Dear Diary,

There are worse problems to have than for the assholes who want to wreck your shit to be living in fear that you will show up and make them very dead or worse, leave them alive and Oliveresque.

That word's my contribution to the English language. Okay, Celtic language, since apparently we're all speaking Celtic. It's a portmanteau of 'Oliver' and 'Grotesque'. Because, y'know, given the shape I've left him in, he's pretty grotesque. His dad? Just quadruple amputee. But him? Yeah, I left him looking ugly and stuck in his own brain for as long as I can keep his ass alive.

Does it make me more or less of a villain that if I hear he's somehow managed to off himself I'm gonna go Revive him? I mean, I'm not fixing any of the shit I did to him, and if the Revive fixes it I'm just gonna re-violate him, but... yeah, I think I answered my own question there.

So yesterday, right as I was about to end a solid workday of scrying with my favorite dessert in the whole wide world, Lachlan called out that he saw the assholes we'd been looking for. Without stopping to think about it, I stepped to our Lancaster House bedroom, dropped Isnomi and Saffron both unceremoniously on the bed, stepped back to Lachlan and shouted "Calverton squads one and two, join hands!" I grabbed Lachlan's off hand, grabbed the nearest guy in squad one as they all managed to get hands together, and stepped us all to the farmstead in Lachlan's scrying bowl. Before I even had a moment to orient, I let go, pulled my hand back, and jumped back to Lancaster House's Scrying Room. "Carruthers!" As he moved toward me, I jumped over to the second squad of Calverton Heroes. Again, the moment I had contact with the squad and Linus, I stepped them all to that same farmstead.

I suppose it says something that I didn't even look to see which one it was. Didn't even look back at it as I stepped behind an archer at the back of the rogue formation. I think he must have heard the snow crunch as I landed, because he spun to face me, and if I was Lachlan's height I'd have had an arrow through my eye. Instead I got what would probably wind up as a brand new scar as the arrow missed me by less than the width of it's head. Or, y'know, more accurately it ricocheted off my fuckin' skull. Before he could do anything else, I popped eight little six inch Mana Blades, one from each of my knuckles, and punched him half a dozen times in the chest, grabbed his shoulder, punched him twice more in the gut, and finished him off with a right hook to the jaw. Which kinda left his head only loosely connected to the rest of him, but I didn't have time to check if any not-obviously-armored rogues had Cold Iron Chainmail.

A quick scan showed one dude looking like some kind of LARPer who hadn't been engaged by either of our squads yet. Black and yellow robes, big old staff with a knob on the end, and worst of all a swirling mass of fire coalescing around his hand. I leapt toward him, Translocating just before my knees hit the snow. I slid into the side of his legs as I popped up a Filtration Ward set to block Fire around both of us. On the subject of popping, his right knee did so, and he toppled over on me. I closed my eyes, ducked my head, and screamed as fire washed over both of us. Before I did anything else I Shaped a Create Water over my own head, really hoping I'd managed to keep enough hair to not look completely dorky. Right about then the asshole thwacked me right in the crotch with his stick.

I Translocated to about five feet above him, extruding decent sized Mana Blades from my knees as I did so. I landed on knees and fists, but more importantly my knees landed on his knees, and my fists landed on his chest after going through his spindly little arms. Apparently Calverton didn't train its Mages the way duBois trained Phileo's Cadets. "Nothing. Bigger. Than. Nine. Inches. Asshole!" With each word I punched him in the chest again, at which point I realized that he wasn't 'beating at my crotch with his fucking stick', his corpse was 'convulsing each time I punched him'.

"Oops."

I looked around to see Lachlan straight up split a dude from crown to crotch with a big assed sword, then throw a Fire Bolt at the dude behind him. On the far side of the fight, Carruthers had gotten to grappling range with a dude in plate armor with a broadsword and kite shield. Neither really did him any good as the Cadet grabbed him by the shoulder and crotch and straight up suplexed him headfirst into the ground. Given that the guy was almost as tall as Carruthers, that must have taken a lot of strength. Which Carruthers demonstrated again by grabbing the dude's ankles and lifting one while pushing the other down. Behind his back. When he got it nearly horizontal, while the dude flailed at Carruthers with his sword, my boy lifted one of his big size 'fuck you' boots, putting his foot atop the dude's thigh, and shoving down with that foot while holding the dude's other leg up with both hands. The resulting noise as both the dude's armored skirt and his hip joint gave way? Not something I would forget any time soon.

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

Between Lachlan, Carruthers, and me, we'd taken out four of them, which left the rest outnumbered two to one. Our Calverton guys gave the rogues a quick lesson in why against anybody but, y'know, me and Larry, steel was a way better choice than Cold Iron, especially when you're relying on your armor to protect you from the guy behind you.

While they mopped up with Lachlan and Carruthers backing them up, I stepped over to the plate armored dude, rolled him over with my foot, and knelt on his throat. I remembered how I'd been trussed up during my Court Martial, and that wasn't even the full 'Rogue Hero' protocol. We didn't have any way to take prisoners that a competent Hero couldn't get out of, and these assholes had already made it clear that killing me was more important to them than, y'know, protecting the people they were sworn to. Interesting trivia tidbit, he died neither from my Mana Blade decapitating him nor my knee suffocating him. By the time the rest of the group had finished off their dance partners, I'd melted a hole through his throat armor, and the cold iron did like molten iron do, giving him an emergency tracheotomy. The operation was a success, but the patient died.

I'd also burned my knee, but not, like, third degree. Second at worst. Yet another scar to add to the mix.

"Strip them all. Leave their gear in the farmstead courtyard. Pile the bodies there," I pointed to Mister Wizard, "hurry up, we've got to get back. I wouldn't put it past these assholes to hit more than one place at a time."

With a dozen big burly guys doing the work, we had eight corpses piled like cordwood in less than that many minutes. Hey Boss?

Yes, my Champion?

Any chance you could light these guys up?

Not exactly a hearth.

Nope, it's not. But you're also a fire god, and I don't want anybody Reviving these assholes.

Fair points, both.

Flames washed over the pile of bodies, and I Shaped another Filtration Ward to keep the heat of the flames in, which ought to prevent any forest fires or shit like that. Smokey the Bear would be proud of your girl Tabitha.

Thanks, Boss. You're the best.

I know.

As the fire went into overdrive as none of the heat could escape, I had the boys line up and hold hands. Two seconds after they finished, they all stood back in the Scrying Room. I looked over to Larry. "Any other customers?"

He shook his head. "I wish we could let all of the others see what we just watched. They might surrender themselves."

I cocked my head. "Haven't they pretty much earned themselves the Death Penalty?"

He shrugged. "I'm not sure. They've disobeyed orders and gone rogue, but General Hargreaves could show mercy and simply have them defrocked and serving time, or even reinstate them after they make up for the error of their ways. None of that really matters, though."

I looked around and realized that Larry, Fred, Bonnie, and Raven had all kind of bunched up around the Scrying Pool we'd spotted the Rogues in. The other ten Calverton Heroes made another ring around them. Right about then it dawned on me that the kids who'd been helping watch all day long had been firmly kept outside that outer circle. Yeah, I guess we did kinda go full on 'not suitable for younger audiences'. "So what does matter?"

Larry nodded at the Scrying Pool. "Honestly? I'd rather a noose or headman's axe than what Linus did."

I chuckled, because I kinda agreed with him. "Send somebody if anybody sees anything before you all pack it in for the night. I'm goin' to bed."

"Good Night, Commander. I'll wrap things up here."

A moment later I faceplanted in the bed. I rolled over and looked around, immediately noticing a complete lack of Isnomi. "Where'd the Menace go?"

"Something about 'watching out for Momma', I think."

Hell with it, our Menace might not be the scariest thing in Lancaster House at the moment, but I put her in the top three, easy, and Marie wouldn't let anything happen to her. I banished our clothes to the dressing room, rolled over again and muttered, "we've got, like, until she gets downstairs and back again, then."

"That sounds like an excuse."

I didn't say anything for a bit after that, but when I heard the living room door open I scrambled to get us both under the sheets. Just in time, because the entire Junior Scrying Patrol thundered into the room a moment later, followed closely by Marie's horde hoard. I rolled an unresisting Saffron half over so I could snuggle up behind her. While Marie got them all ready for bed, because apparently she actively enjoys doing that kind of thing, Saffron thought at me, do I smell pork?

Right about then my knee reminded me of my adventures in smelting. Oh. Yeah. Did bad things to my knee. Hurts like a bitch. Sorry, think it might have distracted me from important things.

She pulled my arms around her, schooching back until we pressed together, skin on skin, all the soppy intimate feels Happy Brain Chemicals firing off, every point of contact between us tingling as the pain in my knee and along my scalp faded into memory. All that before she finished things off by thinking, no reason to be sorry.

Well, finished me off anyway. Lovely thing to drift off to sleep to.

Mimic dreamt of... I dunno, some kind of horizontal Connect Four bullshit. Made no sense asleep, even less when I woke up.

Morning had us helping Marie get her horde hoard clean and ready for the day. A day including two farmsteads calling for Healers, one for help with a lost cow, and dick all beyond that.

No last minute Rogue spotting at the end of the day, even, although Saffron returned from Newark even more worn out than yesterday. This time I dropped Isnomi off with Marie, and we had all of dinner to get our too-tired-to-eat-dinner selves to sleep.

There are good things to be said for efficiency and nimble fingers. Saffron summed all of them up with, it's time to go to sleep, Goof.