotted some fresh ice patches, but nothing anywhere near big enough to have passed the big Dire Bear. Before I could decide whether to bring Chloros and the rest over to look, Brown whispered in my ear from across the lake.

"Ma'am. I think you should see this." I stepped back to our camp of the night before, then rapidly stepped along the shore until I spotted O'Brien. He stood over a big fuckin' bear print in the dirt just beyond the shore of the lake. When I stepped next to him, Ryan and Brown both stepped out from convenient hides. Only made sense, leaving the tanky guy to guide me in, with the physical and magical ranged hitters waiting in ambush if one of the bear's buddies happened along.

I glanced over and saw fresh ice on the lake.

"Damn. Looks like we found where he went in."

"Uh..." Brown kinda hemmed.

"What?"

"I'd rather not say until Chloros gets a look at it, Ma'am. I could be wrong, and I don't want to bias her or you." I nodded.

"Fair." I stepped over to Ryan.

"You mind if I do something to get Chloros' team back here faster?" She looked at me blankly for a second, the kind of blank that told me she wasn't entirely copacetic.

"Something dangerous?" I shrugged.

"Not as far as I know." She sighed.

"I'd feel better with her here. Go ahead." I really didn't know what I was doing with what I did, but I reached a hand out to her left shoulder, my thumb instinctively going to where the artery pulsed through. I felt through her not unlike I did when I sent stuff going through Gods to ferret out their Avatars, only I kept my touch far lighter, far more careful. A moment later I found the link between her and Chloros, and stepped us to her side.

"There you go." Ryan smiled, hugged Chloros, then looked back at me with one eyebrow raised.

"Okay, we're with her, but aren't we all supposed to be back with the other two?" I smirked at her.

"Smart ass. Okay, ladies and gentleman. Join hands." When they did, I stepped us all back to where the other two waited.

"Okay, Forensics Cadet Chloros, do your thing." Her thing took nearly until sunset, when she trudged up to the rest of us, who'd mostly set up camp off to the side of the bear's path.

"I'm sorry, Ma'am. Bad news. Also, worse news." I winded.

"Report." She sighed.

"I double checked, because I didn't want this to be true, but... every bit of evidence I've found points to this being an exit point, just like the other one we found."

"Well. Shit. So Smokey was in the habit of going under the ice." She shook her head.

"No, Ma'am. That's the worse news. This?" She nodded toward the new ice, then kinda ran her gaze down the path of tracks and evidence of a big Dire Bear's passage.

"This happened within the last forty eight hours."