Dear Diary,

"It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."

- Niccolo Machiavelli

Yeah, y'know what? Fuck you, Nick.

Nah, that's not fair. I get it. I really do. I'd be a hypocrite if I said I didn't, since not only am I apparently currently Head Bitch In Charge of the Pantheon of Terror, my go to maneuver since I got here has been scaring the crap out of people to keep them from escalating, then if they decide not to back down being so fuckin' scary violent that anybody who sees what I do to them decides to do something safer, like fornicating with a wood chipper. Entirely separate from the fact that post-Isekai me is now a Deity who thinks fear is a tasty healthy snack food, fear is one way of controlling people, getting them to do what you want, and it's even better at getting them to avoid doing something you don't want.

But love is... Look, I thought the whole 'laugh is ten times more powerful than scream' was absolute fuckin glurge, even while I cried sappy happy tears about that whole 'it only works if you have every part' ending. But holy shit when it comes to spontaneous Worship, I've had both fear, which I totally went out of my way to generate, and maybe love, which while I really try to do shit that will make Saffron happy, I'm not stupid enough to think that 'generates love' or some shit. So I don't try to make people love me. Shit, I'm not sure I'm capable of making people not hate me, so love is kind of a tall order, especially when my instincts are to scare someone until they lose bowel and bladder control.

But I've felt it. Holy shit, I've felt it. From Saffron. From Marie. Maybe even, if I pay attention, from Menace's posse and the horde hoard. Definitely from those parents when I brought back the kids they'd left... No, not 'left for dead'. They didn't do that. They thought they were dead. They mourned the deaths and probably hated themselves because they couldn't even bury them. Then they saw their kids again, heard I somehow played some key part in pulling them back from Hel or Hades or wherever the fuck babies go when they die and nobody can afford to get them sent to the Gods in a proper Temple ceremony. Yeah, there was some awe there. Maybe a little fear. But holy shit on toast, each and every one of them at some point in that conversation looked at me with pure, unadulterated adoration.

Fear is titillation, a quick sugar rush, a camera flash.

Love is the fucking sun.

Got a lot more of that over the past two days. Enough to say that if I had to choose, I would choose love every day of the fuckin' week. Twice a night and six times on Sunday.

Yesterday the ROTCs and Saffron and I went to class together and played around with Air Shields and Mineral Bond. Kinda funny, when most of the class is part of the same clique, and part of that clique is not just already a Hero, but also the fuckin' Imperator of the Alliance, 'horseplay' doesn't begin to cover the shit that went on. Little stupid pranks all day long. The new kids, the other six people in class, are more or less off limits until and unless they join in of their own volition, but the rest of us wound up in rare form. At one point after the second time my ass bounced off a sudden Air Shield, I Mineral Bonded Carruthers' shoes to the floor along with his desk and chair. Doc facepalmed, but the rest of us laughed our asses off when not only did he just fuckin' shatter the thing when he stood up, but he also ripped his left boot off before he realized.

Saffron insisted we all stay until everything was fixed. I might have cheated and summoned up a copy of Carruthers' desk in M-Space and swapped it in when nobody was looking. Blend for the win.

Alex's onesie is on hold while Marie produces at least two decent all weather outfits for each of the refugees staying with us. So weird, having all these women who pretty clearly are in their twenties and thirties looking at me like some kind of authority. I mean, yeah, I get it, to them I'm the Champion of the Alliance, so I'm in charge, and I saved them from murder, rape, or worse, so I'm their own personal Hero for the moment, but, like, shit, the youngest of them has more real world life experience than me. I'm just some dumbass who got her dumb ass isekaied from Camden to Phileo City, then spent a year living like here and now royalty. Shit, I'm pretty sure Saffron could kick my ass in any kind of cooking competition. Not even gonna try on any other aspect of Normal Adulting Tasks, except maybe taking out the trash or other 'heavy object lifting' things.

So fuckin weird. That adoration, though. Fuck, I don't do the shit I do for the rewards, but holy fuck on toast that's a fuckin' reward to do shit for. I say this with full awareness that my other extant reward is the debauchery of my choice with a literal sex goddess and an SS+ tier short stack who fits my personal preferences with high tolerance machined precision.

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Mimic spent the night sucking her least and most favorite tentacle in the whole wide world, while her Kraken continued to express their displeasure with every Undead stupid enough to come within a long tentacle reach of Calverton's waterways.

In the morning I toweled everybody dry after they went through the tub with Saffron. That's a whole 'nother thing that's weirding my ass out right now. Just like yesterday, Menace led everybody in, one of the shelter girls refusing to meet my gaze as Isnomi towed her along by the hand. Two by two the kids got scrubbed clean by Saffron, then came out to me to get toweled dry. Some of them reveled in my strength, even giggling when I managed to lift them while spinning them around with the towel. Others preferred I pad them dry like I did with Maze.

But all that turned out pure appetizer to what followed as, one by one the women from the shelters crept into the tub with Saffron. Way more gentle than she was with the kids, she sponged each of them clean, saving any rough scrubbing for caked on dirt on their knees, their feet. A few of them covered their faces while she did that. Washed their feet. She spoke with each of them, quietly asking them about their lives before the shelters. Not about what drove them out, but what they'd done, what they enjoyed doing, what had given them joy before someone stole it away from them. Some of them cried. One broke down completely and clung to her, sobbing, as Saffron gently stroked her back. When she finished, Saffron pulled fresh water to sponge her face clean from the tear tracks, then kept washing and talking like nothing had happened, like she'd expected it. Like the woman who'd grabbed at her had nothing to fear, nothing to repay, like it was just what she as a person deserved.

I'm pretty sure my Kitten had fallen apart like that at some point, alone with nobody but her Grandma and her infant daughter. Or maybe by herself, while Grandma kept Isnomi safe.

Then they'd come to me and I'd towel them dry. I tried my best, but while I may love me some love, I'm kinda shit at both small talk and anything an adult would take as kind without being horny on main. So I stuck to stupid practical topics, like whether they liked the food, or had enough blankets, or needed anything. Turned out our refugee supply coordination, which consisted mainly of one magically engineered tiger lady and one pregnant woman, had forgotten about feminine hygiene products. Go figure. Everything I manage to excel in when it comes to helping people comes down to blood and shit.

Fuck it, somebody's gotta be the janitor. If mopping the puke off the floor makes them love me, give me a fuckin' mop.

So today got a tiny bit exhausting. Another day of construction at the new house. Well, construction prep, really. Saffron decided against 'balloon frame', whatever that is, but didn't want concrete or cobbled stone for the walls, either. So as a test, she had me make fuckin' magma. Like, not real magma. She had me dig a hole separate from the foundation holes Marie was shoring up and policing, put rocks in it, then pour Fire Bolts into it, one at a time, slow as fuck, until the entire pile of rocks melted into a gooey mass. Then she had me do it again, over and over and over. Okay, I think by the end of the day I'd only done that like five times, but holy shit that was a lot of work.

The one that she flash cooled with repeated Create Waters wound up looking like it might be a solid block of obsidian or some shit like that, right up until it cracked in half. The others looked less and less like actual glass the longer we let them cool. I'm not sure, but I'm thinking she's gonna custom craft the rock for the walls. Which is gonna fuckin' exhaust me, but fuck it. She absolutely feeds me all the best treats. Woof.

Overwatch atop the mast of the Black Dragon felt weird. Like prior to the attempted ambush of Marie, which even thinking about makes me angry enough to ash or smash another part of the City, it had been quiet, but it was the kind of quiet you felt when your friend's dad got paroled and came to visit, and maybe brought a couple forties and some Henny with him, so you got quiet so he didn't hear either of you, because if he didn't know you were there, he'd spend his time with your friend's mom, but if you made yourself obvious, he might get pissed and start swinging. Or he might not get pissed, and that could be even worse. But now, after I killed the living fuck out of a major Lich, ripped the Undeath out of a thousand babies, smashed a four lane highway through the middle of the City, and shredded a unit of Spartans and an Athenian High Priest, the silence had a completely different quality.

It felt like I was the dad coming home on parole.

But at the end of the day, neither of those really mattered. I mean, yeah, they did. Building a home? Fuck yeah. Scaring the fucking Undead into submission? Fuck it, they fucking deserve it after throwing all their babies down a hole. But...

Once everybody had some breakfast in them, Maze came over to me, and I stepped us to the Academy suite, where I flopped down on Isnomi's increasingly unused toddler bed and watched Saffron code while Maze went to the shelves for I Shall Wear Midnight. But instead of climbing into my lap, she reached out her hand for me. That's when I saw she had Wee Free Men in her hands.

"You sure?" She just nodded, so I stepped her back to our suite at Lancaster House.

Liam made grumpy bitch noises when Maze started at the beginning again, but one look from Menace and he shut his ass up. Definitely my Kitten's daughter. So for the entire day, while first the girls, then a few of the younger women, then eventually the entire bedroom sat in a semicircle around Maze, she sat in my lap and read them a tale of a little girl going up against the Queen of the Elves armed with nothing but good boots, a frying pan, and a whole boatload of fuckin' attitude.

Guess this is 'be proud of my kids' week.

I'm totally down for it.