Dear Diary,

Some days, the only time I really think about being an Isekai'd hood rat is when I notice some particularly egregious primitive bullshit. Other days are way better than that.

So Saffron and I didn't make it back to class yesterday. We both felt a little bad about that, eventually, but mostly we just felt a lot sore once the endorphins wore off.

We had Marie and Isnomi for the night, and we spent it playing toddler learning games with her. Saffron tried to get her to count to ten while I shut my mouth about vaguely remembered wiki-searches describing how much we use our teeth and fine tongue control while speaking. Marie played pounce games with her, looking so much like a lioness with a cub from those National Geo nature documentaries that I got a little wistful watching them. I mean, until I joined in. That shit's fun, and there's definitely something just kinda liberating about being tossed around a padded environment by someone you know absolutely will not let you come to harm.

After pounce, I had her walk around holding onto my fingers. We did a bunch of laps around the room, and she gradually altered her stance until she pranced around on tiptoes. One lap when we passed my shrine, she let go of my fingers and launched herself at the shelf, grabbing one of the Cold Iron coins and running off.

"Bring that back, you little menace!" I mock-growled, crouching over and chasing her.

She giggle-squealed and pranced off toward Saffron, who sat at the desk reading a book. "Ma! Ma!" she shouted, knocking the coin against the padded front of the desk, then against Saffron's thigh. Without looking away from her book Saffron reached down and took the coin. I play-pounced at the menace, but she dove away, faceplanting into the floor and giggling madly about it. I moved over to lean against the desk next to Saffron while Isnomi righted herself, tiptoe pranced back to my shrine, leapt up and knocked down the chunk of wood, then charged back to Saffron's far side, poking her with her new prize shouting, "ma! Ma!" until Saffron, still reading, reached down and took it from her, a little clumsy with the coin still in her hand. When the menace ran off, I reached to empty Saffron's hand, but she shook her head ever so slightly.

When Isnomi knocked my bottle of wrestler-sweat off the shrine, I winced, but Marie caught it before it hit the ground. The padding probably would have kept it from shattering, but really didn't want to find out after our room stank of luchador. Isnomi grabbed it away from Marie, growling as she did, and ran back for Saffron yelling "ma! ma!" all the way back. Saffron shifted her hand to let Isnomi balance the jar atop the wood. When Isnomi turned her back to run back to the shrine, Saffron held her odd handful out to me. I grabbed the coin and tossed it to Marie, who put it back on the shrine after the little one knocked down one of the other two and commenced running it back to Saffron.

We kept her running in circles until she started faceplanting more than once a trip, and made more annoyed sounds than hilarious ones when she did. At that point we turned off the lights, snuggled up into a pile, and went to sleep.

When we woke in the morning Saffron announced we'd be out of the Academy most of the day, and asked if Marie could take Isnomi. She tilted her head, thought about it, and said, "Half." A moment later, she looked at us and said, "Grandma?"

"That sounds like an excellent plan. You take her while you can, and deliver her to Grandma when you can't. Thank you, Marie." We all got each other dressed, Marie rolled off with her Isnomi Hood Ornament, and the two of us headed for breakfast. Oh! New Food Drop in the Dining Hall! Fried Fish Cakes! No tartar sauce, but they tasted pretty good with the lemon dressing they'd been drizzled with. The gobbo table wound up nearly out-eating us ROTCs when it came to the fishcakes, and most of the tables got a tray or three. The Barbie Brigade turned theirs down, but Headmaster Miles and Doc DeLeon seemed to be into it.

So we stuck around until Doc DeLeon finished and got up, at which point Saffron quick marched us up to Intermediate Heroics. No Lachlan today, which my treacherous brain had the audacity to miss just a little bit. I mean yeah, he's an arrogant, misogynistic, racist asshole, but I think I'd started to enjoy his undisguised looks of triumph when he managed just a little bit more welding before he passed out. Suppose it didn't hurt that he'd inevitably ask me, sometimes politely even, to Stabilize the living fuck out of him when he woke up.

"Doctor DeLeon, could you come here please?"

With nobody else in the classroom, he shrugged, set down the book he'd been reading, and walked over to us. When he arrived, Saffron held out both our sets of metal rings. "You confirm these are in their start state?" When DeLeon nodded, she set them down interlocked, Shaped the Spell with a little more complexity than I recognized, and released it. All the rings Bonded together at once. She handed me my set and nodded next to hers. I shrugged, set them down like she had, then just Mineral Bonded the shit out of them. When mine stopped glowing, Saffron picked hers up and handed it to Doc DeLeon, who examined it while I pried mine off the desk. He nodded to Saffron, lifted an eyebrow when he took on the shadow of the disk on the desk where I'd bonded mine, then examined it much as he had Saffron's. He nodded again eventually, saying, "Excellent work, both of you."

Saffron held her hand over her bowl, Shaped, and about a quart of water splooshed down into it. DeLeon nodded, picked up the bowl, and tasted it. Hiding my shudder, I held my hand over my bowl, Shaped, then jumped back as Too Much Water hit the bowl. I managed to catch it before it tipped off the desk, but a puddle the size of Lancaster's ego covered the floor under our desk. After handing Saffron's bowl back to her, he carefully picked mine off the desk and took a sip. He smiled a little as he set it down. "Excellent work, Aetos. Diaz, you'll want to learn to control your quantities eventually, but excellent quality. Both definitely passing marks."

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The first couple Cadets filtered in as DeLeon made his pronouncement, and Saffron huffed out a sigh. "Fire Bolt is next, yes?" At his nod, she paused, picking up her target and handing me mine. After a second she tugged me to the far corner of the room from the door, Mineral Bonded her target to the wall at face height, then pulled me about halfway along the wall and said, "Cadet Diaz, would you be so kind as to put up a Fire Filtration Ward around us?" I dumped enough mana to create a Ward that covered our half of the room. She turned to the prof and asked, "Doctor DeLeon, would you join us please?"

Doc DeLeon walked over and stood between us, his gaze on Saffron's hands.

Close your eyes and pay attention.

That sounded really fuckin' oxymoronic, since I can't hear Mana any more than I can see it, but what the hell, she's the smart one. I closed my eyes, and watched a realtime feed from Saffron's eyes as she Shaped her Mana into a new configuration. Like, I saw this weird orangey-blue colored line of light taking shape under her hands. I still paid attention though, because my manipulative little Kitten had clearly Pavloved me into associating Learning and Happy Fun Times or some shit. It looked pretty simple, but I could feel how hard she had to concentrate and how much she slowed herself down for my benefit. From the moment she started to the moment a bolt of solid fire formed and shot across the room to nail her target dead center took maybe five seconds.

Doc DeLeon nodded to her. "Excellent technique, Cadet Aetos. Just under the maximum Shape time for a passing Fire Bolt, but clearly under it." He turned to me and watched expectantly.

With your Water Affinity and lack of Fire Affinity, you'll need to overpower this one, Goof.

You sure I can pull it off?

I have faith in you.

That tingled in that weird way, but I nodded, raised my hands, and straight up rammed that Shape of Mana into being, forcing as much Mana as I could into the Shape as I counted to four, then released it. I blinked a little at the afterimage, then glanced sheepishly up at Doc DeLeon, only to see him rubbing at his forehead.

"Well. I still have eyebrows, at least." He heaved out a sigh, looking at me with the saddest 'really Diaz?' look I'd seen in a while. "While I'll expect you to fix that, and you'll probably want to work on control with this even more than your Create Water, you have indeed created a passing Fire Bolt."

Saffron asked Doc DeLeon something, but I missed what she said when I looked at my target. Okay, where my target had been. I think the hole in the wall was sort of centered on where it had been, but I couldn't be exactly sure, since there was, as noted, a complete lack of target. I Created Water to quench the glowing, slightly flowing stone where my target used to be, causing hot water vapor to blow around that corner of the room, not to mention making another Lancaster Ego Puddle. "Oops."

That last was as much for putting the image of Lancaster making Ego Puddles with his hookers as the assorted damage I'd done to the classroom. I gotta find out if there's a 'Brain Bleach' spell. Or have Saffron come up with one or something.

Saffron laughed and tugged on my hand. "C'mon, Goof. You and I'll need to come back and fix that later, but right now we need to head over to the Yards to convince those people we spoke to yesterday afternoon."

Rule Number One of working a Team Con, 'Agree with whatever the fuck your partner says'. "Yeah, we can pick up some supplies while we're out too?"

She nodded and dragged me out of the room at a skipping run. Excellent improvisation, love.

Are we really going to Camden today? At her nod I asked, "Should I wear The Dress?"

After a moment's thought, while we kept jumping ahead of one another, eventually settling into the fastest run she could maintain, she replied, "no. My libido has threatened to kill me and hide the body for saying that, but I think today we should be there solely as Cadets, not High Priestesses, Champions, or Councilwomen."

We dashed through the Entrance doors, the Senior Cadet on door duty waving us through as we did. I scooped Saffron into a princess carry and took the steps a flight at a time as she clung to me, burying her face in my neck and squeaking every time my foot hit the ground. I hit the street and accelerated to my fastest sprint, sticking to the street, because dodging wagons was easier than dodging pedestrians. Saffron's breath hot against my ear, she whispered, "why the rush, Goof?"

"I figure they'll assume we took a vaguely normal amount of time to get over to Camden. This buys us another hour to make up for yesterday's hooky shenanigans."

She giggled huskily into my ear, "keep reminding me how smart you are and more shenanigans may be required."

I kept my voice to an absolutely flat deadpan as we flew past the end of the Boulevard and I leaned into the left turn onto Vine. "Finally you reveal your nefarious plot to transform me into a nerd with your sexual favors."

She pulled her head back enough to look at my face. "Is it working?"

I didn't stop laughing until we hit mid-bridge. I slowed a little at that point as she guided me around to the right, and we followed the waterfront until we came to a building at one side of a large open area in the middle of the dockside warehouses. As I skidded to a stop in front of it, I breathed out, "Holy shit."

Saffron hopped down and grabbed my hands, holding them in her own. "What is it, Tabitha? You sound upset."

I shook my head, working my mouth without saying anything as I tried to decide how I felt about recognizing the building in front of me. I mean, I didn't recognize the building itself, but I immediately recognized the type of building we stood in front of, even with the little differences from what I'd have seen back in Camden. Eventually I decided to laugh about it, the synchronicity was so ridiculous.

The building itself stood maybe a story and a half tall, with steps leading up to a pair of doors about five feet up off the ground. A big sign, white letters with blue and silver chasing, read, "Drivers." Another thought ran through my head and my laughter got a little more real. The first five feet of the walls was stone, but instead of the grey slabs that made up most of everything else in Phileo and much of Camden, big irregular chunky red-chased brown rocks covered that portion of the wall. Above that the place had broad plate glass windows that ran all the way up to the shiny metal roof. The line of folks picking up steaming paper wrapped packages from a window on one side of the building didn't quite match my memories, but the rest?

"Tabitha?"

"Of all the things to remind me of..." I cut myself off, then said, "a fuckin' diner. Bill's parents own a diner. With a drive through, even! Wait, wait, wait, does this place have a bar? Like, do they serve alcohol?" At her confused nod, another bout of laughter took me. "Where's fuckin' Guy Fieri when you need him?"