Dear Diary,

Y'know, I don't normally think about socializing. Like, I do it, but I don't really think about it while I'm doing it. Yeah, if the stakes are high I might start running scenarios in my head, trying to figure out how to end things without anything I care about getting cut off, but generally when I'm shooting the shit I'm totally in the moment. I think Blend helps with that, really, since I never have to think about how to say what I want to say in whatever language I'm speaking, because I know what I want to express, and Blend makes my mouth noises match the brain of whoever I'm talking to. It's really handy that way.

Of course, last night I hit one of the more hilarious semi-failures of the Skill. While I'd been shooting the shit with Panther, Silk, and Closer, my Cadets were completely in the dark about what we were talking about. Apparently Murder Mittens no-selling Panther's arrow took them by just as much surprise as it had Panther. Fuck, her showing up had them a mite tense too. But me just taking it in stride and handing Panther his arrow back gave let them know I was serious about the whole 'peaceful contact' thing. But for the most part they'd had to go on facial expressions and body language.

Of course, I didn't realize that until I set up watches; three watches, two Cadets per watch. Mackenzie and Ryan asked to take first watch. Pretty clear why'd they'd taken that, what with Silk being up and watching. Dude had the most limited Celtic vocabulary possible while still being able to spit game at the ladies. I tossed up an Alarm Ward set to let me know if anything larger than a big dog came within about a hundred yards of us. Then I sat there and watched Silk try and set up some company for when his watch was done, all with super cheesy lines about 'nice eyes', 'pretty hair', and 'round ass'. That last one got Mackenzie laughing, because apparently Ryan had nearly as bad a case of flat ass as I did. Senior Cadet, so what she had looked a lot like mine; ripped enough to show muscle definition through her slacks. Mackenzie actually made her stand up and show it off, at which point Silk got this really starry eyed look.

Mackenzie might have gotten a little bit of a booger look at that, but I cleared my throat and said, "Cadets?" When I had their attention, I said, "unless one or both of you really intends to propose monogamous matrimony, it's not a competition. Or it doesn't have to be. Or you could take the competition to the next level, if you take my meaning."

They both spluttered a little, Ryan eventually saying, "really, Champion?"

I snorted. "In the first place, I'm your... Mentor, I guess, not your mother. In the second, you did notice which Temple High Priestess Karen claimed?"

Both of them got a little wide-eyed at that. I guess maybe they'd forgotten that along with the whole, 'double Champion, High Priestess, Hero-in-Waiting' thing I had going on, I was also the Patron Deity of the Alliance. Kinda sorta no matter which Deific hat I had on at the moment. I'm not sure whether the Alliance had two Patron Deities, or it was just 'me', no matter which hat I wore at the moment. Either way, both of them kinda goggled at me for a little bit, then shifted toward Silk.

"Just remember a couple things." When they looked back at me, I said, "The Academy doesn't give maternity leave, you're on watch right now, and we leave the same time in the morning as we did this morning."

Ryan snorted. "Okay, Mom."

Smart ass or not, they kept alert. Mostly by taking turns looking at Silk as they chatted him up. Okay, only a limited amount of chatting up was possible given the language barrier, but given Silk's looks and the general physical fitness of Senior Cadets, very little chatting up was required. When Brown and Aetos woke up to take the middle watch, the two of them followed Silk back into their little bower. Closer came out a minute later, shaking his head.

"You're not going with them?"

I shrugged. "I get plenty at home. Not saying I'd say no if he came out and asked me right now, but they seemed a lot more interested than me. Besides, I'm supposed to be in charge. Wouldn't be good for morale if I took his attention away from them when they're all worked up about it."

He laughed at that, then after making sure the fire would keep burning low and slow the way it was supposed to, looked up at me. "You'll sleep next?"

I shook my head. "Nah. I can go without a couple nights if I need to." I'd felt my ladies Worshipping off and on through the night. Not really 'waking dream' level of awareness, but clearly enough that I wasn't gonna be groggy in the morning.

He just smiled and said, "without sleep, or without..." and nodded to the bower, where quiet noises had started up.

"I meant sleep. I guess I can go without the other too. Gonna be a stone bitch, though."

That got a laugh out of him. "Oh, that won't do. Can you summon up your... spirit wife? The cat woman? Or will one of us have to suffice?"

I smiled at him, realizing right then that he was about as serious as I normally was when spitting game. Meaning not really, but absolutely willing to follow through if that's what happened. "She's a Maenad." I'm not sure how Blend translated that, but he got a little wide eyed. "And yeah, she can find me and come for me wherever I am."

Apparently Blend manages to translate innuendo pretty well, or at least it did this time. "That... that would be something to see."

I grinned at him. "We're not normally into public displays." I let him nod sagely before dropping, "we save that for Holy Days and other special occasions." Bam, spit take. Your girl Tabitha wins again at competitive shit talking. At that point he nodded as he laughed, and I got up to walk the perimeter. When I got maybe a dozen feet away and I heard Closer quietly chatting with Brown, I pushed my Blend up enough that nothing ought to notice me. I wasn't gonna leave them completely unguarded, but being able to do the informal diplomacy thing was definitely something that took real world practice, and they wouldn't get that with me there mediating.

Maybe an hour before sunrise I felt something walk across my Ward, and I ghosted over to it before it could get any closer our camp. When I saw it I was glad I did. I would put six Senior Cadets up against a bull moose, but I did not want to explain to Sister Siobhan how my ride along Cadets got busted up by a fuckin' deer with kaiju boosters going on. Without dropping my Blend, because I didn't wanna get stomped either, I Mana Bladed it's head off it's shoulders. Its body still knocked over a small tree before I Translocated in front of it and took it off at the knees.

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A few seconds later O'Brien, Chloros, and Closer came crashing through the underbrush. Okay, Closer didn't 'crash' so much as follow the other two quietly, but still. I dropped my Blend back to normal the moment I saw them, and O'Brien called out, "Ma'am? What was that?"

I nodded to the body of the thing and said, "hey Closer, you guys wouldn't by chance know how to butcher one of those things, would you?"

Turned out that's actually exactly what the three of them had been doing; hunting and field-dressing game animals. Apparently they'd seen this big four-door-sedan-sized motherfucker before, but had sensibly avoided it. Closer ran his hand across the cauterized stumps and asked, "you did this with Mana?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Mana Blade. Not what I'd normally use hunting, but it was wandering toward the camp, and I didn't want to explain how my Cadets got broken to my Concubine."

Right about then Silk called out, "four? There are four of you?"

Laughing, I called back, "yeah, she's not into dudes. But she can keep the others warmed up for you if you come visit."

In the end we decided to stick around long enough to watch the hunting party field-dress the fuckin' herbivorous tank. Turned out to be 'assist' as well as watch and learn. Mostly because it took three Cadets or O'Brien and Silk to lift the fuckin' thing. When it turned out the braided leather cords they had weren't up to the job of hoisting the thing by the biggest branch on the biggest tree we could find, I had Marie bring me my rope darts. Mimic hide be strong.

"We'll need to leave this here for a while; will you stay to collect your ropes?"

I nodded to Panther, then shook my head. "Nah, we've got to get going. We're gonna have to double time it to stay on our scouting route and get home in time as it is. But," I thought about it, and the corpse swayed a little in a wind that wasn't there. "I can find them wherever they are. So, y'know, I'd like 'em back when you're done with them, but use them as long as you need them." I waved eastward. "Like I said before, we live about a day's run that way. Look for the tower; you can see it from quite a ways out."

The three of them did insist we stay for lunch, which turned out to be fire-roasted liver. Not my thing, but not terrible. Nom is nom, and the Cadets seemed to like it. What with them hitting the jackpot on the meatiest of meat loads, they sent us away with most of the liver. I think some other organ meats, but I don't know from all that. To me it was a little meh, to the Cadets it was apparently 'the good stuff'. I definitely had to let Marie cook them at least one meal before I sent them back to the Academy.

Once we were back on our route, I called out, "whoever's one up from the rear needs to be marking our path. Straight east-west is easy, and north-south isn't much harder, but we're gonna be going northeast, maybe arcing a little out toward the northwest a bit. I wasn't kidding the locals, either, we need to pick up the pace; I'm not gonna run at night, too much chance of somebody taking a header off a cliff or tripping over something and landing on their face. But until dusk, we run!"

As we moved north, it did not get noticeably colder. Mostly because it was already 'cold as Ymir's frozen asshole' already. Running at Academy Graduate speeds definitely kept us all warm, or at least warm-ish, but every time we crested a hill at least one of us laughed about sweat droplets freezing in the wind. I did notice and point out to the Cadets two piles of bones and offal. Not, like, the kind of thing hunters might leave, either, but the kind of thing a big predator might decide weren't worth the effort to fuck around with.

We camped more or less out in the open, our perimeter secured by Alarm Wards, both mine and whoever was on watch. We didn't set a fire, what with the food in our big meat satchel all being cooked already. Instead I just had them put up a Filtration Wards to keep precipitation out and warmth in. I could have done it, but that seemed like work, and I was already staying up all night to make it a triple watch instead of double. Decided in the morning as we broke camp that I probably needed to get some sleep Thursday night.

We ran at a more reasonable pace today. Not slow, by any means, but a distance runner's lope that let us keep our eyes open as we moved. The Cadets spotted another half dozen moldering mostly eaten corpses. I noticed two they didn't, mostly because I'd hopped to the top of a tree to make sure we were headed in the right direction. I called them over to that one. Mostly because one of the two corpses had really recognizable scoop shaped antlers.

"What the fuck did that? Begging your pardon, ma'am."

"No worries, O'Brien. I've fought fuckin' Jotnar and I wouldn't want to face one of those big fuckers in anything approaching a fair fight."

Brown, who'd paid the most attention when the hunting party took apart the prior moose, examined the thing up close, doing some hand measurements on the skull. "I think this one was bigger. Like, by a fair margin. How'd you take the other one out, ma'am? If you don't mind me asking?"

I pushed my Blend up, walked around them, and tapped t hem on the shoulder as I dropped it. "Like that."

They exhaled, long and low, as they visibly relaxed themselves after tensing up. "Yeah, that would do it."

At that point Chloros called out from the other corpse. "This one looks to be a griffon. Big one."

"Mutual destruction?"

She shook her head. "I don't think so. Something with claws took its head off, I think."

"Didn't know you knew this woodsy stuff."

She smirked. "Forensics. Cuts and stabs and blunt trauma look different. This looks like a cut."

"Well. Shit. So something out there was big and bad enough to kill one or both of these two, and cocky enough to leave chunks of each of them for scavengers in the middle of the winter." I took a deep breath, blew it back out. "So, keep your eyes open, ladies and gentlemen. I'd bet on the seven of us against anything short of a Dragon, but if whatever ate these two gets the drop on us, it might not wind up a bloodless victory, and I'd hate to have to explain to Siobhan why I had to Revive one of you."

You could just tell them you care about them, my Hero.

You heard that, Ice Pop?

It's a slow day in the Infirmary. I hope you don't mind me watching.

Nah. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Well, as warm and fuzzy as I can be without you here. But I can't tell them that, because then they'll think I like them or something.

Don't you?

Eh. Maybe. But I don't want them relying on me to protect them from everything. Kinda against the point of the ride along.

I suppose. Well, the sooner you get moving again, the sooner you'll be back home with us.

True. Love you, Ice Pop.

We got moving again, staying to our long arc until right around sunset. At that point snow started coming down again, and the temperature decided that it had had enough of all the balmy sub zero temperatures it had been treating us to and plummeted. In the lead, O'Brien called out, "I think I see a cave. Should we camp there for the night, Champion?"

Really had to get them to stop calling me that. Maybe. Anyhow, I jostled my frozen brain into gear and called out, "sounds like a plan, but be aware, if there's a natural bivouac, odds are something's bivouacking there already."

"I'm sure we'll be HOLY SHIT what the fuck is that?" O'Brien hollered as he backpedaled, forcing me to step aside or get trampled as the rest of the Cadets came up and spread out behind the two of us. That let me get a good look at the thing coming out of the cave.

"That, my fine Cadets, is a Dire Bear."