Chương 652: Day Six Hundred And Fifty

Dear Diary, Kinda funny; I'm not completely unaware of how much I've progressed since I arrived here, but it still kinda surprises me that my progress has been noted by others and is being used as an excuse to make me some kind of authority figure. Like, not even talking about the whole 'Goddess' thing here, although I'd be lying if I said I wasn't kinda chuffed about yesterday's special altar time with Orla. Like, I kinda get the whole 'muscle mommy' attraction now.

Not like I wasn't into self assured physically strong women before that, what with Marie. Like, yeah, the two most self-assured women I've met here and now, and I've cuffed both of them, so I think I may have a type when it comes to long term commitment. Then again, Sister Siobhan Darling is probably the opposite of that; she's as self-effacing as they come.

I really hate to think that my attraction to her is entirely sexual though, and the reason I bring that up is just thinking about the woman fills my brain with innuendo. But where Saffron has got a typical Hero's muscle hidden under all that delicious squish, and Marie is a long, lean, beautiful machine, Orla is, not to put too fine a point on it, way more like me. She's got some serious muscles, and while she's still got modest curves packed around them, they're not in any way hidden like they are with Saffron.

Shit, I'm not sure Orla or I could really 'hide' our muscles if we tried, not without looking like Angel. Who, just to be clear, is carrying some serious muscles herself, but her overall build is way closer to a power lifter or strong woman competition winner than a bodybuilder like me and Orla.

So yeah, if a side effect of being tapped as a Goddess is a woman like Orla sticking both middle fingers in the air pointed toward Ares' specific section of Olympus while she murmurs, "wear me the fuck out, Goddess," I'm absolutely down for it. Of course, like I said, what I'm actually thinking about is what I think of as my 'physical' progress. My Strength, my Agility, my unholy high Endurance, which is really fuckin' high even when I'm Blended and not tanking stuff with my tentacles.

Or taking tanks with my tentacles. Yeah, over eight hours focused on Orla definitely had an impact, because her whole deep desire was to be gently conquered by someone so much stronger than her that she could feel utterly, completely safe as I drip fed her Ecstasy. Or more accurately did the Ecstatic version of the frog in a pot, starting out with a drip and gently easing the flow up until she just melted under the onslaught. Damn.

Now I gotta see if my tiny tyrant can take over my tentacles well enough to do that to me, because while it was kinda fun to do, it might be a special kind of sweet to have that done to me. At any rate, my Cadets don't see me as a 'temporary fill in' for duBois at this point, and while intellectually I realize that I'm the woman who singlehandedly defeated New Amsterdam and have done multiple Marathon level feats of Endurance, emotionally I'm still, y'know. Just me.

Yeah, I think this might be a 'daily mantra' kind of thing. But I can't say the same fuckin' thing every day even if I want to. So yesterday after I lay a limp, unconscious Orla down on the altar, maybe a little sheepish as I scooped up Rabbit and Spider, I hopped the three of us up to the Homestead, picked the kids up, and took them to the Phileo Temple for their lessons. I sorta wanted them nearby me, but I remembered the classes I took back in the day where we never had the same teacher longer than a few weeks.

I mean, yeah, I had a few classes like that at the Academy, but those were kinda oddball classes here and now. So I dropped the kids off at school, slapped a smile on my face as they dispersed into small groups with their new friends surrounding them, and got my ass down to Calverton. Where I wound up being the visiting math expert. So fuckin' weird. I'm not even really good at math. But here and now, I'm a math teacher.

A few days a week anyhow, until the local teachers pick up what I'm putting down and run with it. Spider and Rabbit both seemed content to tag along for the day. Not sure why. Part of me worried about Spider, but Rabbit seemed okay with him, and I trusted her judgement. Worst case, I wound up with a really embarrassing Lily situation. Like, anybody looking at Lily would totally get me Just Happening to her. But Spider... yeah.

They'd have to spend a day with him just vibing, making quiet comments that had every adult in the room biting their lips trying not to laugh. Brought both of them home for dinner after I picked the kids up. At first I felt some kinda way when Spider paid them so much attention as I brought the Academy food around, but then I realized, he wasn't creeping on them or anything even really close.

He just listened to their stories of their day at school as carefully and attentively as he had done to my stories about our wedding and Grandma's death. Stolen story; please report. After dinner, I gave Spider and Rabbit a ride back to Compton, dropping them off where I'd found them. Before I left, I pulled my Blend around Rabbit and I and asked her about a couple things, and while she seemed a little surprised, she definitely didn't seem as terrified as she had been when I first saw her standing there.

After soaking for a good long time, then putting the kids to bed, my ladies and I spent a little time in the Bedroom noodling around with tentacles. Like, letting them use them. I figure if that was a good way for me to learn, it would work for my best High Clergy, too. Jury's still out, more experimentation needed to see if that teaching method works for them. Lots more.

I realized that I didn't remember ever really doing formation training with this batch of Cadets, so once Lachlan ran them through their warmup while I delivered the kids to school, we lined them up in two sixteen man formations.

"Okay, everybody. Today we're gonna learn the formations used by Phileo Volunteers. I know not everybody here is gonna work with Volunteer Units, but the basic concepts still apply." Citron's hand shot up.

"Will the Imperator be enforcing Phileo's recruitment and training methods throughout the Alliance?" I paused, because we hadn't really talked about that.

"Honesty? Maybe, but I kinda doubt it." He looked like he was trying to think of a response, so I decided to cut him off before he went off half cocked.

"Look, I'm all about Agency. I'm not gonna dictate how anybody does anything. The Imperator..." I shrugged.

"She's smarter than me. If she says there's a right way to do things, that means she's looked it over, probably talked it over with experts in the field." I watched him starting to think rather than just get pissy about it.

"She's the smart one, that's why she's the one in charge of organizing things. That said, she knows I'm all about Agency, and she knows I mean that as much for some random person living on the street as I am for the richest fucker with the biggest mansion." Citron tilted his head.

"Is that why you chose a homeless person to represent Newark?" I blinked.

"What?"

"Councilor Papadopoulos. My mother researched him when he was made Grand Councilor. Prior to the Battle of the Walls, he was living on the street." I shrugged.

"Yeah, I didn't know that. But honestly, I'm not upset about it. He's probably the single most, I dunno, virtuous person on the Grand Council. When I've heard him talk about stuff, support stuff, his whole rationale is 'does this help people', 'is this the right thing to do', and 'is there a way we can help more people while hurting less'. He's a fantastic example of keeping his feet on the ground even when he wound up in exactly the right place at exactly the right time."

"You... you didn't know who he was?"

"Nope. Didn't care, either, other than that he was from Newark. Because it made no damn sense for the representative of Newark to be from somewhere other than Newark. And he's the only one from there who didn't run screaming when we asked for a volunteer." I nodded.

"Let that be a little lesson. Way more often than not, success in life hinges on being in the right place at the right time. Or the wrong place at the wrong time. Or, y'know, to put it another way..."

"Luck," Hildegarde blurted out.

"Yeah. Luck. Thing is, it's not just luck most of the time. If you're born on the street, you gotta work your ass off and get lucky." I stopped, shook myself.

"We're getting kinda far afield though. Short version, work hard, keep your eyes open, and when that moment comes along, grab it with both hands and don't let go." I smiled at Vickerson.

"Kinda like when the right person comes along. Or people." I took another deep breath.

"So all I can tell you is that conscripts? Slaves? People forced to fight when nobody else has to? Yeah, not gonna be happening any more. But beyond that, if you want people to fight for money, or pride, or train everybody, or however everybody in your City decides to do it, so long as everybody doing the fighting agrees to that method of recruiting, I don't think either of us have a problem with it." I looked at Citron until Vickerson not so surreptitiously nudged him with her foot.

"Yes, Ma'am. Thank you for the answer, Ma'am."

"Good. Now, however they're selected or equipped, troops need to be trained. You're not wrong about Phileo Units not being the only way to train people. Right now we've got more trained Veterans than any other type of experienced troop, so it's the easiest one to propagate, but you guys are gonna be the ones training troops next time shit goes down. Whenever that happens to be. Unless there's not any kind of war or disaster again in your lifetime."

I gave it a few moments, and most of the Cadets snorted out their opinion of that.

"So, right now you're gonna learn Phileo Volunteer Unit formations. Over the next couple weeks, I'm gonna research the other Cities' traditional methods, work with the Imperator and a few of our military veterans to sort out which of them can be integrated, and we'll be training in how to train troops in those methods as well. But for right now? One person per squad of four, go get shields and spears from the equipment sheds!" So we spent the day marching around in circles.

After the first couple Infirmary visits, I remembered duBois hadn't started us armed, and figured out why. Kinda wanted to do something nice for George, because from the last week or so of listening, he really was the moral center of the Grand Council, which is a hell of an accomplishment for a dude who was homeless a year ago. But really, when it comes to rewarding people, I've gotten to be a little bit of a one trick pony, and Cailyn's already got that covered. Good for him. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.