Dear Diary,

Always important to remember the Dao of Qui-gon: there's always a bigger fish.

Seriously, I'm kinda stunned that I even ever stopped thinking that on the regular. Okay, yeah, I've yet to see a bigger fish than Mimic, but in theory Dommy Mommy is still out there somewhere, and she's the one who pushed Mimic out of her metaphoric hoo-hah, so she might well, y'know, be bigger than Mimic. Then again, back when I first arrived Mimic fit in a single chest. I mean, a big fuckin' chest, yeah, the kind of thing that Saffron could probably have made a minimalist survival house out of, but still, one chest. So maybe Mimic's Mom isn't any bigger than, y'know, Loki or some of the really big Jotnar I've read about.

At any rate, that was kind of an underlying conscious reality for me back in Camden, although there it was more 'all the other fish are bigger than you', whereas here? After you face down a Goddess in single combat, kill an Army, and eat two gods in an afternoon, you start feeling some kinda way about your chances of losing a fight. I mean, there's a whole shitpot of ways I could fuck up outside of fighting, but even going hand to hand without any Mana Shaping or Trickster Shenanigans it had been a while since I did anything like losing.

So yesterday I wound up showing the rest of the class how I could recharge somebody with a Stabilize. Most of them looked low key horrified by the idea, but even with the whole 'that's all the OSHA violations at once' expression on her face, Smith took me up on the offer after she spent all morning and most of the afternoon trying to recreate the effects of my basic Mana Blade. I still think it's funny watching people's eyes glow if they keep them open when I do that. I've said it before, I'm a simple woman. In this case it didn't even take tits or ass to make me smile, just the thought of 'look at what happens when I shine a flashlight in Smith's eyes'. Totally unfair to her, she seems pretty intelligent, if maybe a little unwise when it comes to picking her battles.

Reminds me of somebody, but can't remember who at the moment.

Anyway, by the time class was over, I'd worked with Saffron and Doc going over everything I did when making a Mana Blade in super slow motion. Kinda tiring; not so much in the 'used lots of Mana' sense, but in the 'controlling it in a way I normally didn't'. Like, y'know, when you work out a muscle you never really have before, and even though the weight's really low, you still get all stupid sweaty and tired? Not that I'd know from personal experience; I'd never done that here, and back in Camden I had an aversion to, y'know, sweating. Not sweat itself though, which is why I spent a while hitting the gym after school every day 'spotting' for dudes on the football team. Like I could really lift any of the weights they were playing with. Mostly I just stared and tried not to drool, 'cause I was classy like that, even back then.

Dinner was stew, delivered by Marie and the menace. I mean, Marie delivered everybody's dinner, but after helping her hand stuff out, the menace sat beside me and stole the good bits out of my stew. I drew the line at her stealing my bread. Okay, no more than half of it. I got to show everybody the original inspiration for my Mana Blade by making insta-toast out of the whole loaf, then a couple others that people offered up just to watch me cut them up. Weird, but I think the only one who actually believed me about toast being the inspiration for Mana Blade, other than Saffron and Doc, who knew me, was Smith.

I wonder what she'd do if I introduced her to Conrad and mentioned they had a name in common?

Got a Really Stupid Idea when everybody else had cleared out of the room for the day. "Hey Marie?" When she looked over, I asked, "do you think your cart could hold all three of us?"

She shrugged and nodded, so I scooped up the menace, then did the same to a squeaking Saffron. "What, pray tell me, are you doing?"

"If Menace likes it, it's gotta be good, right?"

Note to self: the menace is an even bigger adrenaline addict than I am. When my accomplishment for the ride back was 'not pissing myself', and I'm not sure Saffron could say the same? Not to mention the fact that I now had a hand-shaped bruise on my thigh from her holding onto me for dear life? Yeah.

Fun as fuck, though. I mean, maybe not quite as much fun as that, but certainly at least as exciting. Because that particular activity gets a mite bit exciting when the tiger woman Maid queen of Dionysus' murder fuck cult is the less dangerous of my paramours.

Wow. 'My paramours'. Like, plural. I'd fantasized about a lot of shit back in Camden, because anybody living there who'd seen Isekai Anime sure as fuck would, but 'my paramours' wasn't ever something I'd really fantasized about having. Not, like, 'ew, why would I want that', but 'let's be realistic and hope for being able to do magic and fight like a honey badger'.

All of us were way too keyed up to sleep after that, so we started a four way pillow fight. Which, much as it usually did, wound up with the three nominal adults using bolsters to play 'yeet the menace', while she bonked us with pillows whenever her yeetification carried her into range. After like half an hour of that, she dropped her pillow; when I caught her, I realized she'd actually fallen asleep while being yeeted around. Only my Menace. I lay her down, and the other three of us retired to the bedroom. None of us were quite ready for sleep, but we managed to correct that in short order, after which we fell asleep in a big 'ol pile.

Mimic still watched the stars for Mom. The south still stank. Odds on bet that it had, indeed, risen again.

Woke up to Isnomi's face inches from mine, where she'd wormed her way in to lay back to back with her mom, who was cuddled into Marie. Lay like that for a while until the other three got up, because it made some place deep inside all warm and gooey to watch them all sleeping like that, even if it was in total wireframe vision.

All four of us managed to dress ourselves more or less normally this morning. I even wore underwear, although that was more because Menace told me I'd be 'gwounded' if I didn't. Little smart ass. Definitely my kid, no matter the genetics.

Breakfast was fish cakes, corn bread, and some weird corn pancake things. Not something I'd ever had before, but really tasty with the addition of some butter and preserves. Apparently Marie had either found another source of corn recipes, or she'd mastered everything I could remember and was experimenting. Not that it really mattered to me which. Okay, it did, and I found that weird, because jealousy? Not a good look on anybody, and somehow the whole 'I'm a Primordial Goddess capable of ending life as we know it' thing made that even worse. Weird.

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Got up to the practice yard, and duBois pulled me aside as soon as he'd gotten everyone else working in groups of three. "You back in fighting trim?"

I opened my mouth to give some kind of smartass confirmation, then thought better of it. Because I am a Mature Woman who Takes People Seriously. Really I am. Stop laughing, I'm serious.

At any rate, I took a minute to stretch myself through my full range of motion, then did a few flips and somersaults. I shrugged. "Not quite. Still got some stiffness in the big joints and my back. Some pain when I push past it. Nothing I can't deal with though."

He nodded. "If we need you for the Calverton cleanup, maybe you'll have to push through, but for the moment?"

"Yeah, yeah, heal up when you can, so you're healed up as much as you can when you can't."

I could tell his eyes-crossed expression was faked, but it still made me chuckle as he said, "despite that sentence needing to be taken into the equipment room and quietly strangled, you actually remembered that lesson. I'm really kind of surprised."

"Why?"

I'm sure Saffron and I had that same look when Isnomi asked questions we'd really rather not answer, which made me laugh again as he said, "not only because you have a bit of a reputation as, shall we say, academically disinclined, but because... well..." he waved a hand, and somehow I knew he referred to my scars.

I laughed. "Yeah, well. As I'm sure you mentioned at some point, I hit a situation that required all the tough I'd managed to stockpile. And then some, really."

His smile didn't go away, but he put one big paw on my shoulder and said, "really proud of you, Diaz. I'd like to think I helped get you ready for that."

I nodded. "You did. You absolutely fuckin' did. Thanks."

He heaved out a breath and said, "okay then, let's get you limbered up before anything else." We started with some of the pairs stretching stuff, then segued into the off-brand tai chi he'd been teaching me. We did that until lunch. After lunch we did that for another hour or so, then he said, "you up for some stick fighting?"

As you might imagine, me and slow, controlled tai chi, even off-brand? Not my favorite thing. "Oh, hell yes." I stepped to the equipment shed and stepped back with four sticks. He just raised an eyebrow. "It's like anything else, if I don't use it on the regular, it gets rusty, right?"

He nodded, thoughtful. "I'd never really thought of it that way, but you're probably right."

We started out slow, just like last time. By the end of our first hour, we'd sped up to the point where the sounds of stick-on-stick were a constant staccato rhythm echoing through the Practice Yard. It was almost all I could do to keep him from clobbering me, but now and then I'd managed to sneak an attack in. Never, y'know, landed one, but then he hadn't either. Shit I blocked with my forearms didn't count, what with the armor there.

By the sun it was maybe an hour before dinner when, without slowing, he said, "ready to take it up a notch, Diaz?"

Honestly, by that point I'd been leaving a trail of sweat for like an hour, and I had to focus to inhale enough to respond, but the day's work had all the stiffness gone. Besides, as anyone who knows me knows, I'm a dumbass who will never say 'no' to 'harder faster higher weirder'. "Sounds fun."

He disappeared. I didn't think; I Translocated and Co-Located at the same time, spinning kicks aimed at the backs of his knees and the front of his chest. I managed to land the shot to the back of his legs, but right after that he clobbered that me with the other me, what with him dropping a stick and grabbing me by the shin to block. I didn't really think about it a lot, but the Marshall was strong as fuck. Strong enough to swing me like one of his sticks, even if I wasn't quite as stiff as one of them. Somehow he kept me from Translocating out of his grip, although it felt like he'd shifted it when I did. A second later I realized what he'd done; he'd Translocated with me. Crafty old fucker.

He Co-Located and swung a stick at me, swinging me at the stick at the same time. I Co-Located again, one new me blocking his stick with both of mine, the other tackling him from behind, taking him in the backs of the knees again. Instead of trying to stay upright the big bastard just flopped backwards and sat on me. I suddenly knew exactly how Ti Lung felt during that last fight. Not even enough air left in me to try to Translocate out. The me he'd hammered to the ground with myself tried to stand up, only to get a spinning stick to the noggin; he hadn't dropped it, he'd thrown it into the air, and it landed right where I'd fallen.

As he fell back on me, I'd twisted in his grip and gotten my legs around his neck. As his ass landed on my poor back, piledriving me into the ground, the other me's ass landed square on his face. I winced as I heard his head hit the pavers, but since he didn't go limp or anything, I figured he wasn't dead, so I just bore down, ignored the pain from where my knees had hit the pavers as well, and hoped he couldn't get up the concentration to Co-Locate again.

Meanwhile that left one of me facing one of him. I'd blocked his stick, and the impact of my two sticks on one of his broke his stick with huge crack. I swung both of my sticks at him, and somehow he managed to get his one stick in the way of both of mine, spinning it like a baton to bat them away. Which did absolutely nothing for the knee I brought up into his crotch. Two really important things occurred to me just then. First, while the Phileo Cadet and Hero uniform jackets had integral chainmail, the slacks did not, nor did the uniform include a cup. Second, if it did the Marshall would need one of Bowie-as-Jared-esque proportions.

He used that tiny fragment of time between 'knee to the groin' and 'total systemic shutdown' to backhand me backwards across the pavers. Like, full on, every ounce of muscle in his core, bitch slap. I tumbled, completely unable to do anything to break my fall with my head still spinning from his slap. The me trying to choke him out with my thighs managed to wheeze out, "your gold watch is gonna be epic, old man." Then the tumbling me impacted with the me still trying to recover from being hit with stick from above, and I decided I'd had enough.

The me that he'd sat on slapped the ground, right as the one of him that remained standing said, "wait, what?"

I absolutely refused to comment on my mid-combat smack talk, for obvious reasons. Not the least of which was when he hoisted the pair of me up off the ground and I saw the him I'd stopped trying to choke out lower a hand to the ground where he'd raised it like he intended to slap the ground. Obviously some kind of new move he'd been about to fuck me over with, because no way in hell was this bastard anywhere close to surrendering.

Of course, he leaned one paw of his standing self on one of my shoulders and said, "Diaz? Could you maybe de-Co-Locate?"

I stepped and somersaulted and wiggled back into myself, letting out a low groan when all of my accumulated dings hit me all at once. "You okay, sir?"

He rolled back into himself and said, "that hit not only was painful and disorienting, that hold's... distracting." He took a deep breath and said, "well done, Cadet. Where'd you learn to Co-Locate and Translocate in a fight like that? I'm sure I didn't teach you that."

I shrugged. "Loki?"

He blanched. "Yeah. Well. That would explain it then."

We turned to look at the rest of the class, suddenly aware that the sounds of sparring had stopped at some point. I managed to get my arms up to catch my incoming Kitten who, after a kiss that lasted long enough that I was seeing stars, pulled back and whispered, "you are so hot when you kick ass."

"Not sure I was the ass doing the kicking just then, but I'll take it."

"And me," she whispered in my ear.

"Yeah, that too," I whispered back as I nuzzled her neck.

"Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I think that's it for class today. Any of you who want can stay out until sunset, but I'm gonna go get some rest. If anyone needs me before tomorrow, I'll be in my quarters."

As I stepped Saffron and I back to our rooms, a sudden thought struck me. "Wait, wait, wait... did he or did he not just say, 'I'll be in my bunk'?"