Dear Diary,

Sometimes it's the stupid little questions that wind up blowing shit up but good.

So Saffron and I woke up to Isnomi sitting in between us and slapping at us with her pudgy little hands, shouting, "Ma! Ma! Mama! Mama!" at the top of her lungs. When I opened my eyes and Saffron winched her own just far enough open to see, the little rugrat got the smuggest little grin and waved her hands in the air above her head, giggling the whole time until she toppled over backwards, which just made her giggle even more.

A slow smile spread across Saffron's face. "I could get used to that sound."

"You're not used to it already?" I asked, never looking away from where the crotch goblin rolled herself over and made for the edge of the bed.

Saffron ran one hand down my side, wonder coloring her voice when she said, "Isnomi's always been a good baby, but she's gotten a little bit rambunctious since... since you. And the more active she gets, the more she giggles, it seems."

I reached down and laced my fingers through hers. "I guess she feels safe."

Saffron just smiled and shook her head, almost like she couldn't believe her eyes. She pulled herself over and leaned on my belly so she could watch as Isnomi very deliberately somersaulted off the side of the bed, rolling down the slope of bolsters and pillows we'd built. She giggled madly the entire time she rolled ass-over-teakettle, and her mom echoed that with a warm chuckle as, the moment the little one stopped rolling and got her limbs underneath her, she crawled straight over to the desk, where we'd wrapped soft red cords around the desk vertically to hold the drawers shut. It made opening them a little bit of a pain in the ass, almost a two person job; one person to hold the cords aside, the other to open the drawer and get whatever we needed out of it.

Isnomi, of course, used the vertical ropes to pull herself upright, then reached up to grab the handle of the middle side drawer and yank with all her might. After thirty seconds or so of continuous effort, she managed to get it to slide about a quarter inch open, but couldn't quite reach the top of the drawer. Saffron nodded toward her and gave me a significant look.

"Okay, okay, you were right, she found a way to open the drawers." Even if she'd been able to reach the top of the drawer and gotten her fingers in, we'd Mineral Bonded lengths of fluffy rope over the inside of the drawer and the top edge of the opening, which made opening and closing it even more of a pain in the ass, but meant if she caught her fingers closing the drawer, she'd catch them between two fluffy edges rather than two sharp corners. While we'd had to jury-rig a bunch of stuff, since we couldn't exactly hit a department store for pre-made babyproofing stuff, Saffron had absolutely gone overboard with making the room into a gigantic padded playroom for our little one.

Marie knocked, and when I let her in she pushed her cart into the least padded area of the room, which we'd left with a single thin mattress she could park her cart on. Okay, least padded except for the area where the door swung open. Since we couldn't really do anything about that without totally changing out the door itself, we'd made an impromptu baby fence out of a weave of ropes to keep Isnomi out of that corner of the room. Of course, the moment Marie came in, Isnomi squealed with glee, stumble-dove toward her, and made it to one end of the baby fence by the time Marie had her cart far enough past the door to push it closed. Of course, the moment she did, she scooped the little gremlin up and nuzzled her.

"Did you want to deliver her to Grandma for the day today?" I asked as I traded her the handful of dirty laundry Isnomi'd created after Marie left last night for an armload of clean uniforms and diapers.

Marie pondered that for a moment, then said, "No," plonking Isnomi square in the middle of her cart.

I had a moment of sphincter clench as the little imp rolled herself around, but she managed to get herself seated about six inches behind the front of the cart and started slapping her hands on the surface of the cart in front of her while almost chanting, "Ca! Ca! Ca!"

"If you're sure she won't be in the way?" Saffron asked. Marie just leaned over and nuzzled first Saffron then me before pulling her cart out the door. As she turned to head down the hallway, Saffron called, "just drop her off in the Infirmary if you need to!" Marie nodded, and we listened to Isnomi giggle-shrieking as they headed off down the hallway.

That left Saffron and I alone in the room. I gave her my best lecherous grin, stalking toward her, but she planted one palm in the middle of my chest and said, "not today, Goof. We've got class all day, and Lachlan will likely want us to help him again."

I pouted, hunching my shoulders and more or less trapping her hand in my cleavage. "He's nowhere near as big of a knob goblin as his brother, but he's still... y'know... Lancastery. You really want us to spend our day with him?"

She just smiled serenely at me, sliding her hand slowly just long enough to make me shudder a little, then whipping it away and heading for the armoire. She untied the rope holding the doors shut, put away the laundry, then pulled out our uniforms, tossing me mine. "I'm no fan of the Lancasters in general, mind you, but it doesn't hurt to have one of them in our debt. Lachlan's the eldest son of Leonard, the current head of the family."

"Ugh. Politics. Makes my head hurt. And unsettles my stomach when it gets really awful." I yoinked my shirt and pants on, deliberately leaving all the ties untied, then just kinda draped my jacket over my shoulders.

She shrugged. "It's not like we're hurting anyone; in fact we're rather doing the opposite." Once she had herself dressed, she looked over at me and shook her head, but she couldn't hide her tiny smile or muttered, "Goof." She walked over and, starting with my shirt, tied all my ties and buttoned all my buttons. "You could at least pretend to dress yourself."

I grinned down at the top of her head while she worked, wiggling just enough that my pants dropped to my knees as she finished with my shirt. "I like it when you fix me up. At least this way you don't have to undo anything."

She shook her head as she bent down to pull my pants up, flicking me hard enough to sting, close enough so I knew she'd missed making it stupidly painful on purpose. "Are you telling me I'm interfering with you learning how to dress yourself?"

I chuckled, "nah. Not like I care all that much about making everything just so anyhow. I just get it close enough nobody's gonna notice." I shrugged. "At least this way I get your hands all over me before we have to head out for the day."

She looked up at me, batting her eyes as she tied my pants and started in on my jacket without looking. "You mean you wouldn't learn to do it right just for me?"

I heaved a longsuffering sigh. "Oh-kay. If you put it that way. I'm gonna miss you doing this though."

A hint of the Grin of Inhibition Obliteration leaked through as she said, "do you think you can dress yourself properly tomorrow? And avoid destroying the Academy until tomorrow afternoon?"

I shrugged. "No promises, but I'll give it my best shot. Why?"

"Because at the moment, you've got the afternoon off, we've got a positively eager nanny who'll likely have Isnomi until dinner at least, and I've nothing to do all morning but make nefarious plans for how to occupy you from lunch until dinner time." With that she spun me around, tugged the tails of my jacket down, and slapped me on the ass. "Let's get going."

Of course, she got a little irked when I stepped over the baby fence, then lifted her over it. "So you don't have to get all messy," I waggled my eyebrows in an over the top leer, "until tomorrow afternoon, at least."

She pulled me in for a laughing kiss before I put her down and we left for breakfast. Apparently today was 'death to pigs' breakfast; only one short tray of spicy eggs, but piles and piles of bacon, sausage, and ham steaks. We even got some pretty big bowls of apples and blueberries. A little before the meal ended, I grabbed a big apple I'd set aside, carefully extruded a Mana Blade, trying to match a shape I barely remembered, and cored, sliced, and cooked the apple all at once. I nommed the core while I waited for the rest to cool a little bit, then handed them out before we all headed to class. The Dining Hall basically ignored my Mana Blade Insta-Toast shenanigans by now, but when the smell of baked apples followed us out of the room, everybody, even the high table and the Barbie Brigade, watched us enviously as we left the room nomming on baked apples.

When we got to Intermediate Heroics, not only did we have our metal 'make your own bullseye' kits set out, we also had a bowl on each of our desks. I looked at Doc DeLeon, pointed at a bowl, and kinda cocked my head in that 'what the fuck is this shit?' position.

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He chuckled and said, "today's lesson will be the most basic of Water Elemental spells; Create Water. Something to hold the water in makes it far less messy."

I shrugged, tugged three desks into a little workspace, and Saffron and I settled in. When Lachlan arrived we waved him over, then put a Mana Ward around all of us before we started in on Operation Lachlan Bonding. He'd managed a really shitty job of Mineral Bonding the center disk to the circle around it before the rest of the class arrived and Doc DeLeon gave us a quick lecture about how Create Water could allow Heroes or even small units to traverse deserts or oceans without having to transport bulky water casks.

"Must be pretty handy in swamps and jungles, too." I quipped at that point.

Doc DeLeon just stared at me, long enough that I hunched a little bit and said, "What?"

"I'm trying to think why you think you would need to carry water in a swamp or a jungle, both terrains known for plentiful, even excessive water sources."

I tilted my head, trying to figure out how the guy in charge of one of our Infirmaries wouldn't pick up what I was putting down. "Uh, it's like the ocean though. The water's not safe for drinking?"

His head tilted to match my own, and he shook it a little, like he was trying to get the concept to fit into his head, or maybe trying to dislodge it. "Stagnant water can be problematic, but both swamps and jungles have plenty of fresh, flowing water. It might take some searching, and perhaps a little filtering through a cheese cloth to be sure you don't wind up trying to drink a fish, but neither would really be a place you'd need to Create Water."

I just sat there, at a loss for how to explain the idea of germs to somebody from a city where everybody just assumed that diseases were caused by a visit by some Disease God, or maybe his minions. Demons. Whatever. Eventually I shrugged, put on my best goofy grin, rapped a knuckle on the side of my head and said, "duh. Sorry, brain must be on the fritz. Thanks Doctor."

"Teaching you would be my reason for being here, so you're welcome. Now, watch carefully, class."

I have no idea what he did next, because Lachlan quietly rapped a knuckle against his shitty bonding job. "Can we get back to this now?"

Saffron picked up the poorly linked pieces of metal while saying, "what about Create Water?"

Lachlan shrugged, put one finger over his bowl, and half a dozen grape sized drops of water formed and dropped from his finger in less than six seconds. "Help me with this and I'll gladly demonstrate Create Water as much as you need."

I sat there speechless for the second time in as many minutes, although at this point due to surprise at a Lancaster displaying casual competence and a reasonable sense of fair play. I mean, he still wanted to do his shit first, because of course he did, but that dropped him square in the middle of 'selfish privileged jerk', not 'raging overcompensating asshole' with his brother Larry. Saffron just nodded and picked up her own disc and inner ring, setting them in the middle of the three of us and saying, "watch carefully." She didn't bother with the light show, because just like everyone else in class except me, Lachlan had no problems seeing her normal Mana Shapes. Maybe ten seconds after she started, the edges of the inner circle just kind of melted into the ring around it. She picked it up and showed Lachlan both sides, which had flowed together seamlessly.

He looked down at his half-assed job and shook his head for a second before picking it up and trying to pop the center circle out. It flexed, and there was more gap than connection, but before he strained something I handed him my materials and took away his crappy Bond job. "Thanks."

"De nada." I replied, and watched as he slowly, painstakingly wove his hands through the Shape, only to have the edges of the center disc flare, flutter, and form an even shittier job of Bonding than the first one, if that was even possible. At that point, Saffron went to raise her hand, I guess to ask for more materials, but I got a sudden inspiration. "Wait," I said, and pushed out the thinnest Mana Blade I could, running it through the Bonded spots and turning his first attempt at Bonding into a slightly sloppy disc and a corresponding circle. He handed over his second attempt while the first set cooled, and I separated the Bonds on that one too.

He reached for the mostly cooled first set, a resigned look on his face as he said, "I've got enough Mana for another try or two. Nothing for it but practice, I guess," and lifted his hands into what he used as a 'shaping position'.

At that point another inspiration bomb hit me, and I reached out and put a hand between him and his materials. "Wait! I just thought of something." He pulled his hands back and I explained. "I just realized, Saffron and I do our Mineral Bonding differently. She's got way more finesse and control than me," at this point I glanced over to see her using the thinnest Mana Blade I'd ever imagined, like a hair thin one, arranged into a perfect circle, to slice the center disc out of her materials as smoothly as I'd cored my apple earlier. "As you can see." I rolled my eyes and smiled at her, "showoff." She grinned at me, reminding me way too much of Isnomi when she'd just figured out a new way to terrify Saffron and I with attempted self-destruction. "Anyway, everybody knows I don't have any finesse or self control, but I've got Mana blowing out my ass, and I haven't had a problem with Mineral Bond, because I do it differently."

Lachlan let out a huge sigh and said, "yes, but you've likely got far more Earth affinity than I have. I've got plenty of Fire affinity, and reasonably good Water affinity, but those leave no room for Earth."

"Neither do I. Have any Earth affinity, that is. Nothing but Water and Air. But that doesn't matter the way I do it. Okay, I'll try not to blind you too bad, but keep your eye on how I do this." He nodded, then watched as I wove the Shape for Mineral Bonding. I hadn't thought about it before, but where Saffron's Mineral Bonds always formed all-at-once, mine worked more like a weld, running along the edges of the surfaces I wanted to Bond. With most stuff, the weld went so fast it looked the same as Saffron's, but this time I slowed it way down, forcibly slowing the shape so we could all see the Bond forming first in a single spot, then running clockwise around the gap between the two pieces of metal, Bonding them as it went. It wound up looking way sloppier than hers, both in terms of the edges not being a smooth circle and because it had those little ridges you got from welding shit, but when I picked it up and rapped at the center of it, the Bond didn't flex in the slightest.

He took it from me, gripped the edges of the ring in his fingers, and shoved the center with his thumbs until a vein popped out in his forehead, but despite it looking sloppy, it just plain refused to budge in the slightest. "Huh." He set my Bonded circle down with a thoughtful look, then reached out and pulled Saffron's materials to him. He lined them up, and I have to say they fit even more tightly than they had before Saffron Bonded them; we could barely see the crack in the metal separating the two parts. He moved his hands through the Shape, slower than he had earlier, with sweat beading on his forehead as he did. A weird, tiny, floating Mana Blade-let thing appeared at one point on the circle, then crackle-hissed its way clockwise around the crack between the two pieces of metal, leaving a sloppy yet apparently functional weld in its place. Forehead vein popped, sweat literally dripping down his face, Lachlan's lips nonetheless bent into a strained grin as the weld reached about a quarter of the way around the circle. "Holy crap! It's working! I'm doing... oh, shit."

With that his Mana Bladelet sputtered out, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed face first into the table. Only Saffron's quick reflexes kept his forehead from going right into the slightly smoldering end point of his Bond. I yoinked it out from under him so she could set his head down, then applied a Stabilize to shock him awake. Doc DeLeon arrived just as Lachlan sat up, shaking his head.

"What happened?" the professor asked, standing just outside our Mana Ward.

Lachlan took a deep breath and blew it out. "Burned through all my Mana before I realized it, but," he grabbed the partially Bonded bits from Saffron and held them up for DeLeon to see, "look! I did that!"

Doc DeLeon reached out, and Lachlan passed the partially Bonded disc through. Apparently if neither of them touched the Mana Ward, since the disc had no active Mana in it, the Mana Ward didn't react in the slightest. The prof examined the Bond, tapping at it with a knuckle, running a finger over the weld. "Incomplete. Messy, as well." Then he smiled, passing the disc back through to Lachlan as he said, "but significantly better than anything you've ever done in the past. If you can complete all three Bonds without passing out, I'll note you as having passed Intermediate Heroic Skills One." He nodded, and I barely heard him mutter, "finally," as he walked off.

If he heard that last bit, Lachlan didn't react in the slightest. He reached out with both hands, grabbing one of mine before saying, "thank you. Sincerely."

"You're not done yet," I nodded to the three-quarters-incomplete Bond, "you haven't even finished the smallest Bond yet. Not even half way."

He let go of my hand and made a throwing away gesture with one of his, taking another deep breath and blowing it out through his nose. "That's just practice. Work. Hard work, I know, because I thought I was done with building up my Mana and learning to avoid Mana Depletion. But," he stopped, shaking his head, but I got the sense that he was denying the idea that the need for hard work would stop him. "I've worked hard on things and succeeded before. Ask Marshall duBois about my troubles with the obstacle course at some point. It took a lot of hard work for me to get good enough at that to satisfy him, but I did it."

"What's made Mineral Bond so much different then?"

He shook his head again, "because even at the start, I knew what I needed to learn, to practice, to work on to get through the obstacle course. There were hurdles," he made a throwing away gesture and smiled, "metaphoric ones as well as the literal ones, but I saw steady improvement every week. This? I've been putting out those terrible excuses for Bonds for three years now, with no progress until today."

I shrugged. "Just glad I could help out. You wanna show us Create Water, or do you wanna jump right back in the saddle again?"

He reached his left hand out, palm up, the way Saffron had done when she needed me to refill her Mana tank. "Forgive me, I need to do this again. Just to prove to myself it wasn't some kind of fluke."

"You got it," I slammed a whomping big Stabilize into his hand. When he'd finished shuddering, without a word he turned back to the materials, his tiny little Mana-Bladelet already glowing in the gap between circle and disc.

By the end of the day, he'd passed out twice more, although right before class ended he managed to do the full circle of the first Bond without stopping or passing out. He never did show us Create Water. I didn't really have the heart to stop him when every time he got just a little further his face lit up like a kid on Christmas. Getting to Stabilize the living shit out of a Lancaster repeatedly and have him thank me for it was just icing on the cake, really.