Dear Diary,

So overall, other than the introductory challenges with Cadet Citron, yesterday went pretty well. Started them up with a five mile run, which got everybody warmed up. Then walked them through basic stretching. Went to the trouble of showing them both with and as a woman and a man, because something I noticed when working with Larry back in the day was that guys just do not quite flex the same. Something about the angle of the hips and shoulders, I think. More in the hips than the shoulders.

Mostly because they seemed the least intimidated by me, I demonstrated with Vickerson and Citron. Nothing crazy, just simple seated straddle stretches, mostly. Then we did calisthenics until lunch. Had some fun with them by jogging down to the Dining Hall chivvying the slow ones, then settled in for a nice bento box brought by my mucha bonita Maenad Maid Marie. Mucho bonita? Look, I spoke conversational Spanish back in the day, but I failed the class in High School, and not having to pay attention to jack shit in terms of language other than writing Celtic here and now hasn't improved anything.

Back to PT, with a double sized class I wound up having to break things up in eight teams rather than four, and setting up two simultaneous matches, each in half of the Practice Yard. I'm not super proud of the fact that I completely forgot about the whole 'lit up no-go zones between the teams and had to pester Saffron about it. Turns out it's a combination of an illusion like the thing we did with the feast at Larry and Bonnie's wedding to make the line glow, an Alarm Ward for the buzzer, and a combination Stabilize and Lullaby attached to the Alarm Ward. Which was something I totally didn't realize you could do, but made a lot of sense once I thought about it. I also put up a simple Filtration Ward across the middle of the Yard to keep the games separate.

Look, in order to make a flat wall I had to put the center over in our Academy Suite bedroom. Not my fault that Saffron caught me putting it up and decided to reward my ingenuity. Don't judge me.

When I dismissed the class to head to lunch, Vickerson lagged behind the others. I stepped over to where she stood waiting in the growing dusk, and she jumped just a little.

"Champion! I... uh..."

"Instructor is fine. Instructor Diaz if you want to be all formal like."

"Um... okay. I... Well."

Somehow the free floating clue managed to find my skull and penetrate it. "This is about what happened after you called Marie in, isn't it?" She nodded. I think she might have been blushing, but between her dark skin and the dimness of evening I couldn't tell. "Look, Cadet Vickerson, don't get the wrong idea. You did a good job that day, and hit me in absolutely the right mood for something like that. To be perfectly clear, that's not all that hard to do; even my wife says I'm likely to Just Happen to people on the regular. But it was kind of a one off thing. Again, not impossible it could happen again at some point in the future when, y'know, you're not a Cadet in my class. But so long as you're here at the Academy and I'm teaching here at the Academy? Not gonna happen. Do you get why?"

Her face had gone through a whole roller coaster of emotions, and now she frowned and said, "no?"

I sighed. "Look, if your whole reason for coming to the Academy was to try and get with me on the regular? Go talk to the Imperator at some point about moving to the Homestead, not to mention your amorous intentions. You might recall she's not exactly against that kind of thing. But if your intention was to actually become a Hero?" She nodded, and I blew out a sigh of relief. "Yeah, people who know what happened between us are already probably gonna talk about how that's why you got into the Academy. Which is probably complete bullshit, because nobody fuckin' asked me about it." Her face fell. "Oh, hey, I'm not against the idea. You did your job exactly as ordered down in Calverton. What happened after wouldn't have happened otherwise. So if somebody had asked me, I'd have voted in favor. But because of you doing your job the way you were supposed to, not because of the mutual doing that went on after that. Got it?"

She frowned, nodded, and said, "Yes, but..."

"Look, if in a couple years you finish all your classes and get tapped to be a Hero in Calverton, or elsewhere? If you're still interested, come see me. Or the Imperator. Or, y'know, Maenad Maid Marie or Healer Darling. They all know how to get in touch with me. I will absolutely celebrate your promotion with you. But between now and then, I don't want anybody saying that you passed a class, or got promoted, or got any other favors from me because I think you're cute or because of your bedroom skills or some other bullshit like that." I put one hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. "If you fuck up, I don't want somebody saying it was because you didn't put out for me, or that you didn't get the same kind of consequences because of any of that shit I talked about." I thought about it for a second, then said, "fly or fall, until you walk out of here a Hero or walk away to try something else, your life ought to be about you, not about, y'know, you being some kind of appendage to me. Do you get that?"

When I'd started talking about people crediting her success to me, she'd frowned a little, but when I finished, she nodded. I waited as she chewed it over, then nodded again. Then she smiled shyly and asked, "so... you think I'm cute?"

I laughed and said, "don't let it go to your head. Go on, get some dinner. Cadet training's hard enough even if you're not starving yourself."

She scrunched up her nose in a, yeah, cute little grin and said, "I'll hold you to that when I become a Hero, you know."

I spun her around, still laughing, and shoved her toward the door. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. you get that nod I won't have to hold back."

She turned back to me as she stumbled away, disbelief on her face, but then blanched and ran as a weight settled on my shoulders and Saffron's whisper filled the Yard. "She's right, she won't, and yes, she was."

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"Time for dinner?"

"Marie? Siobhan? Come here and tell me what you two think."

At that point Siobhan wriggled under my arm and Marie's fuzzy weight settled around Saffron. "Maybe."

"Mistress, after filling my nose with the scent of our Goddess, I'm not sure I could eat anything else."

I laughed. "Well, you're gonna have to. I'm still not convinced you're completely recovered."

She pouted adorably, which is when Saffron reached down and booped her nose. "Mmm... I recall someone saying they were going to feed me, in any case?" When Siobhan looked confused, she explained, "didn't you want me in your lap?"

As Siobhan gabbled in frustrated embarrassment, I scooped her up. "Oh, you do not want to miss out on having that ass in your lap, Ice Pop." I stepped us to our dining room, set Siobhan on Saffron's chair, then let Marie plonk that ass down in Siobhan's lap. Mostly because that way I got to my chair first, then patted my lap. "You gotta get used to it, Mittens." When she raised an eyebrow and folded her arms, I looked her in the eye and said, "you think you're gonna be in any condition to feed yourself after our wedding night? Or do anything else complicated or difficult, like walking? Or, really, do anything except," I reached out and brushed my fingertips across her belly, pressing her skirt tight against it to do so. "carrying those kids of ours?" She blushed and pushed against my hand. "Baking those very special buns in your personal oven? Training up our own dev team of catgirls?"

At that point my lap wound up full of purring, blushing Maenad. Marie made of squee for the dinner time win.

Bath got cut short, unfortunately. Like, I didn't get one. Something, something, something, my partners ambushed me and spirited me off to the Bedroom, where Siobhan continued her task of feeding Saffron with my Kitten in her lap. Marie has, apparently, decided to mentor our little Ice Pop in all things Concubine related, and Siobhan's taken to that with all the passion of a fanatic convert. Yeah, I know, first world problems.

Dreamt of the three of them dipping each other in my Maw to the elbow, then licking each other clean. Probably something about sleeping in the Bed for half the night.

In the morning, along with playing seat cushion for coding Saffron and a far less naughty seat cushion for reading Maze, who'd decided to continue reading to the women and children now that we were all more or less settled in the Homestead. Only in the dining room, where everybody had someplace to sit. Right around lunch, somebody knocked on our Academy door.

"I got it, Kitten." She nodded, focused, as I Co-Located to the door. Opened it to find duBois standing on the far side.

"Diaz. Good. You got a moment?"

I shrugged. "Sure. Bit Co-Located right now, but not doing a whole lot that requires me to pay attention. What did you need?"

He huffed out a frown. "Cadet Citron."

"Fuck."

He chuckled. "You didn't?"

I shot him an absolute booger look. "The fuck, Marshall? You think I'd fuck a student?" He shot a very pointed look through the adjoining door toward where Saffron sat on my lap. "Yeah, well, we were both students. Neither one the teacher or the student. But he's a student in my class." I couldn't help it, I felt a bit of a pouty annoyed look seep onto my face. "I waited six fuckin' months for the Siobhan fuckin' just because she was teaching a class I was taking. I take that shit seriously."

He smirked at me. "You know Basic Two now includes Cure Disease, and she's the one who teaches it?"

I stood there for a second, mouth slowly dropping open, before I shook myself. "One, I already know that Shape. I think I proved that during the Plague. Two, 'oh, noes, I'll have to abstain from Sister Kissing for a couple days'. Seriously, I had to give Vickerson a whole talk about why I wasn't gonna be doing the horizontal mambo with her while she was in my class."

He nodded, forcing himself to seriousness. "I believe you. He's claiming some kind of favoritism toward Cadet Vickerson. The two of you have history?"

I shrugged. "Yeah. She was in charge of a squad of Soldiers during the Calverton campaign. She called for backup. I was trying to encourage our troops to do that kind of thing when they needed to. The encouragement got a little, uh, intense."

"How intense?"

"Oh fuck, oh god, oh fuck, yes, yes, yes intense? Like, uh, three? No, four times?"

At that point Saffron called in from the other room, "six!"

"I wasn't counting me!"

"I wasn't either!"

The Marshall snorted and shook his head. "Okay, so you two have a history. Is it going to be a problem?"

I thought about that for a second. "Not that I'm aware of, sir. I explained it was a one off thing, and that I'm not gonna sleep with her while she's a Cadet."

He frowned. "If we lose a good Cadet because of that I'm not gonna be happy."

"Me neither, sir."

"Yes you will!" called Saffron.

"No I won't! I'll frown and everything the whole time!"

He shook his head again. "Wish you could maybe use that connection to encourage her a... why is your wife laughing now?"

My face heated. "I might have, uh, suggested that if and when she gets the nod to being an official Hero, I'd, uh, celebrate her promotion with her."

He laughed. "Well, that's different." After a pause, he said, "you realize that could still be seen as evidence of favoritism?"

Before I could say anything, Saffron's weight pressed against my back. "Any newly promoted Hero who wishes the Champion of the Alliance to celebrate them is welcome to tell her so, Marshall."

"Hey! Don't I get a say?"

Her breath warm against my ear, she sang, "I really want you to, dear."

The Marshall choked on his spit a little bit, then asked, "what about Cadet Citron?"

I shuddered just a little. "Shit. Sure, if he gets promoted to Hero, I'll take one for the team. Blech."

"I meant, is there anything to his allegations of you being prejudiced against him because he's from New Amsterdam?"

I snorted. "Dude. I think I killed myself Curing New Amsterdam. Why the fuck would I do that if I had anything against them? You know me. I've got too much stupid to remember grudges. They squished Saffron, I killed the fuck out of them, she wound up less squished than advertised, I Cured the fuck out of them. I shared chili and cornbread with them just like with everybody else on my birthday. I... I dunno what else I can say?"

He shrugged. "Look, Diaz, Citron's kind of an annoying little shit. You tell me you've got no grudge, I'm gonna take your word for it before his. I just need to know if you're gonna hold it against him."

I shook my head, shrugged, then realized something. "Look, sir, the best evidence I can give you about me and grudges?" When he made a 'go on' gesture, I said, "Larry."

He pursed his lips, nodded, then said, "Fair enough. Let me know if you need me to say something to him, or if you need advice on handling him."

"Thank you, sir." With that, he nodded, took a step, and was gone.

"Close that door." Obedient to my wife, I did so, then flopped onto the bed when she pulled me backward.

"What brought this on? Not complaining, just curious."

She rolled us over and started planting kisses down my back. "Only you, Goof."

"Only me what?"

"Hero in waiting. Imperator's Attack Dog. Queen of Norfolk. Champion of the Alliance. Patron Demigoddess of the Alliance. Elder Mor Primordial."

Increasingly distracted by her mouth, I muttered, "ah, shit, I gotta get that throne under Olga's ass some time soon. What about all that though?"

She paused to say, "so humble. All that?" and I made disappointed Tabitha noises until she started again. All that, and still you call him 'sir'.