Dear Diary,

"I can't let things be this way. We can be wonderful. We can be magnificent. We can turn this shit around."

- Tank Girl

Kinda why I half suspect my found library was somebody's personal stash, or maybe a lost and found. Bunch of comic books in there along with everything else. Read that one while paging through wondering if any of them would maybe get Menace into something other than running around like a crazed weasel twenty four by seven. Hit me kinda hard, because honestly? That's, like, the fuckin' Vision Statement of Suite Aetos-Diaz in a nutshell.

So last night I left Marie with Loki.

Please don't forget to come get her.

I'll be around as soon as Saffron's awake, Boss.

At any rate, got home only to have Saffron look at me with barely contained panic and say, "where is she?"

For once my brain kicked in and I managed to say the important part first. "She's with dad, she'll be fine, she got in a big fracas with some Undead and needed a realignment. Hell, probably needed a complete overhaul. Her shit felt kinda wrecked. She got so upset she tried to get me to sparagmos her."

From the moment I said 'she'll be fine', the tension started leaking out of her shoulders. By the time I said 'sparagmos her', she let out a semi-hysterical chuckle and said, "I don't think that's a verb, love."

"She'll be fine, Kitten. She's tough, dad's got her, he'll put her back right as rain, you'll see."

"I really hope so. Of course, now we've got another problem." I looked at her, wondering what her new issue was. "Where's Isnomi?"

"Oh, SHIT!"

Thirty seconds later, with both of us Co-Locating madly through the Academy, we found her sitting at the ROTC table, snuggled into Angel's arms. When we showed up, she leapt at me, clutching to me and blubbering. Angel snapped, "What the hell happened, Diaz?"

I shook my head. "Did you notice when Marie went missing?"

"Little busy with a sudden armload of your crying kid."

At that point Raven spoke up. "Some of the Maids disappeared right before she did."

I nodded. "Yeah. That was Marie. She got wounded down in Calverton."

That prompted a round of Cadets making worried noises, none of which I heard through Menace's wailing. "MAWA!"

I stroked her hair, "She's gonna be fine, Menace. She's tough, and she just needed some TLC."

"MAWA!" No consolation there. I shrugged, then put an arm around Saffron. "Thanks for watching her, guys. I'll give you an update as soon as I can." Then I turned to Isnomi. "Isnomi Aetos-Diaz, would Marie want you losing your shit like this?"

She growled up at me and barked out, "MAWA! NAOH!"

I growled right back and said, "I will take you to see her the moment you promise that you won't interrupt her healing."

She frowned up at me, then said, "Mawa."

"I need you to promise. You'll see where she is, who's taking care of her, if we get permission you can even stay there overnight. But no touching, no talking to her, no disturbing the healing. You look with your eyes, hands to yourself, mouth shut. Got it?"

"Mawa."

"Got? It?"

She pouted. "Yeth."

"Do you promise to stay in my arms until I tell you otherwise?"

She got even poutier. "Yeth."

Saffron put her arms around both of us. "Don't worry, my girl. I'm worried sick too, but Mama wouldn't let Marie stay in danger."

With a quick, "thanks again, guys," I stepped us to Loki's cave, my hands tight around Isnomi. Good thing, too, since she lunged toward the table the moment we got there. She didn't talk, though. I quietly turned to Sigyn and said, "how is she?"

Loki smiled and said, "cranky, and she's already asked me to rend her limb from limb twice, but coming along nicely."

Isnomi pulled my face around to look at her, eyes huge. I said, "is it okay if we talk to her?"

"At the moment that's fine."

Marie turned her head towards us, her expression cranky until she saw Isnomi. "Scamp."

"Go ahead, Menace. Just keep it quiet."

"Mawa!"

I hefted her up, then scooted Saffron around next to me. "She got a little upset when you disappeared. Totally my fault, Menace. I needed to get all of her back here so Grampa Loki could take care of her."

Isnomi turned to me, folded her arms, and said, "needa be cawefuw."

I nuzzled her. "Yeah, I know. I'm sorry, kiddo. I was worried about her and didn't think." I turned to Sigyn. "Do you guys mind if maybe we camp out here tonight?"

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Of course not. I'll go get some pillows?"

"Thanks. That'd be great."

A few moments, a few minutes, an hour later we'd all settled into a nest of pillows. Not just the three of us, but Sigyn and Mister Slither as well. After an endless stream of muttered complaints to Mister Slither about her Mama being careless with her Mawa, Isnomi finally slipped off to sleep. When her snores susurrated through the cave, before any of us could say anything, Marie growled out, "Finally."

That started a round of quiet laughter, which eventually devolved into equally quiet snores from Saffron. Sigyn looked at me and said, "did you want to as well?"

I shrugged. "I can deal with a night without, and I told Marie I'd watch over her."

From his table, where Marie had been making semi-pained grunts for a few minutes, Loki said, "you take your word seriously."

"I try."

"Good. I'm not certain how much it will affect you, but when one of us fails to keep our word, it weakens us."

"Really?"

Sigyn nodded, and Marie said, "Yes."

I shifted Saffron to a position where she might not be quite so knotted up when she woke, then whispered, "not really a problem. I'm not sure I could sleep without Marie watching over us."

That got a purr from Loki's table, and I settled in, eyes open, to watch over my wife, my daughter, my beloved Maenad, for as long as it took.

Time flows oddly in Loki's cave. It took an hour, a few minutes, a season, a moment, an eternity before he turned to me, his hair soaked with sweat, and rolled Marie over so she lay on her back. "There you go. Not perfect, but so long as she takes a little time to heal, she should be on the path to recovery."

I sighed. "She'll have a day before we need to go back in. Maybe two if I solo things for a bit."

He ran his fingers through his sweat soaked, hair, a flurry of snow spreading over his bed. "Fuck. I hate the Undead."

I chuckled a little. "What with them being our kryptonite, I guess you would."

His crooked smile softened his next words, let me know the concern that lay behind them. "Do try not to melee with them if you can possibly avoid it."

"Not really much of an Archer." He just raised an eyebrow. "Oh. Shit. Yeah, I'm dumb, okay?"

Saffron stirred at our laughter. "Wha time 'zit?"

Loki tilted his head, then said, "perhaps a few hours before dawn in Phileo."

"You want we should head home and let you two get some rest?"

Loki opened his mouth as if to agree, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Sigyn gesture to him. "Could you perhaps instead move your little nest over a little closer?"

Which is how I wound up spending the rest of the night sitting with my back against Loki's slab, Marie and Saffron both using my lap as a pillow, Mister Slither providing a makeshift bed for the Menace. I also discovered that Loki doesn't snore, but the sheer volume coming out of his lungs kept the top of my head cool enough to keep me awake all night. Not sure if Sigyn snores normally, but she'd snuggled up with her face so nuzzled into him that her lips made little raspberry noises all night long.

After maybe an hour like that I Co-Located to the mast of the Black Dragon and watched for sunrise. I let the others sleep, picked up my binoculars, and started scanning for red flags.

Once the sun had fully crested the horizon, I Co-Located to the Inter-City Council. Everyone looked up when I arrived, and I said, "the Imperator is attending to religious matters today. Please don't do anything that would make her sic me on you," collapsed back into myself, then Co-Located a uniformed copy of me to the Advanced Mana Shaping classroom and said, "Archmage Aetos-Diaz can't make it today. Religious retreat." Nobody questioned me. Dunno if they figured that was explanation enough, or if I looked too annoyed to bother, or they just figured I wouldn't know the answer. Having a reputation as a dumbass can be as handy as having a reputation as a badass sometimes.

The fucking Undead prompted four different red flags through the day. Two of them were spaced out enough I could let Olga deal with them. Just fighter types who, when she skewered them, slammed them into the ground, and stomped on them, went splat not unlike the Undead Dragon who'd wound up a thin slimy layer under the Black Dragon's hull. The other two happened in sequence. First our lead element of Undead hunter-killers got tied down by a big swarm with a bunch of archer types pelting them while the horde kept them from getting to cover. Olga and her Jotnar moved in and introduced the Archers to the concept of 'counter battery fire'. With rocks. Big ones.

Heh. 'Mine are bigger' is totally gonna be the name of Olga's sex tape.

Sorry, by that point I'd gotten a little punchy, what with keeping vigil in both spots and pouring Mana into Cadet Karen Smith in Advanced Mana Shaping, because of course she didn't finish her project last Season. When the red flag went up over that same fucking alley, I got maybe a little more pissed off than I realized. I pushed my Blend all the way up and stepped across to the roof overlooking the alley. The only Undead who looked up at me was the Mage type in the back. When I walked calmly toward his end of the alley, his gaze did not track me. About a dozen paces from the corner of the roof, I felt the Miasma lapping at my ankles, and his eyeless, glowing gaze snapped up to me. I stepped back and started pulling Mana. I glanced over the edge of the roof to see three dozen Undead Archers aiming where I'd intersected the Miasma, with two big fuckers bodyguarding the Undead Mage obviously in charge of the group.

When it hurt to hold the Mana I held, I Shaped thirty seven Smites, pouring Mana into the central one until the Mage's gaze finally snapped around to it. His mouth opened, glowing with Miasma, but before he could say anything I stepped forward and unleashed my big Smite directly into his Miasma.

He burned. He burned hard. He burned fast. He screamed the entire time. Then he exploded, knocking the two big dudes off their feet. Before they could rise, I Co-Located one of me next to each of the fucking Archers, dropped my Blend to normal and barked out, "woof woof, motherfucker!" before releasing a Smite right in each of their faces.

While they screamed I collapsed into four of me standing over the two big armored fuckers. "Hey, dumb fucks. Wanna know a secret about that Cold Iron armor that protects you from my Smite?" They didn't say anything. I'm not sure they could. I had no fucks to give, really, so I paired up against them and used my swordstaves to pry their fucking heads off. As ichor leaked onto the ground, I powered up another big pair of Smites and, right before releasing them into their exposed necks, said, "it protects me from your Miasma too."

The screaming of the Undead as Smite burned them was a beautiful chorus of apology for their crime of existence.

I stepped back to the top of the barricade at the end of the alley, collapsing my dockside duplicates into a single me standing hipshot in front of the Warrior Karl standing there. I recognized him. I half turned, twisting at the waist to look out over the dozens of Thralls standing ready to defend the wall. "Hey, this guy called the flag?" They all nodded, called out 'yes', or otherwise indicated that he had, in fact, called me in. I turned back to him and swayed my way over to him.

Took longer than it ought to have, because for some reason he backed all the way up to the wall as I approached. Standing there in the glow of the Mana I'd channeled into one hand, I slipped my swordstaff over my shoulder, leaned my whole front up against him, laying one finger across his lips, and stage whispered, "that's gotta be more than twenty-five, and you followed orders, which means you were useful." I slid my Mana glowing hand down his front until it rested on his smooth crotch. Then in one abrupt motion I clawed my fingers through his codpiece and ripped most of his crotch away, then hit it with a Heal Injury big enough to turn foie gras back into a living breathing incarnation of Canada's hatred. As he stood there gasping, I confirmed the Heal had done its work by making sure his heart and mind would follow, then leaned in and growled, "Good Boy."

Then I collapsed back to my perch on Black Dragon's mast.

I think I'm getting the hang of this being in charge thing.