Dear Diary,

"Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft."

- Theodore Roosevelt

Yeah, after getting reminded about how much of a Teddy fangirl I was back in Middle School, I paged through looking for other quotes from him. I mean, everybody's heard the old 'walk softly and carry a big stick' one, but really, that was never me. Yeah, I faded into the woodwork back there a lot of the time, but that was just survival instinct at work. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but the tall grass gets mowed and the nail that sticks up gets hammered. By nature I maybe blended in, but I also poke at people to get them to notice me. It's a weird dichotomy at work. Maybe it's, like, I wanted to be noticed, to be special, to stand out somehow, but I didn't want me to stand out, I wanted the persona I was playing to stand out.

Oh. Oh, shit. I... I don't even look like I did back there. Now I'm kinda worried that the part of me that I was back then, I dunno, died, and I'm just the part of me that played all those roles. That would be so fucked. I think, maybe it would be fucked? Like, okay, I still remember shit that happened to me, at least as well as I ever did. I think like me, but I sure as shit don't try to fade into the woodwork much any more. I mean, I go literally invisible sometimes, at least however Blend makes me not noticeable, but I don't do that whole 'hiding in the background' thing.

I guess I do still do the Trickster shuck and jive pretty often. Fuck, I'm doing that one right now. Like, not right now right now, but right now with the whole Calverton situation. I guess I'm really doing more of a three card monte or maybe a shell game. Maybe all three at once, really. Of course, I'm still trying to sort my own personal shit out on top of everything else, and lying to my diary, even lying by omission, seems like it might fuck that up. But at the end of the day, if I wind up fucking myself up to fix everything else, maybe that's who I have to be. Who I need to be to maybe feel like I deserve to be... I dunno. Maybe just to deserve to be in the first place.

But what Teddy said? Don't start fights, but sure as fuck end them? Don't start shit, but when shit starts, fuck shit up? Yeah, that kinda describes my entire existence in the here and now. If it turns out that doing all that means I can make the world a better place no matter the personal cost, and I get Teddy's approval, however unintended and indirect? Worth.

So yesterday after spending the afternoon rubbing Marie all over the Captain's cabin aboard the Black Dragon, I looked up to see a very smug Saffron sitting in the Captain's chair watching us. "How'd you get in here?"

She put on an absolutely fake mock outraged look and said, "I'm not welcome to watch my fiancé flagrantly fucking my wife?"

Marie snickered at that and flipped me over, turtling me just a little bit. I could still see Saffron to talk to her, so even if she started fusing my brain circuits a little bit, I was good with it. "You enjoy the show?"

She sniffed, delicately licked her fingertips, and said, "what do you think?"

All three of us laughed at that, which did interesting things to the already interesting things Marie was doing. "Nah, I kinda like to know you're watching, and I kinda like to know you're enjoying watching while knowing you're watching, but I'm cool with it even if I don't know, because I know you'll show me anyway if I really want you to. No, I was wondering how you got through the locked door?"

Kitten was still definitely in a claws out playful mood. "Oh, did you think you'd locked me out?"

"Nah. Thought I, I, Ayeehahaha..." My brain melted down a little, and when my eyes uncrossed I finished, "Marie needed locking in. How did you get through the door?"

She slipped off the chair and sashayed over to me, reaching down with one finger to boop me on the nose, then drag her fingers across my lips. "You only coated the outer surface of the Black Dragon with Cold Iron. Not the inner doors."

"Huh. Good to know. Can we maybe take this back to the Love Shack?"

Saffron stopped, tilted her head, then said, "No. No, I don't think so."

I guess my tiny tyrant and towering tigress decided two scents liberally applied to the interior of the Captain's Cabin was one too few.

It was kinda late, well after bedtime, when we all collapsed back to the cuddle puddle back at Lancaster House. When we'd been getting ready for bed, a certain Sister Siobhan had shown up.

"Did you need something, Sister?"

"No, Hero. I thought perhaps you'd have need of me?"

I shook my head and smiled up at her from where I'd already kinda laid down before she arrived. "Not a Hero yet, technically. Still just a Cadet. Hell, not even a Senior Cadet, officially."

She smiled back down at me, gracefully bending her knees until she knelt next to me. "Well then, Cadet. That's even more reason the Healer responsible for the health of all Cadets in the Ladies' Dormitory to visit. Did you have need of me this evening?"

I opened my mouth to demur, but I suddenly remembered my earlier thoughts about maybe not being the same person I used to be. I shut my mouth, nodded, and held out my arms. She nodded, stood, and walked over to the bed frame we habitually pulled the mattress off of to camp out on the floor every night. Slowly, gracefully, almost ritually she pulled off her robes and headdress, hanging them over the frame, then walked back over and lay down next to Saffron and I, snuggling in front of me with her back to me, while Saffron snuggled in closer behind.

Is it Garde again, love? I shook my head, and the four of us lay on the soft silky sheets of our Love Shack bed. "Would it be easier to say it aloud?"

I realized right then that I couldn't remember if I'd ever told Sister Siobhan about the whole Isekai part of me. Shit, even if I had, who the fuck knew if I'd hammered it home hard enough for Blend to not erase it right back out of her memory. Eh. Fuck it. I squeezed her just a little. "You know I wasn't actually born in Camden Yards, right?"

"I... I hadn't thought about the birthplace of a Goddess before. Hadn't even really thought you had one."

I sighed. "Yeah, with everything else, I guess it kinda slipped my mind, but I've got another thing I have to tell you."

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

She rolled herself over far enough to look at me. Thankfully not far enough I had to worry about dodging sudden amorous assaults. Not sure I really could with my thoughts all scattered. "You don't have to tell me anything, my Goddess."

I grinned at her. "Yeah, I think if I gave up my whole 'intent to deflower' thing, Saffron and Marie both would kill me."

"Oh, no, love. Just hurt you until you wish we had," Saffron whispered in my ear.

"True." Marie concurred.

When Sister Siobhan blushed and giggled just a little, I said, "I, like, Tabitha Diaz me, was born in the city of Camden, in the State of New Jersey, in the United States of America. I lived there until one day I cut school to go to the Aquarium, where I was shot and killed. I woke up in the Aquarium here. As Mimic. But still me, Tabitha Diaz me, inside my head. Oh, at that point I kinda killed the Dragon attacking the Aquarium here, then sorta passed the fuck out and woke up in the Infirmary with you watching over me." I shrugged. "You were the first person I met here."

"That's... quite a lot to take in," Sister Siobhan whispered.

At the same time, Saffron nipped at my shoulder, then said, "that was you who killed that Dragon?"

"Uh... yeah?" I thought about it for a second. "I'm sure I told you that before."

"No, Goof. You did not." She sighed, then laughed. "I suppose that makes Newark the second time you saved my life, not the first."

"What?"

She shuddered a little bit. "I was looking straight into the mouth of that thing when the Kraken... when you attacked it. Had you not? I wouldn't be here today."

Sister Siobhan chuckled. "So many little things. Tiny coincidences that make life what it is."

"Yeah. So, y'know. Now you know."

She smirked at me. "Are you sure there's nothing else you need tell me? I'd hate to come to the end of our date and have you a hair's breadth from finally slaking this thirst you've placed in me, only to have you decide you cannot." She giggled. "Are you perhaps Aphrodite in disguise?"

Saffron snorted, and I said, "no. No, I promise, I didn't eat Aphrodite. Not even in the fun way. Bitch probably has all kinds of diseases."

My Kitten whispered, "not that you'd be susceptible, Goof."

I shrugged. "Yeah, we're all High Priestesses, so it's not a big deal, but..."

"And?"

"And what?"

"Apollo?"

I winced. "Oh, shit. Right."

Sister Siobhan rolled all the way over to face me. "Pardon me, but what about Apollo?"

I sighed. "Mimic kind of ate him." Her eyes got wide. "Not even, like, on purpose or me doing it! I told him to help out with anybody I missed in New Amsterdam, and set Conrad to watch over him, and he rabbited into M-Space, and... you remember the tentacles?" She nodded, eyes still wide. "Yeah, I wasn't real happy with him, and that means the rest of Mimic wasn't either, and he stepped right in the middle of them, and... splat."

"Splat."

"Yep. I mean, I assume splat. Conrad could barely recover enough to make my cane."

Siobhan blanched and said, "Conrad? Your... son? Adopted, I assume?" I nodded. "Do I... Do I even want to know?"

Before I could open my mouth, Saffron's hand slipped over it. "You do not. Trust me on this."

"But I don't want to keep secrets from you. Like, not even because of the whole 'intent to do you until you can't walk for a week'. You're my friend. I don't want to keep secrets from you."

She lay her hand against my cheek. "You would tell me, yes?"

"Yeah, I..."

She slipped her hand over my mouth this time, and her pinkie slipped across where Saffron's fingers still lay. "Saffron, you really think I shouldn't know?"

Saffron hummed, then said, "you have no need to know, and it is quite... disturbing until one has become accustomed."

"Well. Perhaps another time then. But for now... Champion, did something about your origin disturb you?"

I nodded, and her hand slipped away. "Oh, yeah, I also inhaled Sengann." She gave me a good old fashioned 'What the fuck, Diaz?' look, so I explained, "he was fucking with New Amsterdam when I went to Cure the City, so I Cured him first. He kinda... died and turned to ash, and anything I didn't accidentally inhale just got sprinkled across Mimic's tentacles anyway."

She winced, sighed, then laughed. "I'm in danger."

"Oh, jeez, you guys haven't even seen that show and you're saying it."

She started to say something, then shook her head and asked, "what disturbed you so much tonight?"

I froze, then forced myself to say, "I'm not me." They all just lay there, silent, surrounding and supporting me. "I mean, yeah, in my head I think I'm me. But, y'know, behind this," I waved at myself and dropped my Blend, "I'm this. And even when I'm," I pushed my Blend up again. "Like this, I'm still nothing like what I was back in Camden."

She nodded. "Does that matter?"

"The fuck? Of course it does!"

That's when she hit me with the question. "Why?"

"Be... Uh... Fuck."

"Not until after our date."

I rolled my eyes, and right then and there almost decided to fuck the date and the Sister, but then the weird depression I'd been feeling hit me again. "I just... I always wanted all this, I think. But now I don't know if I'm really me. I don't know if I really always wanted what I've got, or if I'm just... I dunno, me flavored Mimic, who is the one who really wants it all. Even if it is me, what if the only way I could get it all is by being Not Me?"

"Did you look so very different?"

"Yeah. Oh, fuck yeah."

"Do you want to show us?"

I froze at that. "I... I do?"

"Are you ready to show us?"

I thought about that for a second. "No. No, I don't think I am. Sorry."

"Don't be sorry, love," Saffron whispered. "You're juggling quite a lot. If doing so would be the straw that jostles your elbow at just the wrong time, then wait. The same goes for not doing so."

"You're... you're not mad that I didn't think to show you before?"

She laughed. "Why would I be? It's not like it's a thing you've hidden from me. This definitely falls into the category of 'things you forgot to tell me'. Things I'm sure, all in good time, I'll learn."

"But..."

"We have a lifetime, love. And an eternity of afterlife after. I am in no rush." I laughed at her, gently, and she rolled her eyes. "I want to savor you. The parts I can resist gobbling up straight away, at least."

Somehow talking about it had taken the edge off of my depression, leaving just a sort of melancholy behind. I gently rolled Sister Siobhan over and asked, "I... feel a lot better, but can you stay anyway?"

She squirmed a bit, getting comfortable I guess, and said, "of course, my Hero."

I sighed and collapsed all of us back to the bedroom, where we drifted off to sleep.

Today in class I asked Doc Roberts if we could practice the whole 'Mana Network' thing. I let Cadet Karen Smith play with the business end of the Shape, and she managed to not only put up a Mana Blade with a Mana Ward core, but wave it back and forth a little bit. Not exactly Episode Three Yoda, but still pretty cool.

I hopped from the Black Dragon over to the rooftops of Undead Calverton, cutting my announcement down to, "ATTENTION! Calverton Miasma Victims! Time is running out! Act now! Restoration supplies are limited! This offer ends on Autumn Equinox!" Okay, that's not cut down, but I said it faster, all while hopping from rooftop to rooftop with every word, Miasma Wards popping up behind me.

What with it being Wednesday, Menace snagged Maze to come play with them, so everybody went outside to the courtyard for the day. Kids, refugees, Maenads, babies, everybody. Some of them played house, some of them ran laps or played red rover and other 'running around' games. Oddly enough, while Liam initially stayed with the kids doing red rover, Menace seemed to want to learn how to diaper a baby. Might need to have that fuckin' talk sooner than later, because Liam totally joined up with the kids playing house after lunch. At first I didn't think Menace noticed he'd gotten one of the Maenads to show him how to change a diaper and burp a kid, but then I noticed her very pointedly not looking at him. I just really hope I can hold off until after Calverton. I do not need that kind of stress while I'm trying to pull off a con, y'know?

At the very least I got some rest and stability playing seat cushion. Of course, I still felt a little of that melancholy. I think that's what prompted me to say, "tell me I'm the best massage chair ever."

Saffron leaned back and said, "one condition."

"Anything for you, Kitten."

My Kitten purred back, "when I'm done work for the day, I want this massage to get a lot more intense."