Dear Diary,

I definitely think I flipped some kind of Adult flag today. I know in the past I've seen adultier adults look at some bullshit I'd just pulled, or even was in the middle of pulling, and after a moment of building themselves up to confronting me and possibly shutting me down, possibly redirecting me, possibly losing their shit entirely, instead just deflate, shrug, and choose tranquility. Like, yeah, maybe they'd say something at that point, maybe something that wasn't entirely appropriate due to language or situation or whatever, but the dressing down and explosion just didn't happen, because there are just not enough hours in the day to deal with my bullshit.

I never realized exactly what that would feel like from the other end of things. I guess I kinda realized today that those adults in the past weren't entirely fed up with me, specifically. Adults deal with so much shit so often, especially adults working in places like my old Camden, that eventually they run entirely out of fucks to give. Which reminds me of a song, and now it's going through my head again. Which normally isn't all that bad, having yet another earworm in my brain, but now I've got Apollo's gift of Music jawns working, so now everybody knows that song.

So yeah, as we crested the last rise and Silk got his first good look at Saffron's middle finger to the world, the by now distinctive cry of a Dire Bear echoed through the valley. Everybody went still, and I took the opportunity to really listen. Along with the roaring came the kind of crashing sound my brain still associated with traffic accidents. Crashing, thundering footfalls, and roaring all kinda travelled from left to right, and I caught it right as a small airliner sized Dire Bear came crashing out of the tree line, heading directly for the West Tower like it had taken that shit personally.

"Cadets, this is what we're here for. Silk, Panther, feel free to stay under cover, or get to the Houses and get yourself indoors."

Silk just snorted explosively. "You'd have us hide in the house with the women?"

I walked past him right then as the Cadets charged down the hill. "Hey, I'm not gonna risk that pretty face before they've had a chance to ride it. They know where I sleep." Then I backed away as he spluttered, throwing my Blend up as I did.

Kitten? Might need you visible. West Tower maybe? Dire Bear headed for the Homestead.

Why?

Plausible deniability if I gotta use my tentacles on the thing?

You are attempting to ease your way into a bit more visibility, are you not? To perhaps dissuade the wiser, more educatable Gods from attempting to do violence to you and yours?

Shit. Okay. Still might like you on the tower just in case?

In case you do something gloriously Heroic and breathtakingly violent, that I might be appropriately aroused?

Uh. Yes? Totally that?

Saffron laughed in my head, and I felt her Co-Locate to the top of the tower. At this distance she was a tiny, tiny speck. Well. Arouse me.

Gotta give the Cadets a workout first. Also, y'know, maybe Revive them after if they need it.

Such a dedicated mentor.

I stepped to the base of the tower and took the opportunity to watch the Cadets move into action. If they'd been six well oiled machines last time I brought them out, this time they moved like six parts of a single device. They'd been practicing.

While the other five dashed down into the valley, Brown charged up. It took me a second to realize they were throwing Air Shields in front of themselvess, then bouncing off of them to get a little more height and a fair chunk of distance as they advanced. Meanwhile Chloros' voice rang out over the valley. "O'Brien, Aetos, tag team! Ryan, keep its mouth shut! Mackenzie, see if you can get a charge in its ear! Brown, handing off to you!" By that point Brown had hit a point where they had a solid view of the valley, and they slid to a stop in an Air Shield box right before firing off a big old chunky Fire Bolt right at the thing's crotch.

Between Chloros yelling and the Fire Bolt, the thing finally noticed the Cadets about halfway across the valley. It ripped up a couple fields the women had laid out and started working on clearing before the snow got deep as it turned disturbingly quickly and charged back toward where Brown hung in the sky, charging up another Fire Bolt in the flashiest way possible. Of course as it paused and roared its opinion of getting the equivalent of a bottle rocket up the ass, the telltale thrum of a Crossbow reached me. A moment later it shook its head and roared again. Fluids spewed out of one clenched closed eye. Chloros definitely had a way with that Crossbow, although to be fair this time her target was the size of a small car.

While it shook its head, what looked like splinters appeared across its face, mostly around its open, roaring mouth. Its roars cut off into a sort of ongoing spluttering cough as Ryan did her one woman rain of arrows thing. It took a couple lumbering leaps toward Brown, then tripped. I realized why when Aetos came into view, tumbling away from where its paw had gone out from under it. Not surprising, as his big spear had gone missing, presumably in the bear's paw. Don't care how big and tough you are, somebody shoves a pencil through your tarsals you're gonna be ginger about stepping on that foot any time soon.

"O'Brien, Aetos is disarmed, cover for him!" Brown's shout came right before their next Fire Bolt slammed right into the Bear's face. "Ryan! Shift targeting to vitals!"

I laughed a little as the rain of arrows stopped flying at the Dire Bear's face and started flying at its crotch. I guess with something this big, most vital organs were buried too deep for basic arrows, but certain very sensitive spots tended to be kinda close to the surface for obvious copulation reasons. At that point O'Brien engaged it, which was a fancy way of saying he slammed that big fuckin' greatsword into its good front ankle. That got about the result you might expect, the Bear raising its paw into the air with the intent of driving it deep into the dirt and turning O'Brien into a bracelet in the process.

I tensed up a little, but he dove to the side at the last second, rolling to his feet and bringing his greatsword up, around, and landing a slicing slash to the thing's foreleg as he did.

With him being so acrobatic and flashy, I almost missed what else had happened. When the thing pulled its paw back Mackenzie, who'd buried both of her daggers into the back of its foreleg, rode it up, then leapt off and slammed both daggers into one of the bone plates on its side. As the bear tried to turn O'Brien into a greasy stain, she climbed it hand over hand. In seconds she'd reached a point she could run straight up its back. Infuriated by Aetos and O'Brien, it didn't even notice her navigating her way to the back of its head. She pulled something out of her pack, did something with it, then leapt up and dunked the whatever it was into the Dire Bear's left ear.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

It felt her grabbing its ear, and gave up on stomping O'Brien to try and scrape her off its head. She ran back down its back, sprinting as it stood up. She still had to be at least forty, maybe fifty feet in the air when its back got to vertical for her to keep her footing. Instead of trying to cling to it, she leapt. Like, didn't even try to curl up or anything. But like I mentioned, teamwork. She slowed into a sliding skate just before she hit the ground, when Brown's hastily thrown Air Shield turned her earthward momentum into a burst of horizontal speed.

Good thing, too, because the Dire Bear spotted her, twisted, and brought its forepaws down right where she'd landed, hard. Hard enough that one of its feet hammered through the covering of snow, deep into the soil. The other one came down on the Air Shield, and while I heard the Air Shield give way, it lasted long enough to act like a grease patch; the Dire Bear's foot went right out from under it, and its face slammed into the snow chin first.

"Timing on the charge?" called Brown.

Right on the edge of hearing, sprinting for all she was worth away from the fanged business end of the Dire Bear, she shouted out, "any time now!"

Two things happened nigh simultaneously. Another Crossbow bolt slammed into the thing's other eye, which spurted gore onto the ground in front of it. At the same time, a 'thump' made tiny by distance and intervening bear skull echoed through the valley, accompanied by smoke blowing out the thing's left ear. A moment later a few more wisps of smoke drifted out of its right ear and both nostrils. Mackenzie slowed to a jog, looking over her shoulder. Aetos and O'Brien backed off, although Aetos was definitely looking at the foot he'd lost his spear to, like he wanted to go get it back. For an endless moment, the valley held its breath.

Then the fuckin' Dire Bear lost its goddamned mind. Blind, probably deaf in at least one ear, it started thrashing, smashing, roaring as it pushed itself to its feet.

I Shaped an amplification and said, "Okay, Cadets. Back away. Good teamwork, good effort, but this fucker is just a little beyond what you can take without undue risk."

"You heard her; back away, remain ready to back the Champion up as needed."

I snorted. I've never really been able to tell exactly where some things are in M-Space, at least in relation to the Mortal Realm. Like, if you asked me where the Maw is, I could point to it from anywhere in M-Space, but I'm just not sure when I'm in the Mortal Realm. But I realized right then, as I reached out with my tentacles, pushing them into the Mortal Realm, that I wasn't the only one who considered the Homestead 'home'. I'd just reached through with the biggest local tentacles. I hadn't exactly expected the big cat five tornado motherfuckers. Careful not to accidentally squish my Cadets, I whipped one around the bear's midsection, the tip of another around its neck, and a third around its legs right above the knee.

I squeezed it around the middle, at which point I realized that my amplification spell was still up. "Fuck!" The bone plates armoring the big airliner sized Dire Bear proved razor sharp, lacerating the skin of my tentacle as I bore down. This did not make me happy. Or do anything for me remaining more composed than the thrashing, roaring, furious bear itself.

"Fuck, it's righty tighty, lefty loosey, right?" I know, I know, Dire Bears don't have standard threads. They're probably machined one off or something. But that didn't stop me from holding its torso still while my other two tentacles twisted its head and hips away from me with every ounce of power in them. Two horrific snapping crunches later, the thing convulsed, then proceeded to fertilize the fields it had been wrecking as it went still.

Mittens? Could you get the women bundled up and out here to start rendering this thing?

Drain?

"Ah, fuck."

Nobody said I couldn't get at least a little comfy. I stepped to the top of the West Tower, leaned against the railing, and thought about railing railing as Saffron wrapped her arms around me and pressed her cheek against my back. "Love?"

"Yeah, Kitten?" I grabbed its rear feet in one tentacle, hefted it up until its head dangled above the snow, then used the other two to rip its fuckin' head off. Messy as fuck, but I didn't see how draining this thing would be anything else. More fertilizer for the fields, right?

My Kitten purred for me as she said, "when you do that to Zeus, I'm not sure I want to see?"

"Whut? You feeling all right, Kitten?"

She sighed. "I'm not sure I could survive that level of arousal."

I snorted, snickered, and laughed out loud as I stood there draining out the big fuckin' kaiju bear while Saffron's hands roamed.

Cadet Aetos wound up a little pissy. Turns out his spear wound up deep in the bear's tarsals, but said ankle bones proved too much for the spear, which wound up looking kinda modern-art-esque. Eh. The women seemed almost as impressed with that as they did with Silk's... essential Silkiness. For his part, Silk seemed mollified by the fact that while he had run toward the Dire Bear, my assumption about the Cadets had been right. The hunters were better at a whole list of things than our Cadets, but 'sprinting directly into battle' wasn't one of those things. I'm honestly not sure what he would have done if he got there. Maybe some of Mackenzie's climbing and acrobatics or something, but I'm pretty sure he didn't have a fuckin' concussion grenade in his back pocket.

Yeah, apparently the Alchemists who'd been supplying the Black Dragon had, in fact, thought of a few other applications for explosives. Handy, especially for big Mana Resistant bastards. Not anybody's fault that the big fucker was just too fuckin' big. Definitely needed to figure out where these things were fuckin' coming from and shut it down, hard.

While Siobhan saw to the Cadets, who'd all gotten away with the kind of minor dings you'd expect from doing parkour on a battlefield, Saffron and Marie swept me away to the Bedroom and kinda knocked me the fuck out. Okay, almost. Siobhan pouted, so when she finished they let her hop in and handle the coup de grace. I definitely needed it.

Dreamt of my lovely ladies orchestrating a whole seven course banquet, including the return of chibi chef beans and all I could nom shrimp. Good stuff. Still not stuffed, and sadly not super rested, because the fuckin' Dire Bear's plating really did a number on all three tentacles. Nothing deep, nothing that made me think I'd been mortally or even gravely injured. Just felt like I'd tried to exfoliate with a cheese grater.

Woke a little cranky. Met Headmaster Miles before he got into the Dining Hall, and we took a quick detour to his office.

"Good news, we've made friendly contact with a middling big town to the west of Lancaster."

"The bad news?" He just raised an eyebrow at my, 'why does there have to be bad news' look.

I sighed. "We didn't really get much actual recon done, and another Dire Bear got all the way to our Homestead."

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I hate to ask, Champion, but..."

"Yeah. Gimme the same six, I'll go back out next week."

He let out that deep breath, obviously relieved. "Thank you, Champion."

"De nada."

Bear steak for breakfast was a kind of cool reward, and as always Marie with fresh exotic ingredients wound up making an absolute culinary masterpiece. Made me wonder what she'd do with Rabbit. In the Bedroom, not the Kitchen. I hadn't given into Her Dark Fatassness that much yet. Got out into the yard with half the steak still on my plate, because that shit was definitely rich, and I wanted to savor it.

Think I was still feeling some kinda way about those lacerated tentacles. Got the Cadets warmed up, then had them set up the obstacle course. Almost lost my temper like two hours after lunch, when Hildegarde and Citron nearly killed each other and half a dozen other Cadets when they knocked each other off the top of the climbing net. As the rest of the Cadets slid off my hasty Air Shield, which also wound up knocking down the climbing net itself, I grabbed each of them by one calf and lifted them off the ground. Had to shake Hildegarde and bark at her when she took a swipe at me, I think before she realized it was me.

I looked down at them, opened my mouth to dress them down with some quality hardcore terrifying threats and shit, and then... just got hit with a sudden wave of tired. Not physical, not mostly. Just kinda emotionally drained, too drained to really get into the right headspace to make these two piss themselves. Instead I just tossed them both back to the middle of the Air Shield and growled at them as they took surreptitious swipes at one another. "Look, I can deal with the two of you pushing each other as rivals. But the moment you put your fellow Cadets in unneeded danger is where I draw the line. I don't give a shit whether you find somebody to mediate, find a somebody to Smite you until you can speak with each other civilly, or just find a room and hatefuck each other into submission. But starting today? Keep. That. Shit. Under. Control."

Motherfucker. I am too young to be too old for this shit.