Chương 862: Day Eight Hundred And Sixty

Dear Diary, Something I'm just coming to realize now is how much of adulting is kinda fucked in terms of anything my brain is made for. I've mentioned the whole ADHD thing, and the trauma thing, and I think there might be some anxiety in there too, and none of that has prepared me for the torturous combination of 'hurry up' and 'wait patiently'. Shit. Fuck. Dammit. I remember that fuckin' phrase comin' out of my ROTC DI's mouth, as a kind of description of the entirety of military life.

Only I remember him talking about it, and what he described is getting shit done as quickly as possible so you'd be have it done and ready before the next shitstorm arrived, then waiting around while the brass came up with the next shitstorm. Of course, he mostly talked about what military life was like when not in an active combat zone, because ain't nobody excited to get into an active combat zone except people who do not know what an active combat zone is actually like.

I remember a whole assed subcategory of edgelords who used to do a kind of in and out and back in again thing in ROTC. They wanted the uniform, and I think they might have wanted the regimented life, especially the physical training, but they didn't want what they called 'petty bullshit'. Which they used to describe pretty much everything other than physical training, the trappings of hierarchy, which they just knew they'd rocket up through when they finally 'got to show their stuff', and combat.

Which, mind you, they were never in, because they wanted to get into the military, so they kept their noses nominally clean. Honestly, looking back, they just wanted to work out and fight in a girl free environment. Oh, fuck on toast I just realized they'd have found their happy place in the Sacred Order of Thebes.

Even if none of them would ever have admitted to it, because they were the most homophobic motherfuckers I'd ever laid eyes on, while simultaneously also being addicted to homoerotic shit that the neopuritans had somehow 'sanctified' into being not-sexual. No fuckin' idea how they pulled that shit off. Don't get me wrong, I understand that not all battle buddies want to be butt buddies.

There are people I consider close friends, extended family even, who I would fight beside and take a shot for, who are not on my 'have fucked', 'to be fucked', or 'am actively fucking, like right at this instant Marie is doing things that would have terrified Day Two me with her claws' lists. I'm joking on that last one, by the way. Or am I? Yeah, now I'm fuckin' around with my Diary, because... Y'know, I'm not sure why.

Probably because I'm still shook from the whole not-right-in-the-head post tentacle possession thing. I think the weirdest thing about that whole deal is that even though I spread myself over who the fuck actually knows how many tentacles, other than maybe some really pointed awful nom impulses, I don't remember any kind of anything from my Mimic self.

Like, I get it, Dad tells me she's my subconscious or some shit like that, and I'm just one tiny bit of her, but still, you'd think if I spread myself across that much of a distributed intelligence I'd pick up something. Okay, something more than 'nom the wife in the...' Fuck, I can't even say 'non-sexy way', because holy fuck but that was some top tier orgasmic feedback on my birthday. Which, to be fair, makes me feel a lot less bad about Garde, now that I think about it.

I mean, I still feel bad about not being able to stop her from choosing that path, but at least now I know she wasn't in pain. Although that doesn't exactly track, what with it feeling like I've dipped myself in dry cleaning fluid when I dive into the Maw for any length of time, and the Mother of Water Panthers screaming her fear and pain direct into my brain as hers dissolved. I mean, okay, it was more her tasting of pain and fear, but honestly sometimes I think the Mimic part of me thinks with her stomach.

Still, Garde smiled, and I didn't taste anything resembling fear or pain as she passed. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. Shit, Grandma Aetos absolutely had the source of Saffron's wicked Grin on her face as she did. I am absolutely not certain what to think of that fact, and the only reason I'm not confessing to Saffron about Just Happening to her Grandma is because she knows exactly what happened to her, and exactly what it feels like.

So, y'know, she knows. I still probably ought to tell her though. So today wound up being another fuckin' day of waiting. Spent all day after leaving my Temples with one of me aboard the Black Dragon, one of me atop the West Tower, and two of me swimming around looking for the next piece of my Fuck Over Poseidon Plan.

Although I'm really not sure on that name now, because even if I take it literally and, I dunno, encase him in carbonite and use him as a box spring for the Bed, I think I'd still wind up way too skeeved. Was not thrilled by having to spend the night watching my ladies float around my Maw from the top of the tower. Both because I couldn't drag them under when one of them looked particularly tempting and because the big screen really isn't set up to be seen or heard well from the top of the tower.

Yes, the ladies did a short 'all is well, go us' meeting, but then they spent the rest of the night watching reruns. I was unaware that our wedding night was available for viewing. I also am not thrilled at how many times Marie rewatched us putting those cracks in the wall, nor at how much all of my ladies snickered every time she let it play until 'too late' came up. Aw, who am I kidding, I just wanted to be down there with them, or better yet in the Bedroom making new memories. Especially when 'too late' came up.

No idea why, but that ground my gears something fierce. Through the day today, as I kept watch and searched and held on to as much Mana as I could without hurting myself, I realized that even without distributing myself through my tentacles, I still kinda felt that awful 'someone pushing through my tentacles who shouldn't be there' feeling.

I'm not sure whether my subconscious impulse to scratch, or yeet them back out into the deep ocean, or otherwise fuck them over had any effect, but I'd like to think it maybe slowed them down, because I didn't catch the slightest glimpse of any of the kaiju, nor did any of my ladies. While trying to simultaneously ignore my tentacular impulses and send them kaiju impeding vibes, I thought about all the shit I needed to do. Some of it other people could take care of.

Some of it I wasn't sure other folks could take care of or not, but I didn't want them to. Really, the list of things that I and only I could do boiled down to taking down Poseidon himself. Shit, there was at least one thing I knew other people could do that I did not want anybody else doing, and I decided to get that done. Strange thing I've realized about stealing shit from my old world.

Or copying it, I guess, since when I went looking today, I decided to look for BB-62 just to check, and she'd returned to her spot along the waterfront in Camden. The Black Dragon herself took a shit ton of Mana to create, where that stupid aluminum can of spray paint didn't hardly need extra mana at all. Glass bottle of malt liquor was no problem.

David's dollhouse and Alex's books and Kitten's technical documents weren't no thing, and all the copies we made of my romance novel collection barely moved my meter around. So I've always mostly thought it was just a size thing. But Lindsey's nice survival knife took a chunk more than any of those other presents. Marie's sewing supplies did as well, although I didn't think much of it at the time since there were a lot of little fiddly bits, and I wanted to make sure they all came across okay.

Thing is, today I wound up looking for something simple, and found more different types than I really needed to, so I got to pick and choose. Specifically, I stole a nice weight set. A couple benches, a couple stands, a bunch of plates of differing sizes, racks for those, a set of dumbbells with a rack. All of it, even the smallest plates, wound up burning enough Mana that I noticed.

Okay, the little two and a half pound plates weren't hard or anything, but sitting atop the West Tower in direct contact with my biggest, most Mana dense tentacles I shouldn't have even felt something that size. Haven't really tried copying anything heavier, like gold or platinum or anything, but now I'm tempted. Maybe I'll do something like that for Daya, some nice settings or something. I'll have to look into it.

Of course, I'd like to figure out why iron shit specifically seems to be harder than anything else to Mana up, but research on that and so much else will have to wait until after we're done with fuckin' Poseidon.