4/19/25
Ah, Saturnalia. You apparently existed once on this world and now are no more. This has almost nothing to do with anything, I just learned it today and the way I did was something I wanted to immortalize.
It won me a trivia game completely on accident. I was only listening enough to hear festival and answered reflexively. My winnings were fairly inconsequential, a soda, but it was my first bit of gambling with my new compatriots.
I hope that this will be a long and fruitful bit of collaboration. I am willing to bet that I’m probably going to be wrong and they or I will be reassigned to Canada whenever that ‘soon’ is.
I should probably start a proper introduction for Kenny and Lettie, but there’s an emergency going on now.
I’m only writing because damages to the base have left us unable to get to the Knight Armors in their docks. As a result, all three of us were called to a secured area, and we are to be ready until either a demon attack happens and we have to bust the armors out of their cages or somebody determines that this is a job for the police or army and we finally get to go home.
4/20/25
My everything is sore and I am tired. These are related, but only a little. The tent I got to sleep in got collapsed. A great many cans hit my sides.
They also got the legs, arms, and most of my places that aren’t called the face and head. Somehow a shelf broke. I did not enquire any more than that.
These things happen, after all. Especially when unplanned demolitions happen and you have to sleep in tents because you can’t be cleared to go home.
I wonder what will happen tomorrow. Or at least later today, considering how early I’m awake because of this little incident.
I’m looking at a clock. It says 8:55 PM. I will get to shower and sleep in my own bed tonight. Despite it being handed over to the police, I know enough people think that the person might have been subverted by demons. Obviously, they said something like alien quislings or catspaws, but I know the truth. As do some other people in this group.
I’m just not sure who all of them are. I know that the mission director has recently gotten some kind of information that made her approach me after the accident and say “I know and we can talk if you need to,” but that’s also pretty vague.
Does she think I know the cause of the shelf collapse and can either verify that or lead me away from my conclusion? Does she know that I’m an incubus (currently) and can talk about what it means in a society where I’m basically a half-remembered bit of legend. Does she know that I’m from another world and am being basically imprisoned here and thinks she can do something to make that hurt less?
Well, actually, in that last case she can, but only because of plans I’m pretty sure that are unknown to everyone on this side with the possible exception of there being some kind of plans as a just-in-case scenario. But that would be good pre-planning rather than explicit knowledge.
It also reminds me. Because of the incident I didn’t manage to talk about the dream bridge.
At least according to Master Alissa, the end of the dream bridge in this world, my head, and the factory should be far enough away that such subtle and distant magic will be unaffected.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t say the same about me, if only because there is the unknown of the Knight Armor on my body to account for and trying to get the numbers in dream spaces would be futile.
I think I will sleep off my rude awakening more than usual. I just realized how I shifted topics without meaning to. Also, still hurts a bit.
4/21/25
Waking up with a cold today has made me very aware of how lucky I was to neither catch new diseases from this world nor to have had some old ones from my world spread around. It is not providence, so I have to give extra credit to the magical side of this operation. I only wish I knew how, so as to best give them accurate credit.
In any case, I had an uneventful day, as I was commanded to sleep and relax because of how banged up I was. There was also an interesting attempt on making my life worse by the demon in this world. A sneaky curse that worses injuries slowly and coincidentally. Fortunately, the injuries of yesterday were numerous enough that even a curse this subtle had become obvious from the sudden worsening of bruises.
Oh, and even if it wasn’t, training day. I got into Natal, Lettie into Vert, and Kenny into the still to be introduced armor of his. I mean, I could introduce it now, but training seems an awfully mundane event to introduce it with. So instead I will say that when it activates full power, it definitely does right by the name it was given. I have also found out that my new companions are at least part Canadian each, so I’m thinking that I can see the writing on the wall.
At least they should be Alive And Well when they leave. That is in my prayers and I’m making it my goal for the time being.
Completely coincidentally, there is training on dodging the goo. Just like the changes to Kenny’s armor from what I heard the original was like are completely coincidental and not at all meant to try and better protect from that goo. It’ll also do good against another focused Knight Opener, which is what they’ve termed demons shaped like the one that gave Natal a bit of a wrecking.
My only hope, which I’ve sent up the line, is that there will be at least one other person assigned here when Kenny and Lettie are sent to the factory up north. There will be accommodation for whatever type of knight armor they are eventually to be assigned.
It also means that the EU factory will be the only one under complete guard, but two-two-three is better than one-two-three.
I think I will add more when I’m sneezing less. I almost made a mess of this page.
4/22/25
Obviously, I didn’t get to add more. The medicine I was given to take at night did a fine job of rendering me into a deep sleep. There were some jokes in the school about the rotation of armor pilots due to my absence of two days. Kenny and Lettie were nice enough to let me know about them and be a little offended on our behalf.
They’ll get used to the place soon enough. Or not need to. One of the two, and I’m not sure which I’d prefer.
I mean, I do like the gallows humor on occasion.
I will have to report that the medicines I’m given have been more soporific than indicted. Officially it’s probably going to be listed as a potential side-effect of being able to use two different polarities of knight armor core or something like that. I haven’t kept up with the terminology to be sure while I’m feeling so sleepy. But it’d just be a sign of me not actually being human.
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Again, so very lucky.
4/23/25
More medical tests are being scheduled for me. None before the two others are considered fully trained, but I guess I got pretty lucky with the emergency stuff not having reactions. Really, my not dying has been quite the blessing. I’m not sure what to call the whole not being crippled either.
Superlat-luck? Multi-miracle?
Just with the goo warfare I should have probably at least gotten a persistent sneeze like a perpetually new snuff user.
Not that I’m complaining. I’m just admiring my luck in a rhetorical way.
I was apparently much more out of it than I thought when I woke to write yesterday. There was nobody to notice on the night of the 21st, a fact that rather worried my new comrades. Thank you, friends, may your stay in Canada be awe inspiringly comfortable. May your Berber? Tatar? Whichever, may your family’s blood be en-nobled by your acts. Also, may you have not taken pictures of me answering drugged and half-dressed. I have no desire to see how my face looked.
Enough about the future and praising my friends, though. We had an attack that was solely in the EU. Large build-up, two demons at once, and one was a Knight Opener. Fortunately, the other demon was wholly unable to properly distract two of the three now classic Knight Armors. So the Knight Opener got opened up on, and the other one was forcibly banished soon after.
I suppose if there’s another double attack in the EU, spires will go up there, hopefully with the lens issue fixed and the two American locations will also need them.
No sense focusing too much attention on one place, after all. Especially since it might encourage more anti-building tactics from the demons.
And by might, I mean will. The other shoe is going to drop and I think it’ll be before the new plant is opened up. There have been too many losses with not enough mystic gain for the goo to be the end of non-demon attack tactics.
Of course, the other obvious change would be more assassinations until one sticks, but the one in charge of those is both stuck in the most watched place of the two sites and also not good at non-magical assassination.
I mean, just going by the news in the past few months, I’ve heard of situations that could have at least gotten one of us killed, only in other parts of these United States. The demon has some agents sworn to it. The math seems clear to me.
Although if the truth of the matter is that the demon here is going to be recalled to whatever realm it came from once the assassinations are done, my ghost will laugh and laugh and laugh. Because that would mean we were being saved by this world being a pretty damn good place to vacation in, regardless of the strange standards of demons.
4/24/25
Some assholes managed to find the triggering apparatus for the demon attack alarms and trigger them. All over town. The on-site stuff hasn’t been messed with, so it means this was an outside job. This also means that I can really only grumble about things because I don’t know enough about how the system works or how the false report was triggered to say anything more on the matter.
Most of my current-but-not-truly contemporaries are complaining for class and test related measures first, and the idea of answer fatigue second. My fellow pilots (here, EU, and former) are all more or less thinking of this event with horror caused almost entirely by the ideas that it could either be a bunch of false positive or a false negative.
I agree with my fellow pilots far more than the rest of society, needless to say.
I am eagerly awaiting long, physical patrols in the knight armors at all times, and I am not being sarcastic. The alternative will end up letting unknown demons arrive in unknown amounts and sizes and is just far too dangerous to allow. Until a schedule can be arranged, I can only hope for good plan-
When I finish this, it should now be midnight. I got picked up around nine for a very late briefing around ten. As it turns out, there were even better contingies then I was going to hope for. Civilian false positives will continue to be a thing. Civilian false negatives will only happen here if several of the small scale scanners are physically altered. Our false positives will be cleared up before anyone is dispatched to get the pilots, and false negatives will only happen if there is large scale destruction of the city.
I can rest easily now, and admit to myself that I didn’t want to go on physical patrols now that I don’t need the lie backing my will.
4/25/25
I was wrong by ten seconds. Oops.
Aaah. Friday. Home of many things I’m not going to be doing and neither are a lot of people here. I would call this a demon attack, but to be honest, it’s just harassment. Well, no. I heard biological warfare bandied about, so people here are taking things more seriously than I. But that’s due to different views on things.
I know this waste is just being done as harrassment. The waste flesh and offal is too poisonous for normal scavengers to healthily consume, and that would be a problem. However, cleaning up the waste is fast and easy for this world; there’s no risk of getting blood in an open wound or dozens of dead rats suddenly stinking up a place.
For them, though, this has to look like some kind of disease spreading attempt, but with unknown diseases and parasites.
Sadly, as a loyal and enthusiastic member of the pilot crew, I have to act like this is a legitimate threat to health.
At least there was no goo attack to go with it. Just lots and lots of cleanup. Oh, and stealthily hoping my magical shot was able to disrupt any magic that might have been the secondary thrust of this harrassment.
I guess that makes it even more fortunate that the knight armors were set to guard the offal, and we even got to do a few small attacks.
I also managed to sneak a bit more classified information past my eyes. It seems that the demon that was here has snuck through one of the portals in this ‘attack’ and emerged in the EU. Sadly, it’s likely to have changed face. If it hasn’t, then I will rest far easier once I can find out that alien cult leader X or whatever has been killed when trying to resist being detained.
Perhaps I should try another big of wasteful magical messaging. It’s not like it’ll help much, but I suppose letting somebody with important know that these things are mostly harmless is still some help. Better make a list for tomorrow then.
4/26/25
Managed to get the reagents before the follow-up attack. It’s funny. Whoever did this planning wasn’t expecting full-force clean-up, so the little pests these two came over with were unable to feed and become a horrifying swarm.
They still managed to be an annoying swarm and the army is, I believe, still exterminating the ones trying to break into the disposal facility. But a beast-tamer with no beasts is going to be quickly torn apart. I owe Lettie a drink due to our bet while suiting up.
It was indeed even more underwhelming than I had expected. If only we’d get to see this again.
Well, if nothing else, I’ll get to relax (prepare the reagents and charge up), leave a message, and then get to work doing another blessing.
Although I don’t think the effort is needed, I’m going to be safe. I mean that for both for the messages and the blessing.
The offal’s danger has been shown and proved lacking. The blessing will break once the reason for the transfer happens.
But I don’t want to look back on this as me getting lazy. Well, off to get more reagents and dinner.