Dear Diary,

I know that I maybe did some shady shit on my interrupted rampage across Norfolk, but to be clear, my intention was and is to end this as fast as possible with the smallest casualty count possible.

I feel bad about Jarl Karlson's people sitting around more or less leaderless, and I really hope nobody starts shit with them while I'm gone. I feel less bad about Jarl Swanson's folks, because while he's a rapist enabling dick, he seems smart enough to learn better, and he didn't seem really invested in the whole 'rape as reward' thing he had going on, just like it was something expected. Which is absolute shit, but given how many subcultures glorified or ignored rape except to make jokes about it back where I'm from, I could absolutely believe it's what he learned at his momma's knee. Probably while she was bent over a table getting forcibly railed by some asshole, but I'd like to think that maybe he killed that asshole when he got big enough.

Yeah, probably not, but I need these little fictions to keep me from pressing the big red 'make Saffron really sad, briefly' button sometimes.

I dunno. Maybe I'm too soft to do the job right. Maybe I just need to get Conrad to build me a big 'No Rape!' sign that can be automatically read and understood by these illiterate fucks, then tell Marie to monitor the situation, kill anybody who rapes anybody, and hang their bodies from the sign until people get the fucking point. I'd love to just have the Grand Army march in and declare martial law and, y'know, do the same fucking thing, only with more eyes and hands and less Divine Retribution, but I can't do that until I can hand the crown to somebody more pro-Alliance. Shit, maybe Johnson? If Domnu is my bitch, and I'm the Imperator's attack dog, maybe I can convince him Dommy Mommy Likey Alliance? Fuck, I dunno, maybe I'll try that if I can't think of anything less skeevy than dangling my literally asexual birth mother up as bait. Before you ask, 'how do you know she's Ace?', she literally reproduced without sex, her current sex characteristics include big old non-functional nippleless boobs, a butt I subconsciously modeled on Sigyn's, and a pair of face-lips that don't actually have a mouth behind them. She literally has no sex organs to speak of, I'm not sure she even understands what sex is, let alone has desire for it.

Before you ask about me, I'm gonna stop you right there, because I had an orientation and self-image well before I came into the 'I'm a tiny piece of a mass of tentacles that can be seen from space' thing ever happened. Besides that, have you seen any hentai? Anybody who thinks cephalopods in specific or tentacles in general are Ace needs to take a gander at that shit. Be warned, you'll want the brain bleach handy. And some lube. Because that shit tends to polarize people, and it's pretty amusing seeing which way people flip, because that shit is not predictable in the slightest. Seriously. Twelve year old me hearing about it was all 'eww, gross!' Then thirteen year old me got all self destructive after mom passed, looked that shit up on the internet, and... yeah. Friction burns are really fuckin' embarrassing down there, y'know?

So yeah, I am well aware that I am not the woman to be doing the 'running the government' job. My whole schtick is waltzing through, wrecking shit, and declaring myself the winner because nobody else dares tell me 'no', at which point I hand over fixing long standing problems to somebody I think will choose the Path of Divine Virtue over the Path of Imminent Tabitha.

So over the course of the afternoon I sat there watching Saffron code, holding Isnomi while she napped before her first night flight, and soaked up the vita-rays from the half-ring of kowtowing Saffrons around me. At one point I thought, doesn't that get boring or something?

Why would it? The part of me that might get bored is just hoping I'm not broken out of my focus on coding by my ass being lit on fire by your hyper-intent gaze. Those of me around you are as utterly sincere in their worship of you as I am, but...

Butt?

Butt indeed. To explain it in a way you will viscerally understand, I could no more get bored of doing that to you than you could get bored of, how did you put it? Wearing my thighs as earmuffs?

Oh. Yeah, but eventually you'll get, y'know, desensitized and shit, and while I do enjoy the doing, I'm pretty sure I enjoy your reactions more.

Are you telling me you're not reacting to this? "Then how about this?" She spun around in her chair, then poured herself off of it, going to her knees and focusing what I thought of as her 'prime self' entirely on me.

I might have lost the ability to uncross my eyes there for a little bit. Like sitting on one of those chair massagers, enjoying the vibration, when all of a sudden the whole 'undercarriage massage' ramps up to something measurable on the Richter scale. "Point taken." I squeaked.

"Did you want me to continue?"

I absolutely did not, what with trying to be a good napping-post for our daughter. "Yes, please."

Just to be clear, it wasn't entirely a sexual thing. Hell, it wasn't really one at all, except for the fact that Tabitha's Very Special Brain had somehow permanently linked 'pleasure' and 'sex', despite how often I got the former from food, or exercise, or playing with my kid, or just snuggling with the family. I'm not sure exactly how long I sat there drinking from Saffron's worshipful fire hose, but I think I missed it when she stood up and went back to coding. Was in an entirely different kind of 'no thought, more this please' mental zone until sunset.

At which point Conrad stepped out of his Workshop, and Dommy Mommy spun to face him. As she lifted off the floor I said, "STOP!" She paused, turned her face back to me, which just emphasized how not-human she was despite her MILF chassis when none of the rest of her turned.

"He endangers your spawn. Why have you bid me stop?"

"I, uh, really need you to see something right now, before you do anything about that." Which was a complete and utter falsehood from start to finish, but apparently detecting even the purest, stinkiest of bullshit counts as a 'social skill', meaning she took me at my word and turned her full attention back to me. I got sudden images in my head of what she'd done to Anundr, at which point pants pissing terror must have taken control of my memory and decided to remind me of my last words to that baby back bastard. 'When I figure out a way to kill the fuck out of you without doing it myself, I'm gonna fap thinking about how hard I made you die.'

I am nothing if not a woman of my word, and back in Camden on more than one occasion responded to someone posting a humorous, 'I can't fap to that' meme with 'challenge accepted'.

That bought me a few minutes, at least. What? You think I practiced something that much and didn't get good at it?

At any rate, when I finished, she just stared at me for a second before saying, "Interesting. Self Worship." She paused, almost like she needed time to taste test the concept, before declaring, "Unacceptable."

I blinked. "What part?" She just stared. "Like, the sexual part, or the self-service part."

"The latter." Amazing how she could somehow add, 'of course, you dumbass' to a sentence without a single syllable. "Explain 'sexual'."

"Uh, the fuck?"

Another taste test pause. "Yes. Exactly. No procreation occurred. How was that sexual?"

I sighed. Fuck it, that would buy another couple minutes.

Up in the office, Conrad seemed completely oblivious to his averted doom. He carried Menace's glider, and along with an impressive number of kill markers in a frightening number of sizes, I noticed some new stripes which lead to the rigging, and a kind of faint sheen on the rigging itself which reminded me of nothing so much as the phosphorescent star stickers I'd stuck to my ceiling one year after an Observatory visit. "Good Evening, Mother!"

Menace popped up like a fuckin' prairie dog. "Tikibada!"

He rolled his eyes. "Sister Menace. Are you ready to fly?"

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"YETH!" Guess she'd slipped back into more comfortable dentition. Or maybe she just got ready to get bitey when she got excited. No fuckin' clue, don't want a clue, she can make herself understood if she needs to, Momming done for the moment.

I stood, lifting her to my waist, and held out a hand for Saffron. She smiled, sighed, slid her coding windows aside, and stood to take my hand. I'd been kinda worried that I'd fall over exhausted when her kowtow squad disappeared, but when they blinked out of existence it had no more effect than unplugging a charging phone. The electric cable plugged into my nethers stopped pouring juice into me, but it sure as shit didn't start leaking out or anything. Really glad, that would have been embarrassing to explain.

"Shall we?" I nodded for the door.

"After you, Mothers. Sister." He nodded to the glider. "I'd rather have you in sight while carrying this. Slapstick is gauche."

I laughed at that, but led Saffron out of the room, gleeful Menace on my hip. Marie met us at the door and led us toward the roof access.

Boss? You coming to see our Menace's maiden night flight?

Your... birth mother will be there, will she not?

I nodded. She will, socially, by the end of the night. As much as that word applies to her. I totally get it if that's a deal breaker.

Hardly! For our granddaughter? Sigyn would...

Boss?

For the first time I could recall, Loki sounded... small. I cannot think of anything more likely to turn a Deity from their chosen course than 'facing down Domnu'. Well, save 'facing down Mimic', but that's both rude and irrelevant for her at this point, no?

See you two on the roof?

Of course.

Thanks Boss, you're the best.

I know.

A minute later, we all stood on the roof, Conrad reviewing the differences between daytime and nighttime air currents for Isnomi while he strapped her into her glider. I ignored all that as Marie, Saffron and I walked over to Sigyn. "You okay, Mom?"

She shuddered and looked at me. Oddly distracting; I think I'd interrupted 'torture-time' when I brought Domnu to her attention. Either that or she'd started wearing nothing but stripperific outfits to lounge around in. Then again, if I were basically a married retiree with nothing better to do than see how many times a day I could melt and refreeze my guy's popsicle, I might be tempted to wear that shit too. Even moreso what with her having a literally Divine body, where any 'sag' in anything was purely to enhance jiggle physics.

Yeah, I like that phrase. It's a fun phrase. My only regret here and now was my current body's near lack of anything resembling jiggle physics. Okay, I had a little up front, but mostly they just stood there like vertical mountains. Well, hills. Sigyn? Saffron? Sure, mountains. If mine were biggish, that had more to do with me being a bigger girl than normal than them being objectively big. But yeah, how can you not like that phrase? Fun to say, fun to watch, fun to do, even if I had some difficulties in that area here and now.

Sigyn whispered, "how can you call me that?"

I pulled her into a hug, surprised when her resistance crumbled like feta cheese. "Because despite the whole adopted-maybe-step-mom thing? You're a fuckton more maternal than she has ever been. She's a dam. A gene donor..." I stuttered a little. "Source-being. Whatever. She's not a Mom." I squeezed her hard enough to drive the air out of her a little. "You are."

She sighed. "Thank you, Champion... Tabitha..." She sighed again, pushed me away, smiled at me, then pulled me in for a bone-crushing hug. "Daughter."

"Any time, Mom."

All five of us turned when Conrad cleared his throat. He didn't turn to us, but began explaining to Isnomi. "Now, should anything approach you too quickly, should you become detached from the glider, or should you feel you are in danger, your harness light will activate."

"Lide?"

"Yes, Menace, Light. The few nocturnal flying things I can think of which might threaten you in any way are all deathly afraid of light. In most cases, sufficient light will hurt them." He slipped a little pair of black lenses into her little goggles. "If you have troubles seeing with the light on, these should help."

"Dank you, Tikibada!"

"Are you ready?"

"Yeth!"

He stepped away, looked to me, and I waved to him. "Launch when ready, Sister dear."

She stood, rocked back and forth a little, backed further up the roof, then sprinted down toward the edge. Like half a dozen feet from the edge she leapt, and her feet never touched the roof again as her glider caught air. I'd worried that without active lights, she'd wind up invisible to us on the ground, but as she rose I realized that with the absence of City sky-glow, the faint traceries of phosphorescence made her just barely visible as she soared through the sky.

Down in our Library den, I wound down my endless description of positions and orifices. Shit, when she asked me that question when I was trying stall for time? She just put this on Easy Mode for me. "She's in the air now, Mom. She's looking for you, wants to meet you."

She turned without a word and rose toward the ceiling. I grabbed her ankle, then stepped us both to the roof. "Please don't break my house, Mom. I live here. Oh, and Mom? Conrad? The one you said was 'a danger'? He's also my son, and he dotes on her. He built her the glider she's using to look for you."

"Acceptable."

I let go, then collapsed back into myself, because the moment she got out of reach she disappeared against the night sky. I mean, it only made sense, she was the fuckin' night sky, and you don't get much more camouflaged than standing in front of yourself. Okay, that's not true, but still. I couldn't see her at all until, watching Isnomi swoop about calling, 'gamma! gamma!', something darted in between us, blackness between her light and our perch on the roof. The others gasped, but I'd seen her response to thinking Conrad was a danger. I might be a little worried about Domnu's idea of 'maternal', but I couldn't even pity anything stupid enough to threaten her granddaughter while she was right fuckin' there.

Something flashed between us again, and the lights on Menace's glider rippled rhythmically, an odd, oscillating sound reaching us a second later. "Is that a shepherd's tone?" asked Saffron.

"I believe so," said Loki.

"Well spotted, Mom." Conrad actually looked proud of Saffron. Not unpleasant, but weird as fuck.

As Domnu got closer and closer to Isnomi, and the Menace's squeal of utter glee reached us, the noise got louder and louder, the light pulsing faster and faster, until a new star lit up the sky. A crackling corona of light spread out from Menace's straps, and a much deeper shriek of pure terror reached us a moment after the expanding sphere intersected Domnu, leaving a neatly punched hourglass figure through the light.

Everybody else tensed at that, and only got worse when they heard Isnomi scream out, "gamma!" and dart after the fleeing figure of Darkness.

I called out, "bring her down here!" Neither of them heard me, of course, Then again, neither of them were headed 'down' by any stretch of the imagination. At that point I also realized while everybody had tensed, Conrad's tension was way less 'scared' and way more 'me with Saffron Prime in full Worship Mode'. Fuck it, I'd asked him for that. Told him to make it even. "Good work, son."

He jerked, startled, before he turned to me, creepy wider-than-face smile in full effect when he said, "Thank you, Mother!"

We all stood there, entranced, watching a dot of light chasing something we only saw in silhouette, until the light of false dawn colored the sky, and we finally made out the tiny black dot. Isnomi swooped in under it, tipped her wings back to climb up to it as it hovered backwards, then stalled and fell.

I swear, if I hadn't seen her pull that same fuckin' maneuver just for shits and giggles, I'd have shat myself in terror right there on the roof. Everybody else had the same reaction, and we all kinda giggled as we realized we'd all become utterly immune to that particular 'terrify the adults' maneuver. Except I'd forgotten the one person who hadn't. As Menace twisted about to angle herself into a power dive, Domnu raced after her, apparently discovering that trying to match speeds with something that kept accelerating was a bit of a bitch when you yourself weren't affected by things like gravity. She bobbled under Menace, over her, even managed to get beside her at one point near the bottom of the dive, only to have our little miscreant juke before pulling out of her dive to come screaming toward us. Literally, although the scream had like a ninety percent joyous laughter component, which I absolutely adored. She kept pulling back until she rose straight back up into the sky above us, Domnu still utterly focused on her and in hot pursuit. She stalled again, but this time Domnu grabbed her before she could fall again.

What with the pair of them being a few dozen feet in the air, at least, I'm not sure anybody else heard the faint sizzle as she did so, but the heat from her skin touching Menace's blazing harness radiated down to my... Mimic's tentacles. "Hey, Menace! Bring your new friend down to meet the family!"

Faint gleeful Isnomi noises rained down on us, Menace herself waving her arms as she babbled to Domnu. A few moments later the pair descended. As they touched down, Conrad stepped up and said, "Grandmother," before unbuckling Isnomi and pulling her glider away. Menace squirmed her way out of Domnu's arms at that point, leaving the Primordial Goddess of Darkness standing there looking completely boggled at how she'd somehow failed to keep a grip on a toddler. Then Isnomi grabbed her by the finger and led her over to us, shouting, "thee! Thee! Gamma! Gammama!"

Right then I heard the weirdest sound from Sigyn. Raw, unvarnished indignation, garnished with confusion, seasoned with the slightest hints of jealousy and betrayal. I looked at her as she stepped away from Loki toward me, holding her hands out in the perfect pose to accompany her record setting, 'WTF, DIAZ?' face. I had no clue what I'd done, so I shrugged and shook my head, trying not to let Isnomi see. She rolled her eyes so hard her head tipped back, then of all the wacky assed shit she started bouncing on her toes. I didn't get it until she turned sideways a little, and the part of my brain more or less constantly engaged in mentally undressing every person I saw cleared its metaphoric throat as it mentally stripped away everything covering Sigyn, up to and including her hair.

My gaze shot back and forth between Sigyn's bouncing figure and Domnu's advancing one. "Oh, FUCK!" I turned to Sigyn, desperate. "It's not my fault!"

She sucked in a lungful of air and blew it out through her nose. "Explain to me then, Daughter, how this is 'not your fault?' Please. I must hear this."

I sank to my knees, half crying, half laughing, both halves hysterical as I cried out, "I MADE HER MOM SHAPED!"