Dear Diary,

Gotta remember that just because people disagree with me, it doesn't mean they're not on my side.

Seriously, I'm only just now realizing how much my inner Mimic pushes me to just steamroll anybody who disagrees with me. Metaphorically or literally, she doesn't fuckin' care which. The problem, there, of course, is that as I've tried to make quite clear, I am in fact the dumbest of asses. Seriously, I have no real idea how my digestion works, but the only way I can fart is someone or something literally forcing gas up my ass, which means my ass in fact quite literally dumb, in the 'mute' sense of the word. It's like reality's just having another laugh at my expense.

At least in this case it not only doesn't really interfere with my life in any meaningful way, it's kind of handy not having to worry about literally losing my shit, or passing gas at some inopportune moment. Also, it's genuinely funny. Okay, I think it is, and you've got to laugh at yourself, right? That's like, a way to disarm other people who want to laugh at you, because if you're already laughing at yourself, they're not laughing at you, they're laughing with you.

Back to people disagreeing with me, I guess some of it has to do with how often I got slotted into really shitty situations in the past. Back at Eastside, I never really had the Agency to keep people from forcing me into those spots where no matter what I did, I lost. Apparently somebody told people I was smart before I started at Eastside, because 'reads lots of books' equated to 'smart' in their opinion. So I got into advanced classes my first year. Which I bombed, because despite the material being fuckin' easy shit, once I'd learned enough to understand it, I lost all interest, and I barely did assignments that intrigued my oppositional defiant disordered ass. I sure as shit wasn't going to be doing homework on stuff that I'd already gotten bored with. So, like, I'd ace the tests, get decent grades on class discussions, sorta shitty on classwork, and a big old goose egg on everything else. Thing is? I didn't ask for any of those classes. I wanted college prep English, because that meant more reading and less endless vocabulary lists, and everything else I pushed to get into, like, the 'just barely enough get a High School Diploma' level courses. But nobody listened to me, so instead of nailing it in courses where I could cruise through asleep, I wound up crashing and burning hard, then winding up in the shittiest tier of courses outside Special Needs sections.

Of course, once I got to here and now, every 'disagreement' has turned into 'I get the shit kicked out of me, but you ought to see the other guy! Bring a mop, bucket, and microscope!' So, like, not only have I wound up leaving me with enough physical scars I'm pretty sure that my hot new bod is, on balance, significantly less cute than my old doughy one from Eastside, I've got all this mental baggage from, y'know, maiming and killing and torturing and getting the fuck off on all of that like some kind of fucked up anime villain. So, y'know, I come by that whole 'when someone argues with me, it gets my back up' honestly.

But I still gotta get that shit under control, because as noted, I'm a dumbass, and if there's one smart thing I've done its consistently surrounding myself with people who are smarter, more skilled, and prettier than me. Okay, Menace really qualifies more as 'cute', Marie is 'hotness personified', and Saffron is so beautiful it makes my everything ache, but 'pretty' is true for all of them, so I'm gonna stick with that. But that means that I really need to get in the fuckin' habit of, when they say something I don't like, saying, 'why?' instead of 'die, motherfucker, die!'

So that happened today, in what might have been the worst possible way, had Imperator Kitten Sexypaws, First of Her Name, not been the ultimate sexy badass she is.

After dark yesterday Saffron and I lay down on the deck of the supply ship our Trolls had bivouacked on, me leaning against some bundled supplies, her lying atop me. I still wore The Dress, although somehow she'd managed to straight up deny the stinky Bay water any purchase on her, which meant while I smelled a little of salt and fish, mostly I just had my normal cinnamon sugar me going on. Meanwhile Saffron had Glowing Midnight on, the first thing she'd worn in my presence for a couple days now, what with her persistent efforts to distract me from whatever I was trying to do.

As we lay there watching the stars wheel overhead, I felt the motion. The motion of me shifting slightly so she wouldn't lose her balance breathing or anything. The motion of the boat rocking gently beneath us. The motion of the tectonic plate as it floated on the sea of magma beneath it. The motion of the planet spinning beneath me, hurtling through space, both around the sun and as the sun raced around the galactic plane. This, as you might imagine, fucked with my head just a little bit.

I shuddered, and Saffron twisted herself around, bringing her lips to mine. A while later when she pulled away, I realized I wasn't the only one reeking of sugary sweet cinnamon. I chuckled. "What, is that another Boon you can give now? Basic Bitch BO?"

She smirked at me, and I realized where our offspring got their best smug looks from. "Three." I blinked, and she ran a thumb across her lips, and I might have felt some kind of way about her wiping my kisses off before she stuck her thumb in her mouth and sucked it clean. "Two."

"Am I in danger?" I half joked. She'd tell me if I'd fucked up bad enough she was really gonna hurt me, if only so I knew what not to do next time. I mean, really, the only time she'd ever lashed out physically was when I'd told her I'd hidden being Mimic from her, and in my own opinion that was fully justified. She'd literally kissed it completely better afterward, too, so I wasn't gonna complain, but sphincters clenched when her smile got wider.

She flared her nostrils and inhaled, her smile growing even further. "One." I made a conscious decision to relax everything, and if she slipped a little as I slouched, she didn't complain. On the other hand, the her in the Love Shack took that moment to moan out, "Marie?" at which point Marie got real pointed with her own enjoyment of Saffron's new favorite cake. Then the her lying atop me on the ship booped my nose and said, "your Concubine's breath smells of you too, Goof." Then she lost her shit laughing, barely able to force out the words, "and we have comprehension!"

I might have gotten a little grumpy at that, if I'd been slightly dumber or more of an ass, but fortunately for everyone my sense of humor is lower than Saffron's even at her lowest. "Oh, no. Olfactory narcissism! I have sunk to even greater depths of depravity!" She just giggled more, and I said, "Okay, High Priestess. It's time to get you home to bed."

She wrapped her arms around me, burrowing into my chest, her giggles never ceasing. As you wish, My Goddess. We will sleep well tonight.

"Sorry, Kitten, but I've got to stay here."

She pushed herself up, rolling to her feet, giggles banished, Imperator in full effect. "You most certainly do not. Centurion!" Furtim, who'd been curled up and snoozing, leapt to their feet, slamming their sword staff blade into the deck. "Are your troops ready to take over night patrols for the Legate?" One slam, and a hiss that brought the rest of the recovered Trolls scrambling to their feet.

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"Hey! They need rest too!"

"All but Furtim have been resting since you recovered them, and the Centurion can go without sleep for one night; if need be they can rest tomorrow below decks. If that's not dark enough we can bring them to our suite and draw the blackout curtains. But you, my love, need sleep."

Seriously, I don't.

Seriously, you do.

I leapt to my feet, growling a little as I did. "I can keep doing this as long as I have to!"

"Champion!" She glared at me, her gaze boring into me, through me, captivating me. "HEEL!"

So much brain override there. On the one hand, I absolutely needed to get this domineering bitch unto a flat surface and do unto her. On the other hand, my sense of humor took over the me in the Love Shack, grabbed the Saffron there by the heels, and brought them up to her cheeks. "You mean these?" She replied to that with appropriate wordlessness, letting Marie forcibly face plant me to shut me up. I approved thoroughly, and expressed that the only way available.

The me aboard ship growled, stepped just behind and to the left of her, close enough her ass bumped my thigh when I put my right arm around her waist. "Woof Woof."

"Centurion, the watch is yours. I will see to it the Legate is prepared to oversee the advance in the morning." As the Trolls slipped near noiselessly off the side of the ship, Saffron stepped us back to our bedroom facing our window, our backs to the bed. She spun to face me, yanked The Dress and her boots off of me with a gesture and thought, then pointed at the bed. "Lie. Down."

I wanted, needed, craved putting her in her place, but right at that moment every me in operation had been grabbed by the gonads and led around to exactly where my Imperator wanted me. Banishing her own dress, she climbed onto the bed, snuggled into me, and whispered into my ear, "Good Girl." The soothing force of those words rushed through me, and before the darkness deep in me could rush back in, she whispered, "remember duBois' lesson, love." I must have made confused Sub noises, because she explained, "just because you can perform some feat of Endurance does not mean you should. I am paying close attention to you, love. Very close. Intimate, in every way that word can possibly mean." She bit her lip and closed her eyes for a moment, stiffening up, then melting across my side. "You, my love, are very nearly as distracting just by being you as I am when I'm trying my hardest to distract you."

A moment later the three of us in the Love Shack returned to the bedroom, Saffron and I collapsing into ourselves, Marie slipping in between us and the bed so I could pillow my head on her chest. "I love you, Saffron."

"And I you, Tabitha. But if I tell you to stand down, it is because you need to stand down. When I say you need rest, it is because you need rest." I must have made some kind of cranky Attack Dog noises, because she followed that with, "do you trust me?"

"With my Soul."

"Are you sure?"

I stopped and thought about that for a second, then a smile wreathed my face as I realized those dark impulses had, in fact, completely receded. "Yeah."

"How do you know?"

I nuzzled the top of her head and said, "what I did when you called me to heel."

She snorted out a laugh and said, "made an awful joke, turned me on likely more than I'd done to you, then obeyed every instruction I gave you?"

"Yeah," I sighed.

"Good Girl."

I almost fell asleep from complete relaxation right there. "Could ya... mebbe say tha' 'gain?"

"Good Girl," she breathed into my chest, and I drifted off to sleep before I could reply.

Marie filled my night with suspiciously Saffron shaped shrimp, and I made a bigger glutton of myself than any time in recent memory.

I woke to her tongue flickering across my chest, her nose tickling me as she sniffed her way to consciousness. "Hey, Kitten. I think I really do need to get back to work now."

She smiled. "You do." A moment later the three of us lay in the Love Shack, and while Marie flipped me over and used my stomach as a pillow, Saffron hopped off the bed to grab some things hanging from some hooks embedded into the wall. A long thin white jacket and what looked like a clipboard. As she examined them, she turned to me and said, "well? Didn't you say you had to get to work?"

I Co-Located one of me to the fleet, picking up The Dress on the way. Furtim and nine Trolls all stood at less than perfect attention, even if they snapped closer to it when I arrived. One Troll stood with their arms tied behind them around a mast, their body held up by one leg, the other devolving to blackened growths halfway down the thigh. I stepped over and slammed them with an overpowered Smite followed immediately by a Heal. When they stopped hissing and shuddering, I stepped around and slashed their bonds away. They leapt into formation like they'd been scalded, grabbing up their pole arm on the way.

That's when I noticed Hero Potami sitting right about where Saffron and I had lay the night before. She nodded to me. then to five more trolls pinned to the deck by spikes. "Good Morning, Queen Tabitha."

I caught the faintest mocking disapproval in her titanium blade of a voice, and replied, "hey, only until I can hand this shit off to Olga."

She shot me a Tiny Potami Grin of Approval, then nodded to the Trolls. "I wasn't sure I could save them, but they're all deeply... infected?"

"Good term for it. I got this, go get some rest?"

She nodded, then headed below decks. One at a time I hammered each of the captive Trolls with a Smite, a Heal, and a Stabilize. None of them looked fit for duty when I finished, and I might have hit the final one with a Revive when the Stabilize didn't take, but at the end we had five more self-mobile, uninfected Legionnaires. I turned to Furtim. "Okay, Centurion. Good work overnight. Get your Legionnaires under cover and rest up. I think the Imperator wants you on night watch while I spearhead the advance." With one thump on the deck, they helped the others up and headed below decks.

For my part, I turned and took a running leap off the side of the boat, chain Co-Locating a dozen of me down the front of the fleet as I did. I really did feel a shit ton better after a night of sleep, and if I was gonna get more rest every night, I'd use that during the day to make this advance as safe as I possibly could.

Right as I finished Co-Locating and started sweeping through the bay on the hunt for Trolls and anything that looked like the unholy mating of a Dragon and a bottom feeder, Saffron nodded and shrugged into what I just then realized was a pretty good approximation of a lab jacket. Then she hopped up onto the bed and knelt next to my head. I snorted and said, "roleplaying in the bedroom now?"

She sucked her teeth. "I'll have you know I am absolutely the closest thing to a scientist in this world. Well, the closest Mortal, anyhow, and I'm working closely with our Son, who is the only one more qualified than I to Do Science."

"You are the nerdiest nerd ever to nerd. Nerd girl nerding out by cosplaying a nerd, thinking that you can do 'sexy nerd' by limiting your costume to a nerdy lab jacket and nerdish clipboard." I couldn't really do much, what with Marie interlacing her fingers with mine at some point in the past few minutes, and her head still resting on my belly as she purred.

"Hmmm..." Saffron looked at her clipboard, pulled a Mana Pen from her pocket, and made a few notes. "So, given your lack of meaningful mobility, and how deep your nerd fetish runs, are you attempting to self-service by words alone? Oh, and is it working? Has it, in fact, worked yet?"

Holy shit my nerd wife is hotter when she's getting her nerd on than most porn stars are while fucking. I grinned up at her and revealed my hidden reserves of eloquence when I said, "uh... Maybe? Kinda? Not... yet?"

She made the cutest little moue. "Well. 'Maybe' and 'Kinda' won't do, since you're scheduled to have your refractory period tested today. Marie?"

"My what naaaokay then. I distinctly remember something about no stress testing!"

She Grinned down at me and said, "but this is For Science!" I lay there, mouth hanging open as she snickered at me and Marie kinda removed my mental ability to do anything but work on automatic. "Oh, and while we're at it, you're supposed to be practicing holding your breath, just in case you're in an extended underwater conflict." She then removed my ability to breathe in the most pleasant way possible. As I desperately tried to manage a dozen of me scouting the waters in front of the fleet while Saffron and Marie did their dead level best to keep me from anything approaching coherence, Saffron absolutely cheated with words I only understood from the cadence and tone.

"Good Girl."