Dear Diary,

I don't remember ever being the 'smart kid' in class before.

I mean, 'smart ass'? Yeah, I've pretty much got that sewn up. But 'smart'? I had a couple teachers back at Eastside who told me that the whole 'smart ass' thing was me acting out because the class bored me because the material didn't come fast enough, but that's just what teachers say when they want you to stop interrupting the class with ostensibly humorous stupidity, right? Wait, is this what Saffron feels like all the time? Is this what Lancaster feels like when he's got to wait for us to learn something he already knows?

Okay, so today started out pretty normal. Marie knocking on the door woke all three of us at the same time, and when I picked Isnomi up as I stood up, the other alternative being her potentially rolling out of the bed onto the not-presently-cushioned floor, she did the expected, loudly enough to startle herself. So I let Marie in with a frightened-crying Isnomi tucked into one arm. She fussed through me changing her, and didn't really settle down until Saffron plonked her onto a tit, at which point she still wound up making grumbly noises while breakfasting. Some people are never satisfied.

So we took her along to breakfast, and she amused everybody with her bread-and-eggs routine while we all filled our bellies. I swear, she's either going to love stupidly spicy stuff or hate any spice with a passion normally only shown in haute cuisine. The funniest part is that none of us can tell which it's gonna wind up being, including her. Fistful of eggs, nom, frown, stare at eggs, fistful of bread, nom, frown at the eggs some more, nom the eggs, rinse and repeat for however long breakfast lasted.

The others all left while Saffron and I kept eating; for any of our mutual academic classes I pretty much follow her lead, and today's lead was 'keep eating until the Maids kick us out'. Not long before that Lancaster and Lackeys walked past, and he snarked, "why do you Bag insist on letting a dirty infant crawl around on your dining table?"

Without a pause Saffron quipped, "You guys over at the Dan table seem to be having so much fun we just had to try and match your overall maturity level."

I couldn't let that go. "Saffron. That's not nice." When she and Lancaster looked at me like I'd grown another head, I scooped Isnomi up and said, "You're way more mature than silly old Larry, aren't you? Yes you are. You even know to eat bread instead of water when things are too spicy for silly boys like Larry, don't you?"

That got Bill, who had just taken a big mouthful of sriracha scrambled eggs, heavy on the sriracha, to snort hot sauce out his nose. Larry and the Lackeys left in the ensuing hubbub as we all looked for some way to help our nominal guy card holder to breathe without lighting his sinuses on fire. I apologized, but he just waved me off, laughing even through tears that left red stripes down his face. Eventually we pointed him in the direction of the Infirmary with Raven to keep him company, then left for class.

I felt a little bad getting to class late after dropping Isnomi off, but Doc Roberts didn't seem all that upset. Apparently, today we started 'Elemental Magics', and since Doc likes teaching practical stuff before getting too deep into the theory, they'd been showing the rest of the class the basics of Mineral Bond.

"Not complaining, but why are we learning this one first? Wouldn't, like, being able to throw fire be a little more useful in a firefight?"

They nodded. "While a basic Fire Bolt spell, which you'll all hopefully be learning by the end of the year, is one of the simpler ranged offensive Spells, we'll be studying that last. Before you ask, we'll be studying Mineral Bonding to allow you to create targets capable of dispersing a Fire Bolt without damaging the classroom, Create Water in order to put out any accidental fires you start when you inevitably miss your targets, and Air Shield to help dry up the excess water from putting out those accidental fires."

By the time they got to 'inevitably miss your targets', I'd started chuckling, and when they primly talked about cleaning up after our messes, I lost it, waving a hand and saying, "got it, got it, safety first."

A dude in the back corner of the class called out, "Doctor Roberts, no matter what I do, I can't seem to get the Bond to take."

They looked back and said, "It's not surprising given your elemental affinities, Senior Cadet Lancaster, but rules are rules; you must have demonstrated success with each of the Basic and Intermediate Heroic Spells before you qualify for graduation."

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"I thought I could get a waiver."

They shook their head while I turned myself around enough to see a blond dude, maybe in his early twenties, sitting there with the concentric rings Doc handed out. The rest of the class pretty much had something bonded to something by now, but his just lay there completely disconnected. "I'm sorry, Lachlan, but the most the waiver could cover is you not having Mineral Bond as a Skill."

He shook his head, and I felt bad for the dude. He had the same look on his face I felt on my own in Remedial Celtic. Not only that, but apparently this dude had to put up with Larry during family gatherings, which nobody should have to do. I raised my hand.

"Yes, Cadet Diaz?"

When they said my name, Lachlan low key kind of glared at me. I said, "Saffron and I have the Mineral Bond Mana Shape down, we could work with him if you want."

"That's very generous of you, Tabitha. Cadet Aetos, are you okay with spending your class time helping Cadet Lancaster?"

Saffron gave me an odd look, but shrugged and said, "Sure. I've got Mineral Bond down as a Skill already. Between the two of us we should be able to get him at least one successful Bond."

They looked back at Lachlan and asked, "Well, Cadet Lancaster?"

He kept staring at me, obviously trying to see how I would fuck him over, but he nodded to Doc, scooped up his materials, and walked over to sit next to us.

"Cadet Diaz. My brother has told me about you."

"Only bad things, I'm sure."

Lachlan shook his head. "Not entirely. You're not as Bag as I thought you'd be from his descriptions."

Saffron pulled back a little and said, "Excuse me?"

The elder Lancaster smiled easily and said, "no offense intended, but I'm sure you know the stereotypes. Short. Dark. Vaguely filthy. Dressed in rags, no matter what they started out as. You know, Bag."

Moving with quiet deliberation, Saffron stood up, moved around to stand directly in front of where Lachlan sat, picked his hand up and shook it as he tried to avoid staring at her tits, which were just about eye level on him. "Hello. We haven't been properly introduced. I'm Cadet Saffron Aetos, Cadet Diaz' wife. Also, one eighth Bag, on my mother's side."

Lachlan got that look I'd seen so many times on folks who just jammed their own prejudiced feet into their mouths, his eyes racing over Saffron, looking for any evidence of the things he'd just spouted. I have no idea why, but I took pity on him, leaned over closer and whispered, "This is where you apologize for making an ass of yourself."

His mouth worked for a bit before he shook his head and said, "Well, obviously not you, Cadet Aetos."

My darling Saffron wasn't about to let him off the hook quite so easily. She leaned over a little, putting a hand atop his head, then pulling it back to the hollow of her neck. "Yep, short." She pulled his hand up next to her face; where his skin was nearly as pale as Marie's, Saffron's looked tan next to him. Light tan, but still tan. "Dark, or darker than a 'purebred' Dan Lancaster at any rate." At this point she set his hand back next to his working materials and finished up with, "before I earned my place at the Academy, we didn't have the money to afford baths more than once a month, and we had to use discarded cloth to sew our own clothes. So I've definitely been filthy and dressed in rags at one point in my life. But do you know what I've never done?"

Unlike his brother, Lachlan had the grace to at least fake being embarrassed, and he replied, "No?"

She gathered my materials and her own, then set them in front of our new pupil. "I've never judged someone based on their family, or their race, or their wealth, or lack thereof. Now, would you like us to help you check off this little box on your graduation requirement list, or would you prefer to continue working alone?"

Lancaster the elder stood up, shoving his chair back noisily, and the whole class went quiet, staring at the poster-boy looming over my tiny wife. His gaze locked on hers, he pulled one leg back and bowed, making a whole production of it, rivalling even some of Loki's elaborate gestures.

After offending my Champion's wife, he'd better.

"I beg your pardon, Cadet Aetos. I did not intend to offend you, and I would be honored if one of the Academy's rising stars would deign to assist me with my own studies."

I gotta say, he's at least got better social skills than his little brother. Then again, he certainly doesn't have a dose of little man's syndrome stacking with his inherent Lancasterness. I still caught the fact that he never admitted to doing or saying anything wrong. But I'd made the offer, so for the rest of the day after that, we worked with him trying to get even one pair of circles Bonded.

Turns out it wasn't Saffron's genius he needed. Just my own brute strength, Manawise. Despite his, and I quote Doc here, 'appallingly poor aptitude for Earth magic', when I dumped nearly enough Mana into him via Stabilize to make his eyes glow, and he then used every bit of Mana at his disposal to Shape the Spell, he managed to bond about an eighth of the edge of the innermost circle to the inner edge of the slightly bigger ring around it. While that's not enough to check that graduation requirement, it's apparently more than he'd ever done previously.

So now Saffron and I have a third 'lab partner' in Intermediate Heroics, at least until he manages to Mineral Bond an entire 'target'; three concentric rings with a circle in the middle.

At some point I really need to find a way for Saffron's brain to override my mouth.