Dear Diary,

"Don't believe in yourself. Believe in me. Believe in the Kamina who believes in you."

Kamina, Gurren Lagann

Holy shit, I never really understood that quote until today, I don't think. Like, when I originally saw it, I laughed and thought it was just batshit insanity. One of my teachers put a poster with that shit up on it, and I laughed. Hell, when somebody would say they couldn't understand something, that it was too hard, she'd just point at the poster and say, "don't make me tap the sign."

So weird that I'd find a copy of that same fuckin' poster folded into one of the comics in my book stash.

Anyway, yesterday after a lunch made satisfying by sudden Maid chromatic changes, we went about our days. Marie and I had some fun posing on the mast, which got some good natured cat calls from the crew working on the deck. Those hit different when my inner monologue is asking, 'should I end them, it would be fun?' rather than 'should I run away or just smile and walk away slowly?'. 'Do I need to pull a weapon' doesn't even enter into it. Marie and I are weapons, and if that comes with all kinds of fuckin' existential angst, it also comes with a lack of fucks to give about potential rapists. I guess dealing with Ericson the way I did gave me one less hang up about that.

Along with being what my Gramma used to call a 'tall drink of water', Marie is, like, weirdly flexible. Not just 'super flexible', either, because while in some ways she is, in other weird ways she's not. She has a bunch of trouble getting her legs entirely straight. I helped her do it at one point, and by the look on her face it must have hurt. She is, however, almost as stubborn as your girl Tabitha, and managed to get fully on point with one leg, doing a vertical split along the mast. Really fuckin' weird to find out that I can pull that shit off without Marie's help. DuBois flexibility training for the win, I guess?

I still needed her help to hook my knee behind my head, which wasn't really embarrassing. Getting it unhooked was, especially when she Co-Located Saffron down to see me before she did so. I mean, neither of them laughed, but Saffron didn't have to with how hard she was obviously working to avoid laughing.

End of the night we headed back to the Imperator's Suite and bedded down for the night. I'm definitely getting used to being buried under the posse and the horde hoard while we sleep. Of course, at some point I need to learn the names of the five who Marie adopted. I mean, I ought to learn more than just those five, with them staying over every fuckin' night, but with those five eventually they're gonna wind up calling me 'Mama', and at that point calling them, 'kid' because I don't know their name would be fuckin' awkward as hell.

Mimic had returned to the Kraken disco with a passion, and seemed equally passionate about her chibi chef consumption.

Woke up and got my daily dose of warm fuzzy doling out warm fuzzy towelings. Almost asked Marie about which ones were hers, but when I saw how Liam looked at her when she dressed him up in a little Academy Uniform, I realized that she'd either say something like 'All.', which wouldn't be very informative, or she'd point out some particular kids, which would make the others feel some kinda way. I guess I could have asked, 'which kids are orphans', but that sure as fuck would have made the orphans feel some kinda way, and none of them deserved that.

When we settled down to a nice Waffle breakfast in the dining room, I put an arm around my Kitten, snugged her in so I could whisper in her ear, and said, "drop those extra waffles and crepes on my plate right the fuck now." She blinked, but after a few moments two extra waffles and two cream filled crepes appeared on my plate. "Good Girl. Now, open wide." She might have gone a little pouty at my initial demand, but that disappeared by the time I'd fed her not only her own waffles, but at least half of mine as well.

"You really enjoy feeding me like that, don't you?" she asked as she patted her lips with a napkin. Mostly useless gesture; I'd been really careful, because I remembered there was a whole assed Famine going on, and it wasn't my Kitten's birthday.

I nodded. "Yeah. I think it reminds me a little of breast feeding Menace." When the others at the table gave me weird looks at that, I rolled my eyes, said, "Loki powers activate!" Mimicked Saffron, then went back to being myself.

It brings me no end of joy to see you make those around you deceive themselves with so little effort, Daughter.

I learned from the best.

I know.

Saffron looked up at me, a teasing smile on her face. "Oh, so I'm your child now? That would rather make some other activities less appropriate, would it not?"

I bent over until our noses almost touched and growled out, "like you'd let that stop you." Blushing Saffron is almost as adorable as blushing Marie. I mean, okay, Saffron is just adorable in general, but the adorability increase in Marie is greater, since she starts out way more 'hot' than 'adorable', where Saffron's baseline 'adorability' is almost coequal with her 'hot'. Let's face it though, they're both pegging the meter when they blush.

Lucky fuckin' meter.

I can't believe I just thought that with my own brain. Maybe I need to talk with Saffron about seeing what she'd look like in boy mode or something.

At any rate, once I'd managed to get my own raging lady boner under control, I laughed a little and said, "no, seriously, it's more about taking care of somebody I care about more than... shit, is this what you meant by 'nurture according to my nature'?"

She smiled and reached up to lay a hand against my face, "I suppose it is, love." Then she leaned into me and kissed me, prompting a round of quiet squee noises from Bonnie and Lachlan, as well as some less than quiet retching from Raven.

Screw it, two to one, Raven got outvoted, and I took my time responding in kind.

When we came up for air, I was gonna ask Bonnie why she still got all gooey when she had her own epic mount, but she'd preempted the question by pulling Larry in for some liplock of their own. Of course, right around then I realized that the bits of waffle I'd saved for myself had been stolen away by a certain Menace, who sat there snickering. "Siwwy Mama."

I rolled my eyes and laughed. I'm not sure if I really needed food as such any more, so I ate mostly for the taste, and I'd definitely gotten plenty of that from sampling Saffron, so I wasn't any kind of pissed with our advanced crotch goblin. I mean, I still snagged her up and raspberried her belly until she squealed, but that's just what you do, right?

Once we finished breakfast, just before I stepped Marie and I down to the Black Dragon to begin our day of overwatch, Saffron grabbed my hand and the Menace and Co-Located us all to the Advanced Healing Studies classroom, the three of us in our Academy Uniforms. I blinked and looked up at the Docs and Sister Siobhan, then back down at Saffron. I leaned down to her ear and whispered, "Dafuq?"

Keeping her voice low as she released Menace with a little butt-shove to propel her toward Doc Z, she whispered back, "what's wrong, Goof?"

"Uh... didn't we do this just yesterday?" I pulled back just a little and frowned. "Didn't I tell you no time shenanigans without checking with me first?"

She chuckled, low and throaty, and pulled me back down. "No shenanigans, love. With all the professors capable of teaching Smite currently in this room, the class has become surprisingly popular, so a Saturnday section was added this Season."

"Nobody said nothin' yesterday when we showed though?"

Another chuckle, and with her pressed close to whisper, this one vibrated through me in very distracting ways. Probably on purpose, because my Kitten be like that. I stepped the pair of Marie and I still in Lancaster down to the Black Dragon's mast, then focused back on Saffron as she said, "love, you are the Champion of the Alliance. If you choose to show up to a class, any class, and soon I'll bet at any Academy, I doubt any professor will do more than ask you not to encourage the disruptive elements too much."

I sighed, frowned, and pulled her to me as we sat. "Dammit. I don't want to bully people like that," I muttered.

The next moment the two of us sat on the end of the bed in the Love Shack. She flipped around and straddled me, putting her arms around my neck, commanding every ounce of my attention. "You are not bullying people, Goof."

"Pfft. I'm walking in wherever I like and nobody can say anything about it? How the fuck is that not bullying people? How is that not me being Queen of Shit Pyramid?"

She laughed, and I tensed. "Goof. Love. Lover. Wife. Tabitha. You... you still don't get it, do you?"

Frowning, because I've got thick skin, but she's more or less permanently under it, and nobody likes being laughed at, I muttered, "yeah. I'm just a big idiot who doesn't get anything."

She sighed and leaned forward until our foreheads touched. "Do you remember the mural, love?"

I blushed a little at that. "Yeah?" Then I thought about my old Philly and snarked, "lemme guess, it's been vandalized?"

She definitely looked like she felt some kinda way about even the suggestion it had been. "No. Not only no, but I suspect 'hell no', and 'no one is that stupid, not even suicidal people'. My Goddess, were you not Mimic Reborn? By this point I suspect you would still be a Goddess in truth, not just in the minds of your people."

"My people?"

She nodded. "Do you know what you did yesterday with Olga?"

"Oh, shit. You saw that?"

She chuckled against me again. "My beloved Mimic Reborn threatening to Just Happen in an explosively fatal manner to someone? I wouldn't miss that for the world, and I say that having been handed large portions of the world already."

I sighed. I'd hoped she hadn't seen that; I still wasn't entirely copacetic about it. "Marie tell you?"

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"I heard Conrad's Workshop moving."

"Yeah. Well. I'm not real proud of threatening to rape someone to death, Kitten."

She pulled me to her, quietly saying, "is that what you think you did?"

"Pretty sure I was right there doing it. Fuck! I do not want to be Shit Queen of Shit Pyramid."

She shook her head, her hair brushing around my face. "Love, you weren't paying much attention to her, were you?"

"Kinda staring at her when I did it. Can we drop this?"

She gripped the hair on the back of my head, pulled me back, and said, "No. No, I don't think so. Definitely not if you're that twisted around about how you're thinking about yourself."

"Okay, genius, tell me what I did, then, if I didn't threaten to kill her?"

Saffron sighed. "Oh, you did that. Everyone saw you. You threatened to kill her, and if in that moment you'd have asked her for her permission to do so exactly as you'd said? She would have granted it willingly. Eagerly."

I shook my head. "Dafuq? Am I in a world exclusively populated by crazy people or some shit?"

"I mean, you live here, so..." She giggled, then shook her head, "I'm sorry, love. I'm so sorry. You're upset, I shouldn't tease you, but with you indulging me so much lately I could not help myself. That fruit hung too low and looked far too sweet for me to resist."

I folded my arms behind her back, because I couldn't fit them between us, and pouted. Mostly because I couldn't really fold them well with my arms behind her back, even with our tits kinda stacked atop one another instead of mashed together. "It's fine."

She sighed. "No. No, it's really not. But I apologize. Sincerely." She waited a moment, then hugged me, shrugged, and continued. Her shrug did interesting things in the region of her chest and my mouth, which shut down my instinctive need to argue with her for the moment. "Love, you are frightening, and you do intimidate those who would stand against you."

"Yeah, I fuckin' scare..."

"Do shut up?" My jaw dropped, and I looked up at her. "Sorry, but..." She kissed me. Once she'd cleaned my tonsils to her satisfaction, she sat back up and said, "again, sorry about the interruption, but like I said, you've been indulging me. I'd say 'too much', but then you might stop."

"Should I?"

She bit her lip, and I waited until she blurted out, "Probably please don't?" all as one word. Then she sighed and continued. "Love, you scare those who stand against you, but you've now been seen by almost every person in the Alliance. Those who might have missed you previously saw you at my birthday celebrations." She stopped and chuckled ruefully. "I'd been trying to think of a way to celebrate you, since unless I miss my guess, it's been almost a year since you arrived here, but..."

"Oh, yeah. Like, one year exactly. Your birthday was my three hundred and sixty fifth day here and now."

She froze. "Tabitha?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you going to stop indulging me?"

I shrugged. "Meh. I'll probably find something to tell you 'no' about out of spite, because I'm still cranky about you laughing at me, but in general? I like indulging you almost as much as you like it when I do. Maybe mo..."

She hit me like a goddamned avalanche, and there was no talking for a while.

We lay there after with me playing with the various bits and bobs of Glowing Midnight's lingerie, which Saffron had bopped onto me at some point in the midst of our revelry. "Okay, I am confusion."

She slid one finger along my jaw, collecting sweat, then sucked it off her finger. "This is different from normal how?"

"De-confuse me, please?"

She pondered a moment. "I can't tell if I want you to command me or not."

"Please do it without?"

She smiled at me, like the sun coming out from behind clouds. "Of course, love. What's confusing you?"

"Uh, let's go in reverse order. Not complaining, but what turned your horny meter to eleven?"

She giggled. "Oh, no, I'm pretty sure that was fifteen." At my even more confused look, she whispered, suddenly uncertain. "Do you mind being my present?"

I rolled my eyes, "you mean two years running?"

"Oh. Uh... do you?"

I pulled her down and kissed her until she melted against me. "I loved every moment of it."

"Liar. You were terrified in that box."

I smiled at her. "Yeah. Also low key kinda thrilled hoping you'd react the way you did."

"Did I? React the way you hoped?"

"Nah. Your reaction was better than anything I'd dreamed of." I stretched, enjoying how the kinks popped as I did, enjoying the look on her face even more. "Now. Olga. Explain."

She caught on to the fact that Happy Brain Chemicals or not, I wasn't joking, nor copacetic about how I'd threatened Olga. She nodded, then twisted around to sit tailor fashion beside me. "You intimidate your enemies, please don't interrupt, but the vast bulk of the Alliance does not see you as an enemy. As far from it as possible, really. You are their protector. Their Champion. Their own personal Demigoddess of Victory." She paused, giggling a little. I smiled myself at the joke that I was, as the Avatar of a Goddess of Trickery, somehow passing myself off as an entirely different kind of Goddess.

"Yeah, that's pretty funny. But go on."

She nodded, sighed, and squared her shoulders. "The world you came from has, in some ways, in some places, moved past this, but... you remember Hilde's response to you?" I frowned. "Love, listen before you stop listening." That put a tiny smile on my lips, just like she'd intended. "Good. Please, stop thinking of it as 'the powerful taking from the weak'. Or rather, understand that it's more than that. For many in the world, the only thing they have that the wealthy and powerful do not is themselves. The most precious gift they can give? Is the thing you value so, so much. So much that you have, in fact, stolen Dionysus' favorite Maenad from him in part from your obdurate need for it."

"Consent?"

She nodded. "Consent. Enthusiastic, Joyous, eager, passionate Consent. I... I cannot feel the way you do about it when it comes to someone like Hilde." When I frowned up at her, she hurried to explain. "Intellectually I do; she is powerless, so much so that her Consent is irrelevant, which means you won't accept it even if she throws it at you the way she has. But here," she placed a hand on her belly, "I do not feel the lack of response you do."

I sighed, "I get the same response you do a little lower, but my gut? Gets a little bit vomity at the thought of..."

She nodded. "I understand. I do. I don't feel that revulsion, but I understand it. I can even agree with it, in concept. Which is why I asked you to hide her from me, so that I might husband my self-control, saving it for not throttling Ophelia Orange."

I frowned. "She getting on your nerves again?"

She sighed. "Not in any actionable way. She's committed no crimes, nor has she meaningfully contributed to the privation or harm of any of your people. But oh, My Goddess, does she piss me off. On the regular, as you would say."

I shrugged. "I could murder her to death a little bit for you. Wouldn't be the worst thing I've ever... OW!" That last came out in response to her slapping me on the tit, hard.

"Do. Not. You have done nothing wrong. Even in your threat to Olga yesterday."

I shook my head. "Yeah, explain that one to me?"

She nodded. "You understand, at least intellectually, that like anyone else in the Alliance, she would consent eagerly should you ask?"

"I'm not that hot, Kitten?"

"Agree to disagree."

I laughed. "Okay, but like, plenty of them are gay men. Hell, even more of the women are straight."

"So's spaghetti until it gets wet."

That one always got me. I spluttered out some half words through my laughter until I managed to say, "Okay, maybe some of them are a little closeted, but it's not any better to say somebody's homo when they're hetero than it is the other way around."

"Oh. No." Suddenly total boy mode Saffron sat in front of me. Looking strong as fuck, but still pretty. Still short. Yep, I needed to get me some cock before I Just Happened to some random dude on the street. Or, worse, somebody like fuckin' Larry. Oh, shit, no, no, no, I did not want thoughts of Larry fuckin' Lancaster in any way associated with fuckin'.

Fuck. Too late.

Saffron reached out and took me by the chin. "Oh. No. Champion, please, I am only attracted to men, take me as one?"

Doing that thing she'd done before, she reached out and shapeshifted me, and I blinked at a sudden shift in weight from upper torso to lower down. "Uh... I'm really not sure about doing... uh.. what's the term? Patroc things at the moment?"

The Grin looked fuckin' hot as shit on boy Saffron. "Are you telling me you don't know how to handle a dick?"

"Uh... more like I don't know how to use one?"

She laughed, and a moment later we both had our normal plumbing and accoutrements. I grabbed mine, then hers, then sighed. "Oh, good. I'd miss those if they were gone for good."

"You realize if you really do intend to sire children on me you'll need to correct that deficiency? About not knowing how to use one? Or..." she frowned. "Are you not willing to do that? I'm sure we could figure something else out if so."

I shook my head. "Nah. Not that. Just not... not right now? Not while we've got that convo hanging over us?"

"Oh. OH! Well, there it is then. Olga would say yes if you asked."

"I didn't ask her if I could fuck her. I threatened to fuck her to death. Not the same, Kitten."

"Not exactly correct either."

"HOW?" I definitely did not grok her in that moment, and it bugged the shit out of me that she agreed with Her Dark Fatassness on the matter of explodey tentacle sex. "Explain. Small words."

She sighed, closed her eyes, then opened them and lay a finger across my lips. "You Hero. You Queen. You say, 'if you hurt mine, you die to make me come'. She say, 'you Queen. Your word law. Me yours, all ways, kill me that way if I do bad thing." She paused, then shrugged. "She say, 'you Queen, you Hero, take life if want, I glad to die for you."

I lay there, torn between laughing, crying, and yelling at her. Eventually I sighed, then chuckled. "You are a complete smart ass."

"Takes one to know one. Besides, all of me is smart, of course my ass is."

I pulled her over by said ass and lay my head in her lap. "I... I don't get it. But!" I interrupted her interruption. "Just like you with Hilde? I'll go with what you say. I... I don't feel it. I can't see how so many people would feel that way about... about..." I waved at my absolute territory; even there scars made a fuckin' roadmap out of my skin. "this."

Brushing my hair back from my face, Saffron said, "I look at you and I see the most beautiful woman in the world. Maybe I still see you the way you were before the scars. Maybe the scars are just part of you, and it's you that are beautiful to me, regardless of your present shell. But most of them? They don't see," she waved her hand across me, then dragged it back along my skin. "This. They don't really see you, and while I understand that might be important to you, it's equally important that you understand what they do see."

"What's that then?"

"Safety. Prosperity. Care. You threatened to end your strongest ally should she knowingly harm even one of them. You are the Alliance's Champion, love. Their Champion. Their protector. Their Hero. They do not see your beauty, they see your strength, your power, and most of all? Your love. And for that last? Almost any of them would gladly give themselves to you as a reward."

I frowned, actively searching at this point for something to be grumpy about, because I still had kind of a mad on. "Yeah, some of them are married and shit."

Suddenly I was bracketed by Saffrons, who chorused, "oh, Hero, we love you, but please, we are joined as spouses, do not separate us, but take us both as a set."

What the fuck else was I supposed to do except comply at that point?

As we lay there after, that little bit of irked trickled back into my brain, and I said, "still mad. Penance. Ready?"

She smiled at me. "Command me, My Goddess."

"Tonight after dark you're coming down and putting up that little privacy bubble around the mast."

Her eyes danced with mischief. "As My Goddess wishes."

"And then?" She looked up, waiting. "You go home and give Marie and I some privacy. No watching for naughty Kittens who laugh at me."

She looked so crestfallen I almost relented right then and there, but whispered, "as My Goddess wishes."

I couldn't leave her sad, though. I just couldn't. I rolled over her and braced myself above her. "You feelin' eggy?" When she frowned in confusion, I said, "are your fields fertile, ready to be plowed?" When she paused, I switched back to the boy mode she'd put me in earlier and whispered down. "I won't figure this thing out unless I practice a little, right?"

She got super ultra pouty at that point. I had no idea why until she said, "we are not in any way ready for me to be pregnant at the moment, and my 'fields' are far too fertile right now to risk what you're suggesting." Then she reminded me that she was, in fact, way stronger than she looked when she flipped me over on my back. "On the other hand, as a wise woman once told me, you can't get pregnant by swallowing."

Yeah. Definitely an experience I hadn't had before. Still not sure how I felt about it. Okay, really not sure how I felt about both of us lying there purring afterward, especially with Doc Glass looking at us in the back of the class like he knew exactly what we'd been up to while we sat in the back of the class and pretended to be bobblehead dolls.

At the end of the day, Saffron showed up atop the mast, popped up our little privacy bowl, and disappeared.

On the one hand, I felt like a complete pushover when thirty seconds later I pulled back from Marie just far enough to breathe, "just a second," then stepped to Saffron's side where she sat listlessly poking at her coding windows.

On the other hand? I could not give a single fuck about anything else other than the look of gleeful, mouth full of sugar joy on her face when I said, "you can watch."