Dear Diary,

Kinda weird that the least exhausting day of my week is PT, but there you go.

Last night was nice. Just all of us snuggled up in a pile.

I dreamt of the strobe-skylight again. The psychedelic tadpoles changed up their routine for some reason. I mean, still all the squishy and weird, but not petit mort weird any more. They'd replaced that with something that felt the way vanilla soft serve tastes. Cool, sweet, undeniably pleasant. A bit of a downgrade, maybe, but not, like, bad. Somebody'd added color to the light, and not a single one, either. It took me staring, fascinated, for most of the night to figure out that it would pulse in one color for a bit, pause, then pulse in another one. I still felt like I ought to understand it, like somebody'd called my name and wanted me to understand.

I woke to a certain adorable menace bonking me on the head with a chamber pot.

I mean, I didn't realize it was a chamber pot at first. Just that somebody'd bonked me square on the noggin with a clonk. Y'know, the hollow sound everybody expects when my head hits something. I got my eyes open just in time for our chamber pot to fill my vision before bouncing off my forehead with another clonk. It pulled back enough for me to see Isnomi levering it up for another swing.

"Stop that!" To her credit, she didn't let it drop. Unfortunately, she'd apparently hit the limits of her balance; she could get it up that high, but then it had to come down. Since I'd forbidden bonking me in the face with it again, she toppled over backwards. Apparently the sounds I made when she bonked me right in the crotch with the damn pot hit her square in the giggle-spot. Once I got over the inevitable wince, because I'm trying to be a Good Mom and not screech at my kid because she whacked me in the split trying to do exactly what I told her to, I pushed myself up onto my elbows and looked her over. She'd let go of the chamber pot, and it rested on my thighs. She still hadn't stopped giggling at my reaction. Worse, a quick glance around showed me near identical smiles on Saffron and Marie's faces, despite their eyes remaining shut.

"Okay, you two. Let it out." I did my best overworked, underappreciated mom voice, "laugh at my pain." That got both of them.

Saffron rolled around laughing, forcing the words, "not laughing," despite the blatant evidence to the contrary.

Before I could respond, Marie's tongue rasped from my shoulder to my ear, where she growled, "nope."

I swear, the women in my life treat me like a Real Doll.

Okay, I admit it, I would be understating things entirely to say that I kinda get off on it.

Not the time, though. I sat up, tumbling Isnomi down onto my lap, where she bonked the chamber pot off my thigh, catching it with one chubby hand before it rolled away. "I get the hint, Menace." I scooped her up, carried her to the desk, and stood by to help her if she needed it. She repeated yesterday's performance, hopping up and powerbombing the pot. I reached for her, but she hopped off and grabbed at the cloth I'd picked up. She tumbled around until she lay on her back, arched to point her butt at the sky with her legs over her head, and reached down to wipe. Weird as fuck to watch, but my mom once told me I'd never crawled, just rolled around the house until I figured out how to walk, so who am I to judge.

When she'd flopped the cloth around her bits and rubbed it around the obviously messy spots, she flung her arms up around her legs. "Dahda!"

When she tried to roll back down, I snagged the rag and held her in place, "Sorry, Menace, but your wiping skills need a little work. Don't need you leaving a trail of poo everywhere." I finished wiping her clean, thinking about the higher difficulty level of cleaning up a body part blind. She grumped a little, but I made short work of things. Since she hadn't sat in the shit like she would have by filling the diaper, it really didn't take all that much work.

When I finished, I scooted her around a little and put a diaper under her. She wriggled and shouted, "na! Na! Ahnama Bee Ga!"

I left the diaper under her, but took her hands and pulled her up to look at me. "Not quite yet, Menace."

"Na! Ahnama Bee Ga!"

I put one fingertip over her lips, avoided the inevitable nip and booped her on the nose, then placed it back across her lips again. "You've used the potty seven days in a row. Very good girl. We're all very impressed, right?"

Saffron chimed in, "very much so."

Marie followed up with, "Yes."

I nodded, almost losing my straight serious Mom Face when Isnomi nodded right along with me. "But we said seven days of no poop in diapers, too. So you've got to keep that up until we all go to sleep tonight. Understand?"

Her eyes got big, she nodded, and flopped back down, scrabbling at her new diaper, trying to pull it on. It took a surprising amount of doing, but I pushed her hands away and pulled her back up. "There's more."

Her lip stuck out, her eyes glistened, and I swear I heard the blubber starting right then, but I booped her nose again and said, "nothing more you need to do, Menace. But things you need to know about being a Big Girl." The waterworks dried up so fast I knew right then she'd got to the point she could turn them on at will. That's not to say every time she cried it was fake, but now I knew she could fake a tantrum like that. Good to know. "There are rules. Right Ma?"

"Absolutely, Mama. Just because you're not wearing a diaper doesn't mean you get to poo everywhere. Accidents happen, so tell us if you have one, so we can clean it up before it ruins things, but every day you have an accident means two more days of diapers, so we can figure out how to avoid that accident again. Understand?"

She looked at Saffron, then me, "Ah ca da?"

"If you poo outside the pot, that's an accident. No poo outside the pot, no diaper. Poo outside the pot, two days of diaper. Got it?" I looked over the tops of the glasses I didn't have, trying to maintain Serious Mom Face.

"Ahcada, ta dapa?"

"Two," I said, holding up two fingers. "One," one finger, "accident, two," two fingers, "days of diapers."

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Precocious little bugger just nodded and said, "ah ga da."

"No, no accident."

Little bitch-in-training rolled her eyes at me. Looked so much like her mom it almost broke my Serious Mom Face. Then, slowly and carefully, like she was the one talking to a toddler, she said, "Ah. Ga. Da."

I flopped her back and put her diaper on properly, when I pulled her back upright I looked at her and said, "If you're not wearing a diaper, you'll need to wear clothing."

Isnomi gave me a booger look, and Saffron jumped into the conversation with, "while I agree in principle, finding clothing in her size might be difficult. Most Camden toddlers run around naked except in the winter."

"So you're telling me the poor kids go naked while the rich ones get clothing?"

She shrugged, "more or less. Trust me, I agree with you. The first set of clothing I had that fit properly? My Uniform. I filled out before I grew up, and I had the choices of a makeshift toga or clothing meant for someone a foot taller and wider than me. Or more." Those last two words came out in a barely audible mutter. Despite visions of weapons-grade adorable Saffron in oversized clothing, her earlier comment gave me an idea.

I leaned over and put my forehead against Isnomi's. At the last second she bonked hers forward, giggling, but I ignored that and whispered, "ready to fly to Ma, Menace?" Her eyes got big, her grin widened, and I called out, "heads up!" before I tossed her at Saffron. Saffron managed to get her hands up in time to intercept the flying-squirrel charge, but Isnomi glomping her face still spilled them both over backwards. I bounced out of the chair and up to glomp Marie so I could put my mouth next to her ear. Keeping my voice low and trying to ignore her persistently roaming hands, I whispered my idea into her ear. The moment she caught the gist of the idea, she stopped the fondle fest. Once I'd finished telling her the plan, I pulled away and asked, "Can you?"

She looked at where Saffron and Isnomi play wrestled on the ground, her tongue slipping out of her mouth, an honest-to-god genuine blep. After a few moments, where I had all I could do to stop myself from going back to a full on glomp, because Marie Is Warm And Fuzzy, she turned back to me and retracted the blep, nodding.

"What are you two plotting over there?"

Despite my desire to fill in for Marie's undergarments today, I let go and dropped to my feet so she could start dressing. "A surprise for Big Girls, so I can't tell you yet, because then Isnomi would hear."

So, apparently Isnomi can make a tongue-stuck-out 'thppptbbttt' raspberry so poo-sound-like it convinced us to check her diaper while she lay there giggling at our gullibility.

Care to tell me about the plan, love?

I watched as Isnomi clambered back up and got right up in Saffron's face, grabbing onto her ears for support while staring right into her eyes. Alongside worrying that she can see into your brain to hear me at that range, I'd really want to see your reaction to it too.

I am generally un-fond of surprises, as life has taught me they are inevitably bad. However, given that it's only a day, and someone has been aggressively educating me about the fact that life has lied to me about many things, we'll do this your way.

I walked over and gave her a hand up as Isnomi wandered off to badger Marie for a lift onto her cart. I wrapped my arms around her and quietly asked, "on a completely unrelated topic, would you be upset if I played dress up doll with you?"

She paused, considering. "Such a thing does not fill me with gleeful anticipation, but considering I have truthfully said I would abase myself to make you smile, I'll try."

I pulled her close and quietly told her, "I don't want to use your pain to ease mine, love."

"What if that's what I want?"

I rolled my eyes, sighed, and pulled her close, resting my face atop her head, just breathing in the smell of her hair. "I'm trying not to be a villain, here."

She snickered, pulling me tighter. "I know. I admire that. I'll support you, of course. I've just come to the realization that I do not care. If you're a villain, that is."

"Good to know."

We stood there like that, just quietly holding one another, until Isnomi shouted, "ma! Mama!" When we turned to look, she sat atop the cart, holding her hands up in the air and waving them. "Ba! Ba!"

"Bye, bye, baby! We'll see you when you get home!"

Marie and the Menace left, Saffron and I got dressed and headed down to breakfast. We ROTCs made a plan to head down to Drivers for the day; Bill and Angel were gonna head up to PT and tell the sub where we'd all gone, then join us afterward, while the rest would go ahead and set things up. We spent the day talking to people. Just like Thursday, some of them decided right then to Volunteer, including one person we'd spoken with previously. We got a few more people thinking about it. We did some preliminary testing to see if the folks Volunteering would pass muster. After all, no point hiking all the way across Phileo just to get turned down and have to trudge back with nothing to show for it.

Turns out the two biggest parts of that were an Assess Health and an Inspect. When we asked their permission, most of them just nodded, but one woman said, "why? I mean, I get why you're doing it here, but why do it at all?"

Bill jumped into that particular gap, explaining, "because if we put someone who isn't strong enough to lift their spear and shield in a formation, they could get everyone in the formation killed, no matter how much they're trying to help. If we have someone without enough stamina to march all day in the army, the whole army could get caught out of position because they had to stop or slow down. If someone has an illness they don't know about, and they spread it to everyone else in the army?"

She looked thoughtful, then shook her head. "I need to think about that some more."

He just smiled and said, "that's fine. We're looking for Volunteers; we're not going to pressure you into anything. Come back if you decide you're okay with it."

Bill brought us lunch. Driver's Diner meatloaf. Some tiny voice inside me wondered about a bull-guy making stuff out of beef, but my tongue and stomach ganged up to beat that little voice to death and hide the body. I'd always thought of meatloaf kind of as a 'distant last ditch idea for leftover meat', but holy shit this stuff was awesome. They'd put some homemade ketchup and beef gravy on the plate beside it, and I tried it with a little of both, but most of it I just ate straight up without condiments. Ketchup tasted weird on the fried carrots. So did the gravy, although that shit tasted awesome on the rolls they'd sent out in overflowing baskets.

By mid-afternoon, at Raven's insistence, we'd pulled out an awning and set it up. Mostly it covered the Volunteer side of the table, which made folks in line like getting to our part of the line even more. Shortly after we'd put it up, she'd pinned up sheets of paper across the front. The center one had a really nice rendition of the Academy crest, and the four to each side read, 'P. C. H. A. | A R M Y' in really nice, but still easily readable calligraphy.

Why PCHA instead of Phileo?

Saffron shrugged. Phileo's never let the Yards forget about who's in charge. The Yards are surprisingly okay with the Academy, though. Phileo's government can go screw itself, but Heroes actually show up when shit gets exceptionally shitty. With some of us going there, that's shifting from 'okay' to better than that. Not perfect, and some people here still give me dirty looks, but they're way more likely to support the Academy than Phileo.

After that, I started talking about Volunteering for 'the Academy', and folks really did respond better. Thing is? I get it. Those same kind of subtle distinctions made a difference back in Camden, too. Screw the State government, fuck the City government, the school board can go hang their embezzling asses out to dry, but some of the teachers at Eastside were Good People.

When we closed down for the night I got an idea and asked Raven if I could borrow the posters for a couple days. She shrugged, said, "can't leave them here anyway. It might rain," and handed them over.

We all marched home proud of ourselves. Marie and Isnomi waited at our door for us, the little con artist lying all snuggled up atop the cart, fake snores whistling out of her. We scooped her up and headed for bed. When Marie turned her cart to head off to Marie land, Saffron asked, "you've got work tonight?"

Marie shook her head, shot me a secret little grin, and said, "Errand."

"So you'll be back?" When she nodded, Saffron said, "good. We'll be waiting."

She's so cute. I immediately congratulated myself on recruiting Marie into my Nefarious Wardrobe Plan.