Dear Diary,

If there's a God that Gods pray to, I'mma just say 'thank you for Drivers'.

Of course we had to go in and get lunch. Saffron introduced me to Bill's Mom and Dad. Funniest thing? Habits die hard, and some of them run stupidly deep. I met Mr. And Mrs. Driver. Like, Saffron calls them that, because she would never think to call them anything else, and that's how she introduced me to them.

Before we'd gone more than two steps inside the doors, a heavyset woman in a blue waitress' dress and white apron with an improbable up-do and really snazzy sideburns squealed out, "SAFFRON!" and trotted out from behind the counter. Like, literally, the sides of her dress had slits all the way up to her waist, and I caught glimpses of furry digitigrade legs and hooves. She looked down at my Kitten and, her arms in front of her, elbows touching and loose fists under her chin, bounced up and down as she kept up the squeal. "Just look at you! That uniform! So cute!" Then she pounced on Saffron, scooping her up into a twirling hug. Saffron clung to her, catching my eye with a smile and fond eye-roll as she swung past me the second time. After a few more squealing spins, she set Saffron down, said, "you should visit more! You look so smart, but I'm sure you've lost weight." Then she turned to me, the verbal avalanche never slowing, "and who's your friend? Does Bill know her?"

Saffron flashed the smile you save for older relatives who, despite being a little out of touch with reality, meant well, would loan you their car with good reason and their clothes for no reason at all, and probably fed you more than was really healthy. "It's good to see you, Mrs. Driver. I actually haven't lost weight. I've gained a little weight. Lost a bit of fat though, I guess."

"Oh, that won't do!" cried Mrs. Driver, presumably Bill's mom, as she straight up herded Saffron and I onto stools next to the counter that ran along one side of the diner's interior. She whonked a couple monster slices of chocolate cake onto plates and slid them in front of us, then smacked the side of her arm on a metal panel in the wall behind her. "What's fresh out of the oven, dear?" she shouted.

The metal panel slid aside to reveal the broadest fuckin' face I'd seen, ever. It looked kind of like a bull, but not the rangy Texas longhorn bull face. No, this fucker looked like somebody took one of them, then added another couple layers of muscle, then decided that the overall bodyfat ratio of the face region needed to be well over fifty percent. Pale cream fur covered his face and shoulders, and that's all I could see, because this dude's shoulders filled up every part of the two foot high by three foot wide window with no room to spare. "Welp, cow, I got rotisserie coming out the oven now, and I just finished breading some fish, so... Saffron?"

Mrs. Driver giggled and said, "doesn't she just look so grown up in her uniform and everything?"

I really wanted to leap to my wife's defense, but I hadn't even been introduced to the Drivers yet, and while I'd normally say 'fuck that', Saffron seemed to like them, and Bill's a nice enough guy. Also, when I looked over at her, I realized her feet dangled like two feet off the floor, and half her slice of cake had disappeared down her cake-hole, leaving about a half-inch around her face smeared with chocolate. She noticed me looking and froze, blinking at me, with her fork in the act of shoveling a hunk of cake bigger than her mouth down her maw. "Guess I was right about that sweet tooth of yours?"

She closed her lips around the stem of the fork, pulled it out of her mouth with a sucking sound, and pointed her absolutely spotless fork at my cake and asked, "you gonna eat that?"

I slapped her fork away with mine and said, "I'll try a little bit, sure."

"Only a little bit?" Mrs. Driver pouted at me.

I shrugged, "it looks really good, but I'm more of a protein girl. Besides, I wanna watch what she does when I feed it to her."

The floor shook just a little bit as Mrs. Driver hammered her hooves up and down in an epic power-squee maneuver. "I so miss Raven being here. I would so have her paint that."

"I mean, now that I know you guys are here, I'm sure we'll be back when we can." I took a reasonable-for-me bite of my cake, and immediately reconsidered my decision to feed it to Saffron. "Oh my God that's good. You guys are open Mondays and Friday afternoons, right?"

"We are now," the presumed Mr. Driver rumbled out as he slid two plates out onto the counter in front of the window. Each one contained a mega-gyro, a big 'ol pita with long, thin slices of meat intertwined around big chunky ones of tomato, onion, and lettuce.

By that point nothing remained on Saffron's plate but some really faint brown smears, because she'd literally picked it up and licked it clean. She pointedly stared at my cake as Mrs. Driver slid our gyros in front of us, saying, "so. Saffron. Who's your little friend?"

Normally I might be miffed about being called 'little', especially in reference to Saffron, but in case I haven't made it clear, Mrs. Driver fuckin' towered over me. Like, Marie tall, but not Marie svelte. She didn't look obese or anything, but from a distance she'd look kinda like a really curvy normal woman. Between the size differential and her sweet tooth, it really just made sense she slid Saffron into the 'little kid' category. Possibly literally, given Mama Driver's hooves.

Saffron took a petite bite out of her gyro, staring at my cake the whole time, before she spoke. "Mrs. Driver, Mr. Driver," she paused as my fork delivered a reasonable-Saffron-bite-sized portion of cake to her mouth, "this is my wife," another pause for cake station identification, "Tabitha Diaz."

I reached out cross-body with my left hand extended toward Mrs. Driver while I delivered another bite of cake to Saffron. In the moment I looked away, just after Saffron said my name, Mrs. Driver let out another squeal, this one mixing awe and delight in equal measure. I turned back to maybe figure out what she'd lost it about this time, only to get bodily lifted and buried face first into a chest that deserved the description, 'mountainous'. Muffled by her motherly arms and massive mammaries, I heard her squealing, "thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you," and my head got a little damp as something splattered down from above. My vision sparkled a little by the time she let me up for air, pushing me back far enough I could look into her tear-sparkling eyes. "I heard what you did to Bill."

I froze, realizing that combat training or not, this woman's forearms might be as big around as my goddamn thighs, and she still held me mostly crushed against her front. "Uh..."

"Bill told us. That crazy woman who attacked the Temple nearly killed him, cut him down without even looking at him, and before we'd even heard about it, while he lay there nearly dead, beyond the help of the Academy healers, you came in and healed him. I don't know how, I don't want to know how, I..."

"Mrs. Driver?" We both looked to Saffron, who sat in front of a stack of plates, two empties with chocolate smears on the edges and one with a mostly intact gyro. When she had BillMom's attention, she said, "Tabitha is also the woman who assisted Sister Siobhan with Reviving Bill."

Thanks, Saffron, I deadpanned at her as my whole fucking front tingled, and Mrs. Driver planted a kiss on my right temple, then my left one. I mean, technically I think she'd aimed for my cheeks, and her lips covered those as well, but goddamn this woman was large. Torvald would die of massive dehydration just looking at her. She pulled me into another apocalyptic hug, and after a bit I weakly thought, I'mma take a nap right here, I think, at Saffron. Or pass out. Or suffocate. Something like that.

Right about then she plomphed me back onto my stool, and as my brain absorbed some desperately needed oxygen my eyes wandered to take in another couple vaguely normal sized women in waitress getups working the rest of the diner. They only had two other solo customers and one table full of guests, but the waitresses still hopped to, keeping water glasses full, scooping up dirty plates and delivering new ones, making muttered little comments to Mr. Driver, and, y'know, just generally doing waitress things. As my vision cleared, I realized the ongoing tingle hadn't let up. Normally I'd just make excuses to get out of the area, but some adult part of me couldn't leave somebody as nice as BillMom with a lie, even a lie of omission.

"Mrs. Driver?"

"Yes, sweetie?"

"About... the woman who hurt Bill."

She tilted her head quizzically, "I thought that was a young man."

Saffron cut in with, "I think Tabitha means at the Temple."

"Yeah, at the Temple. I..." I cast about looking for some way to say it without actually, y'know, saying it. Eventually I just hung my head and spit it out. "I didn't see Bill there. All I could see was Isnomi up on that altar, that fucking kidnapping bitch about to stab her to death."

Saffron added, "my daughter. Isnomi."

Mrs. Driver pulled back, and the tingling faded. "I'm sorry. Bill didn't know they'd kidnapped her, and he didn't recognize me either. He just saw someone attacking and dove in the way. Just like Heroes are supposed to do."

Saffron looked up from where she'd eaten about half of her gyro. "I... I was going to ask you for a favor, but..."

I pushed my plate away as well, mumbling, "yeah. 'm sorry."

The tingling didn't stop. Mrs. Driver pushed the plate back in front of me. She wasn't losing her shit to a squee-storm any more, but she looked resigned, not angry. "If not for you, he wouldn't have been alive to see the Equinox. Shit happens, especially when folks that matter behave badly."

Mr. Driver was even more succinct. "What do you need, girls?"

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Saffron looked up, her eyes gleaming maybe just a little, and said, "Thank you. I wanted to know if you'd mind if we spoke with people waiting in line about Volunteering."

Mr. Driver grunted and shrugged. Mrs. Driver said, "of course we don't mind. Bill and Angel were here Wotansday doing the same. But you know how it is, never exactly the same crowd any given day."

A bit of memory crossed over into inspiration, and I asked, "hey, there's a thought. What if we set up a little recruiting station right here, and take turns manning it? Like, you and me, or Angel and Bill, or Raven and Bonnie," I paused, "okay, not Raven and Bonnie. Maybe Fred and Bonnie."

Mrs. Driver looked down at Saffron. "Bonnie?"

"Bonita."

BillMom choked down a laugh. "Oh, my. Not Raven and Bonnie indeed. We don't need another meat grinder incident."

I decided not to ask. 'No officer, I have no knowledge of those events' hits different when you really don't have a fuckin' clue.

Bill's Dad rumbled out, "sure. You need anything for that?"

I shrugged and said, "not much. A table, some chairs, maybe an awning if the weather is bad but not bad enough to keep us inside."

He grunted, "c'mon back", and slid the metal door shut. Saffron and I slipped off our stools, Saffron pointing me toward a door in the back wall. Before we'd taken two steps, Mrs. Driver bonked us on top of the heads with our very much not empty plates. "Come algo!" I grinned up at her, scooped the gyro off the plate, folding the pita tightly around itself until it looked more burrito than gyro, and rammed like half of it into my mouth in one big grinning nom. She slid my plate under Saffron's stack, held that down so Saffron could reach her own gyro, and ruffled my hair with her other hand before shoving us both behind the counter toward the door.

When we got into the kitchen and I got a look at Mr. Driver, I just stared at him as he led us to a little half-underground storage area with spare furniture, waved at it, and stood there watching us expectantly. I mean, technically I guess he was a Minotaur, but... Okay, the cream colored fur that ran down to his mid-torso threw me a little, since I expected Ferdinand brown on my Minotaurs, but I could roll with that. His overall build though... He never really 'stood up straight', the way some guys used to banging their head on the ceiling and some weightlifters perpetually crouch, but even hunched he had at least six inches on Mama Driver. I kinda hoped so, because if he wasn't at least eight feet tall, then he was more 'truncated rectangular solid' instead of the 'cube' he'd be at eight feet. Yeah, every exposed surface had the signs of obvious thick layers of fat, but he didn't move like an Incarnation of Obesity. He moved like this one visiting DI I remembered, this big guy from American Samoa. Yeah, he was big, yeah, he had padding, but he had enough muscle buried underneath that his cautious movement wasn't because he worried about hurting himself on the walls, it's because he'd gotten sick and tired of fixing walls when they ran into him. Shit that even I would definitely Not Say ran through my head as I realized that this dude wouldn't Isekai Truck-Kun, but only because Truck-Kun would take one look at him and run screaming.

Thing is, with all that sense of vaguely impatient control, a bodybuilder perma-frown etched onto his bovine features, and the lurking Dad-humor I somehow sensed, I never once got a sense of intimidation coming from him. He waited patiently while Saffron pointed me at a pair of chairs, picked up one herself, and then pointed at a table big enough to seat three people on each side. He hefted it under one arm and led us out the back of the storage area, heading up a half-flight of stairs to the open area behind the diner. He carried the table around until he could set it beside the line, maybe six feet to one side, about ten feet back from where the line came to the window. "That good?"

"Yes, Mr. Driver. Thank you so much!" Running on instinct as much as anything, I leapt up and hugged him, literally dangling from his lower chest like a limpet. His chest rumbled with something I tentatively identified as a chuckle, then he reached around me and patted me gently on the back before lifting me away and setting me on my feet in front of him. He reached out and gently flicked my forehead, grumbling, "keep your eyes open from now on," before heading back into the back of the Diner.

We spent the rest of the afternoon talking with people, eventually setting all three chairs down all sorts of raggedly on the line side of the table, letting people take a load off while they waited. We shot the shit with them about what they did for work, how their families were doing, if they needed help with anything while we, Phileo's-Finest-In-Training, happened to be in the area. Every now and again we'd mention the Volunteering offer, filling in details as they asked about them. Before the day ended, we had half a dozen people say they'd be stopping by the Academy and would mention our names, along with another two dozen who said they'd think about it. As the day wound to a close, Saffron balanced all the chairs and I hefted the table onto my back, and we hauled it all back to the back door.

Pa Driver opened it a bit after we knocked, and asked, "back again tomorrow?"

Saffron shrugged, "we don't have a schedule set up yet, but fair odds a couple of us will be down every day."

He nodded to the wall outside the door. "Just set them there."

We piled them up, calling, "Thanks again!" as he pulled the door shut. Once we'd hit the midpoint of the bridge on our walk back, I remembered what I hadn't dared say earlier and asked Saffron, "Bill and Angel aren't related, are they?"

She shot me a scandalized look, punched me in the shoulder, and said, "you don't just say that, Goof!" When I shot her a half-annoyed, half-mystified look, she explained as quietly as possible. Fauna are notorious for being the polar opposite of jealous, and as you've seen Mr. Driver's a hell of a lot of man to throw around at your friends. I'm surprised Angel's mom can still walk. But as you so pointedly poked me with, the rhythm method is imperfect. It's just really rude to, y'know, blurt it out like that. Unless one of them brings it up or something. Get it?

"Oh, yeah. I get you. Not unfamiliar with the results, although I'm still weirded as fuck by the perpetrator of the situation."

She shot me a crooked grin. "I know you are, Goof. I just couldn't think of a better way to torment you with it than just telling you outright." So if you had some idea about Just Happening to him, my only request would be letting me watch, because I'm fascinated by the advanced geometry which must be involved.

"That's it!" I mock-hollered, scooping her up to dangle over my shoulder, one arm behind her knees, the other smacking her on the ass as I sprinted us back to the Academy. I timed my smacks to my words as I quiet-barked, "Aetos. Women. Stop. Putting. Things. In. My. Vagina!"

Really?

I mean, shit that doesn't belong.

Some of the more fundamentalist Zeus factions believe only a Man's member ought penetrate a woman's secret place.

"Look, Ben Shapiro motherfuckers aside, I'm down with experimenting with interesting objects, but I gotta put a size cap on that shit. No Jotnar telephone poles, no Minotaur bull cocks, no.. uh... fuck, are there whale people? Wait, no, no giant Kraken arms in my vagina."

She bit me. First, unless you're talking about the guard of the King of Crete's vaults, Minotaur is insulting unless you are one, and even then some of them will take offense. Mr. Driver is one of those. Second, you realize you have now piqued my interest about the exact measurements of that size cap?

I laughed as I dashed toward the Academy steps. "I am so fucked."

Her singsong voice filled my head with visions of terrifyingly awesome and painfully exhausting nookie. Not yet.

Isnomi insisted on no crib, but she also insisted on showing us her mastery of the chamber pot, managing to not only get the lid off by rolling it sideways, but hopping up and landing perched right above the middle of the pot before unloading in one big continuous pot-bombing. She waved a hand to me, and I lifted her off, cleaned her up, and told her, "just one more day, and Baby Isnomi gets to be Big Girl Isnomi."

"Dahda!"

"Tada indeed," Saffron said as she scooped her up for her evening feeding. I shut the lights out, and we all snuggled into bed.

So I spent the night chillin' like a villain' again. Tonight something drew my attention to the East, where out beyond the distant far shore of the lake, maybe a little to the North, a single light lanced up from the ground, almost like one of those big spotlights car dealerships use to get attention. It never stayed lit long, but every now and again it would pulse to life, a flickering strobe that went away after maybe five seconds, tops. Weird thing? I swear it was calling to me. Maybe my Blend trying to translate Morse Code or some shit?

So Marie woke all three of us, eventually carting Isnomi off for a day of Marie things and Cart surfing. Saffron and I snagged the other ROTCs at breakfast and explained our plan to them. All of them jumped on board, and by the end of breakfast we even had a rotation in place. Saffron led me down to Headmaster Miles' office and went over how the Senior Cadets tested new Volunteers. As none of us were Senior Cadets, we couldn't sign off on the testing or the enlistment forms, but Saffron explained that between the five of us, we could usually keep someone there who could do the tests, which meant less wasted time for Senior Cadets and potential Volunteers alike.

After that Saffron dragged me back to our room. Fantasies of intimate mayhem crashed and burned when we opened the door to find Lyman seated at the desk, idly flipping through Law and Custom. He looked up at us, stood, smiled, and said, "I take it my services as escort to and from class will not be needed today?"

Saffron stopped, folded her arms, then raised one hand to tap at her teeth with her index fingernail. "With all due respect and adoration to your Divine person, would you be available this afternoon for some intimate activities?"

I leapt into action, jumping behind Lyman and pushing him toward the door. "Nope, nope, nope. Said it before. Rule in place. No telephone poles in my hoo hah. Nope."

Saffron's giggles wove through her words, "but he's a shapeshifter. He can be any size I, I mean you, I mean we specify."

Loki's laughter shook his shoulders as he dug in his heels just enough to slow my progress, not to stop it. That's when the meaning of her nefarious plan hit me. I mock-howled, amused that Loki's doorward progress never slowed, even when I laughed too hard to shove him. "Dammit, woman! No stress testing my vajayjay!" I shoved a laughing Lyman out the door and slammed it behind him. Sorry Boss, she's in a Mood.

Oh, Tabitha Diaz, I shall take great delight in telling Sigyn this tale.

I'mma be pissed if you don't include my vehement opposition to her nefarious plan!

Who, me? Lie?

Nothing coherent came out of my brain or mouth for a bit after that. I discovered that my hair had pull defying qualities but that shit still ached a little bit when I yanked at it in frustration. When I turned to Saffron, she perched naked on the edge of the bed, arms folded, pouting. She looked so much like our daughter my almost-mock-frustration melted into humor at her adorkability. Still, my soul, and more importantly my lady muffin, cried out for vengeance. "Saffron Aetos, I swear, if you pout so hard you shit the bed you're cleaning it up, not me or Marie."

She tried heroically, but eventually her pout cracked as she snorted, giggled, and then gave herself over to laughing until she toppled over. While she hooted like a baby baboon, I put away our uniforms, because we'd hardly used them, and dug out our writing supplies. Today's Sesame Street was brought to me by the letters P and V, and the numbers Six and Nine. I learned all the words typically used by Volunteer contracts in Phileo City, including the fact that the reason duBois trained us in classes of sixteen? Because standard Phileo Volunteer units had Fifteen soldiers plus one Hero, preferably with at least one Sergeant and four Veterans.

We worked through lunch again, although Marie at least came by to remind us to eat by delivering a lunch of fried fish filets and fried vegetables. Did not know you could make carrot fries. Not sure if I like them yet or not, but they're definitely not bad, because deep frying makes everything better.

After lunch I managed to finish up a short but, as Saffron told me, legally complete Volunteer contract for a Phileo City Volunteer Soldier.

Saffron spent the rest of the day making several very convincing arguments regarding allowing her unregulated experimentation rights to my lady bits. And, y'know, the surrounding area, for a value of 'surrounding area' of maybe three feet in any given direction. Very convincing arguments. Some of them actually included words. At least one complete sentence, even. But I remained strong in my convictions. No siege weaponry as marital aids.

Vulcan?

Oh, god. I am so thoroughly fucked.

Thoroughly? Not yet.