Dear Diary,

Politeness costs more than most people think, but it's still a pretty good investment if you can afford it.

So yeah, there we are, walking back from a day spent healing grateful and ungrateful alike, with the kind of busy day where even I could only muster a middling appreciation of a top tier cheese steak, when some big dude stands up and says, "Hello Marie, it's been a while."

My first thought, that we'd just run into Marie's ex, just boggled my mind. Like, I get that it takes all kinds, but this dude just looked, I dunno, soft? Not like bloated or anything, and while I said he's big, I don't mean rotund. I mean, yeah, he had a gut, but he didn't look so much like a 'fat guy' as one of those 'super strong man competition' guys. You know, the ones that have a big old beer belly, but under the outer layer of blubber they've got twice as much muscle, none of it for show? Like, 'old tough biker dude' big. Only without the 'old'. I mean, he had a little gray in his beard, but only a couple stripes, where most of it still had that super dark, super curly look you only expect from someplace in the Caribbean or on the Mediterranean.

Then I heard a rustle from behind me, and turned to see Marie of all people curtsying to this dude, knees practically on the ground.

That got my attention, and given my exhausted state irritated me a little bit. I mean, who the fuck this dude think he is to expect my Maid to kneel to him?

Then he turned to Lyman and said, "Loki. Your Champion is the talk of my extended family."

"Only good things, I hope?" replied Loki through his Lyman disguise.

The big dude shook his head, "The she-bear has refused to leave her chambers on Olympus since that day."

Loki shrugged, "I suppose she might need time to put herself back together after such a decisive loss."

The big guy shook his head, "Her twin is distraught. He's vowed retribution on the city who treated her so poorly."

Loki coughed a little at that, like he couldn't quite swallow the idea, and I felt Saffron bristling, ready to light into this guy. I opened my palm down by my side before stepping up to the guy, holding my hand out in the 'shake my hand unless you're an utter antisocial dickwad' position. "Hello. Tabitha Diaz. Freshman Cadet at Phileo City Heroic Academy, Champion and High Priestess of Loki. Good to meet you," I petered off, waiting for him to introduce himself.

He at least did me the courtesy of looking at me while I spoke to him, although his gaze darted to Loki and back while I stood there, hand out, feeling like some kind of asshole, which is not the expectation I've got when I'm on my best behavior. Eventually, he reached out, took my hand and, gently pushing me to twist my wrist, nodded and brought my knuckles to his lips. Loki sighed, and my arm pulled back, my fist balling in preparation for a lot more energetic meeting with his lips.

Right before I got a chance to see if his jaw had as much structural integrity as it looked like it had, a vise clamped down on my elbow. I half turned to look at Marie's forehead, her eyes still downcast, one hand still pulling her skirt out, her knees still nearly on the ground, two fingers of one hand clamped to my elbow like a tiger shaped tire boot. She shook her head, the motion so tiny I thought I imagined it. I unclenched my fist, and she let go of my elbow.

"You're lucky Marie seems to like you still. That whole lip to knuckle thing is getting a little too familiar for my taste."

"I intended no offense, Champion. Simply greeting you as a High Priestess, although I suppose you find the Champion's role a better fit for your temperament."

I shrugged. "I just spent the day playing High Priestess. I can walk the walk if nobody's being a giant dick about things."

He smiled, although even yours truly could tell it didn't reach his eyes, "Diana seems to think differently."

"I think I just mentioned that whole 'nobody being a giant dick' caveat? Yeah, it goes for 'epic raging bitches' too." I didn't want to throw down with this guy, because Marie, but I wasn't about to back down at this point. That's just basic Camden; never show weakness. You roll over once, you'll be rolling over forever.

For his part, big dude just turned to Loki and raised an eyebrow. "Are you certain it was wise to make this one your High Priestess as well?"

Loki smiled at him, the easy, confident smile of a con man in his element, "I've come to discover that wisdom is a luxury I can no longer afford."

The big guy reached out one meaty hand toward Loki. I caught his arm before his hand quite managed to engulf Lyman's shoulder. I heard the distinct sound of Marie growling behind me, and held my other hand out, fingers spread, as I said, "You really like this guy, I get it, Marie. I'm not gonna hurt him, he just needs to be a little less handsy."

For his part, big guy hadn't forced the issue; the moment my hand grabbed his forearm, he'd frozen, and he didn't move his arm in the slightest when he looked past me to Loki and said, "She would stand between us, even now? She certainly takes her title as Champion seriously then." He shifted his gaze to me, and I caught hints of something, something I'd not seen since I'd arrived in Phileo City. I recognized it from so many people back on Philly, though, that intensity that only came out when somebody fucked around and was about to find out, or on Game Days, when all hell broke loose, win, lose, or draw. He shot me a lopsided grin and whispered, "it's not so much that she likes me, it's that she takes her title as seriously as you do yours."

Eventually, if enough bunker-busting clues are dropped directly on my head, sometimes one can squeeze through the inevitable cracks. "D?"

"Not my favored moniker, but should you prefer to avoid full names, I wouldn't be offended by that name, since I used it first."

"She's not a High Priestess, is she?"

He chuckled, "Not even a Priestess. I'd have bent her ear about cutting a swathe through the crowd in the Moon Temple had she been so."

"I mean, you better not."

"Excuse me?"

"I get that you don't want her creating problems on family game night, but I draw the line at someone going off on my friends for something they didn't do."

He cocked his head, his face twisting into that familiar configuration I knew and loathed, the 'really, Diaz?' From Saffron, from Marie, even from Loki maybe, it was cute. From teachers I just kind of expected it. From this dude? Not gonna even pretend I liked it. "What? You got a problem with me defending my friend just because she's one of yours?"

"Defending her from me?" He shook his head, as if trying to get the words to rearrange themselves into something sane.

For my part, I just tossed my head to get some sweaty strands of hair out of my face and said, "from anybody who tries to hurt her."

He shook his head again, pulling back half a step. Before he spoke, Loki quietly said, "I strongly suggest that you decide now whether our meeting is to be a celebration of old comrades and new, or the initiation of strife. Before you decide, however, you need to ask yourself one very important question."

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D's eyes narrowed, his whole posture hunching slightly, the move reminiscent of a pro wrestler getting ready to grapple. "What's that?"

"Why am I the one holding the baby?"

D's eyes got real big as two foot-long bars of light crackle-hissed to life behind him, and his hands went into the air, his whole posture changing from a wrestler about to grapple to a mall Santa about to shout 'ho ho ho' until his elf hoes showed up or some shit. Credit where it's due, the man followed instructions pretty fuckin' well. "We are all friends here, of course. I see we've simply gotten off on the wrong foot, as it were. Please, let me host a revel to celebrate our friendship, old and new alike?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Loki nodding agreement, and nodded to Saffron in turn. Her Mana Blades blinked out like they'd never been there, leaving us all in the dim luminescence of the streetlights. For his part, D just waved us into the storefront next to the one he'd been leaning against. As Saffron, Loki, and Isnomi passed him, he asked, "Diana let it be known that someone cut a swathe through her worshippers, killed her most trusted High Priestess, then had the temerity to strike at Her directly. Are you telling me Marie did none of those things?"

I shook my head, "Nah, that was all me. She secured our exit and made sure nobody fucked with us on the way there or home, though."

"That was all... you?" He shuddered a little. "So you'd defend my Champion from me because you owe her for her protection?"

I shook my head again as Marie walked between us toward the door, reaching out a hand to stop her, to pull her to me, to hug her firmly to my side while I stared the big D right in the eye. "No. I defend her because she's family."

I smiled as her purr rumbled through me, and D's eyes got real big, and all of a sudden his smile finally reached them. "Truly? This is wonderful, then!" He lunged forward, but I trusted the smile in his eyes, and he scooped us up into a big bear hug, the kind of thing you'd do out of the sheer joy at seeing someone, a kind of super-sized glomp. "My Maenads, they have always been my closest family. Any family of theirs is family of mine, and tonight! Tonight we do not simply dine, tonight we celebrate my reunion with my favorite daughter, sister, mother." He carried us into the door of what turned out to be an itty bitty diner, calling out, "Sef! Spread the word! Tonight, we Revel!"

I kind of lost track of things shortly after that. Something, something, something, killing a case of bottles of ouzo just between D and I. I mean, Marie downed one, then draped herself over me like a big furry cape, and Lyman did a couple shots to be friendly. Saffron confined herself to one, both because you gotta have a designated driver, and something about nursing and not getting hammered. Because oh, yes, I got fuckin' hammered. The only reason I'm sure I didn't, as she put it, 'just happen' to D, or Lyman, or some rando(s?) on the street, because the party quickly spilled out onto South Street, where everybody seemed to know and love D, is because she, as she put it, 'kept an eye' on Marie and me.

Honestly, I only remember a few things clearly.

First, D pulling me aside and saying, "I love your body art. Minimalist, but so nicely done! Who is your artist?" I had no fuckin' clue what he was talking about, so he had somebody bring me a mirror. Right there on my shoulder, where I couldn't see it without twisting my arm around painfully or, y'know, using a mirror, which the Academy seemed to have an aversion to, somebody had fuckin' branded me. A heart, but with a curly cat's tail wrapping around behind it, and 'T + S' in the middle of it. If I squinted, I could make out an 'M' behind them, more suggestion and knowing what to look for than anything else. I knew only one person who had that much precision with the only weapon I knew could burn me like that.

I frowned over at Saffron. "When'd you do this?"

She just smiled at me and said, "if you weren't so drunk, you'd remember, Goof." She leaned over toward me like she wanted a smooch, so I leaned over, only to have her lick my fuckin' nose, then nip at it, growling, "Mine. Mine. All Mine." Still smiling like she was the drunk one though.

"Dude, this is absolutely kickass. I want to show everybody this awesome shit."

Everybody pretty much laughed at that point, because apparently I was like, literally the last person on South Street to see it.

Second thing I remember, way after the moon had set, but before the sun rose, was D pulling Loki and I aside while the massive party swirled all around us, a bastion of flashing lights and white noise, and muttered, "Her brother's been lobbing shots at Phileo from Olympus since then."

Loki looked a little concerned, which for him was like an absolute shit fit from, like, anyone not so cool and collected as my Patron. "That might have been nice to know earlier. Have you been defending us, then?"

D pursed his lips and shook his head, "I would, you understand. Phileo City, she is the only one in all the world who has made a place for my Maenads. Elsewhere, they live in the wilds, in the slums, on the ever unstable edges of society. But here?" He hugged Marie to him, deep affection clear from the gesture. "Here, they honor them, give them their youth to train, as they trained me." I didn't bother to disabuse him of his kind of elevated notions about what the Maids did, but I privately vowed to start campaigning to get them maybe a little less in the way of 'Servant' status, and more in the way of 'kept your asses whole while you were getting started, don't forget that' status. But D kept on talking over my private vows to myself, "but that's the hilarious and terrifying thing. The... nobody knows what it is. Have you seen it?"

Loki tilted his ear toward D, saying, "seen what, exactly?"

"The... the thing! No idea what it is. Came here direct from Olympus, got close enough to see it, turned right the fuck around and took a boat. Would have been here weeks ago otherwise."

"Ah. The thing, which you have yet to describe. Is it a furry black thing?"

"Furry? The fuck am I to know whether it's furry or not. I saw it." He threw his arms out to the sides, waving them around as he spoke, "big. Big. BIG. A black thing of enormous bigness. Like a dark cloud across everything from the font of the Delaware to where it meets the sea. I couldn't even see the fuckin' coast south of Newark, but the mountains. The mountains! The fuckin' mountains were black, and not just on the inside. But you wanna know the hilarious part?"

"Please, do tell, I should like to know there is something amusing about a black cloud that has seemingly claimed this entire river valley as its own on the Other Side."

D just snickered before saying, "Aplollolloos... Fucker. Shooting when I might be downrange. Told them I was coming here to tell Marie off." At this point he waved at me, bowing his head as he did, "not gonna do it, 'cause fuck those assholes if they're gonna shoot at family. Fuckers need to get their fucking priorities straight." Then he started laughing again. "Arrows." He could barely get the word out past the laughter. He picked up a little jar of toothpicks and led us all out to the street, then led a whole procession of partiers down to the waterfront, cackling "Arrows!" every block or so. When we finally got to the wide, dark river, he held out his hand, still filled with the pile of toothpicks, then waved his hand out over the river. "Shadow," he nodded at the river, "Arrows!" he pointed at his handful of toothpicks, then just fuckin' yeeted the whole handful out over the river, then started laughing his ass off.

"Where the fuck'd they go?" I slurred.

"EXACTLY!" he hollered, and he, his followers, and I'll admit it, I myself broke down laughing, like we thought it was the most hilarious thing we'd ever seen.

Final thing I really remember from last night wasn't really 'last night' any more, when the whole fuckin' party rolled up the steps of the Academy. Okay, most of them stayed at the base of the steps, because Rocky fuckin' Balboa was right, those steps can be murder if you're not in shape. Or if you're 'I lost track of how many bottles of ouzo we killed' drunk. Saffron, Isnomi, Marie, and I stepped through the unlocked-because-it-was-morning doors, only to find Headmaster Miles discussing something with the Guard.

He flipped back a page on the clipboard, looked up and asked, "I take it your tasks regarding the recent Holy War took all night to complete?"

I shook my head, "Nope. Jusht 'til after dushk."

Some of the titanium I knew he had inside crept into his voice. "And you are arriving back at the Academy drunk and in a state of dishabille why, then?"

Before I could answer, Marie stepped in between us. Like, stepped in between us and for once didn't slouch, or curtsey, or do anything but push Saffron and I behind her, standing to her full height, which I don't think I'd seen since that day in the Infirmary. Credit where it's due, Titanium Soul Miles just stared patiently up at her while she got her words in order. She looked down at him and said, slowly and carefully, "Revel."

He closed his eyes and sighed. "Acceptable." He scribbled something on the clipboard, then sighed and asked, "Will we be requiring more nannies some months from now?"

I couldn't help it, I interrupted whatever Saffron or Marie was gonna say, shaking my head and forcing words out through my laughter, "nah. Everybody there 'cept us was all about the D!"

I might have been imagining things in my inebriated state, but I think I got a smirk out of him with that. He just shook his head and said, "you're late to class. Get to class as quickly as possible. And Cadet Diaz?"

"Yes, Headmaster?" I snapped to something vaguely resembling attention and snapped a salute so sloppy I felt duBois' disapproval through four stories of stone.

"If you insist on wearing your Holy Raiment to class today, it is your religious right to do so, but please do set your top to rights before you do."