Day One Thousand Two Hundred And Twenty

Dear Diary,

I know I obsessed over being the Bad Guy back during my first few Seasons here. Especially that one long Autumn when Saffron deployed with the Grand Army of Phileo City and Camden Yards. And again a little bit when I was fighting against Norfolk. I'd say most of all when I buried myself in the silt of the M-Space MidAtlantic, but honestly that's not quite true, and I think that's kind of telling.

All those other times I was fighting tooth and nail against all kinds of awful impulses. Impulses that, at the time, I thought came from an entity other than me, the colossal fatass of continental proportions herself. I worried that I was being corrupted, that I would wind up hurting the ones I loved, and that's kind of a parallel, but back then I hadn't yet realized that the call was coming from inside the house.

Thing is, that's not what I was doing down there. I wasn't fighting against those impulses. I was wallowing in the fact that every one of those dark impulses, every fucked up thing I'd done, had come from me, from my own Mind. In doing so, I think I missed the very most important point.

At the end of the day, the source of those impulses didn't matter. What did was what I did with them. Which, for the most part, wound up being fighting them. Okay, yeah, I gave in to them now and then, typically when somebody fucked around, but then, Justified Homicide. Vengeance. I am, without any real doubt, a Goddess of Find Out. Given the amount of hurt I can lay down now that I'm not starving to death tryna power my continental fat ass with nothing but one human sized mouth, not to mention my duBois identified knack for visiting hurt on others, I don't think there's anybody on the planet who is immune to my level of Find Out. I am, as I once hypothesized, all the consequences in the world coming home to roost on the assholes who turned what could have been a paradise into a kind of perpetual hell on earth.

Shit, that's not even what they did. Not really. Nobody from Ancient Greece thought Ancient Greece was hellish. It's only in comparison to a stable modern world that it begins to look that way. Modern plumbing, medicine, and food supplies are a huge part of the improvements. Automation and mass production cover most of the rest of it. Electronics and virtual reality shit is just icing on the cake. Yeah, socially people fucked shit up when they decided that instead of the Star Trek future, they wanted the Neuromancer one, but that's not the technology's fault.

Nah, what the Pact did was just hold things in that state where nothing ever got better. Which, given the whole Red Queen's Race thing, meant that everything was perpetually getting worse. I'm not sure if Phileo would have turned that around, or wound up some kind of fucked up pressure release valve for the rest of Atlantis, or even Europa, but...

All that shit is idle speculation. What I know now is that I need to work on being the Find Out for folks who are too big for anybody else to hold accountable. But at the same time, I think I may be too big of a hammer for, like, folks without a Heroic level of power at a minimum. As I've noted, at some point I gotta step back and let people fail on their own, or let them hand out consequences on their own, because otherwise everybody's only got Agency on my sufferance. Which is not what I want at all. Not really.

I don't want Agency to be a Goddess Given Right, because anything given can be taken away. No, I think maybe, if anything, I want it to be a Goddess Guaranteed Right. Like, it's something they've all already got, and I'm just here to make sure nobody with the ability to take it away does so.

But that means sometimes I've got to hold back and let people be people, and sometimes that sucks.

Yeah, yesterday Tallulah showed up and announced that two Courts had allied with the current holder of The Morrigan's throne, I found myself thinking about all that, because I definitely wanted to head right over and do some creative rearrangement of those Courts. Which... Sidhe might be immortal, but they're not Deities. Shit, they don't even get an Afterlife if somebody shivs them. That's something I just now realized. Anybody else gets merked, their Soul goes to their Patron. That might be great, might be mid, might be awful, but it's not exactly game over. Or, y'know, the game doesn't erase the save file. Something like that.

So I held back any response I was gonna make. I think my Kitten realized that, because while we all got ready to head back home for dinner, she quietly asked, "do you want to talk about it?"

I thought about it, then shook my head. "Maybe later?"

She pursed her lips, but nodded. We went home, where Marie and I had dinner waiting. We'd set aside like half of the roasts to firm up to be used as cold cuts later, but the ones we put on the table wound up denuded pretty quick. Mostly, I think, because roasts are great for one thing. Gravy. So much gravy, so much of it the thick, savory stuff that I remembered from back in the day. Don't get me wrong, I love me my Murder Mittens' sweet syrup gravy, but along with the fact that old fashioned gravy is a component of that, it's kind of it's own, different, special, awesome thing.

The kids all seemed to like 'drenched in gravy'. If anyone is wondering what they liked drenched in gravy, the answer is yes. The roast, the roasted veggies, the baked potatoes and yams and sweet potatoes, because we'd gotten some of those now too. Shit, I'm pretty sure I saw some of the kits dipping the pumpkin pie we'd made for dessert in the gravy.

I copied them, at least for a bite. It was a unique flavor experience. Not gonna say it's bad, but it is definitely not my jam. More importantly, it's not Saffron's jam, and after one bite of gravy pie, she agreed with me and I slathered the rest of hers and mine with whipped sweet cream, then fed it all to her.

Did some manual Kitten appreciation as we floated in the Bath later. That led to me chuckling a bit. When she scooched down, rolled over, folded her hands on my belly, and set her chin on them to look up at me, eyebrow raised, I explained. "Despite every attempt on my part to inflate you like a beach ball, you remain perniciously hourglass shaped rather than spherical."

"Oh, I'm sure you'll think of something that will make at least parts of me spherical eventually." While my face heated and I chewed air at the obvious Kitten Mitten impregnation implications of that statement, she sighed and said, "while I need more exercise to keep my Strength where I'd like it to be, not to mention my Endurance, I've come to the conclusion that Shaping burns calories."

"Huh. Even when you use my Mana?"

She smirked at me. "So you do want me spherical?"

"Parts of you, yeah."

"But not all of me?"

I shrugged. "That's fine too. So using my Mana what, burns my calories?"

She rocked her head side to side. "Yes and no. I still burn some percentage of them to control the Mana, which I must perforce use my Mana for, but the amount spent per measurable effect is definitely less." Then she heaved a sigh. "Speaking of, are you feeling well enough to assist with the Status update tonight?"

I thought about it, then nodded. "Yeah. Might want to talk after though."

She just smiled. "As my Goddess wishes."

So once we had everyone else in tucked into bed, Saffron and I stepped to the top of the North Tower. A moment later Siobhan joined us. Saffron just raised an eyebrow, but Darling didn't back down or stutter. Instead she explained. "Assess Health will need to be updated to integrate with the System Spell, will it not?"

Saffron pursed her lips and nodded. "And you wish to observe me updating Status?"

"Exactly."

She smiled and said, "then observe, Archmage Darling."

I put together a Mana Network with all three of us, and after a surprisingly short time Saffron had a simple sphere of intricately shaped Mana hovering directly above the Tower. "Okay, how much more are you gonna need?"

She laughed, the sound reverberating in tune with that sphere of pure magic, pure life. "None, love. I need not emplace the spell or really overwrite it. One advantage of the System Spell." She turned to Siobhan. "You, on the other hand, will need to overwrite the current Assess Health."

Darling just nodded.

"Well then," Saffron took a deep breath, then whispered out a word that Blend translated to, "Status."

Unlike the world altering tsunami from last time, the sphere expanded, contracted, then spun into a spire that reached up, up, and over to M-Space. I Co-Located to watch as it tapped into the constellations of the System Spell, the glow from Saffron's Shaping spreading through the System like dye in water.

I collapsed back to myself in time to hear Siobhan say, "Thank you, Archmage."

"My pleasure, Archmage."

i chuckled and put my arms around both of them.

"Did you want to talk about something, love?"

I took a deep breath. "I'm not sure I should do anything about those Courts."

They both tensed, then Saffron let out a low chuckle. "Are they beneath your notice, finally? As they should be?"

I snorted. "Nah. But... Agency." At her raised eyebrow, I explained. "If I personally come down like a ton of bricks on anybody who does anything I don't like, what Agency do they have?"

She pursed her lips. Furrowed her brow and opened her mouth. Then closed it again.

After she'd chewed air for a while, Siobhan quietly laughed and said, "I for one think our Goof has the right of it. As do you, Kitten."

Saffron growled out, "you like to live dangerously, don't you?"

"Did you forget who you're talking to?"

That got a laugh out of both Saffron and I. Eventually Saffron nodded. "I suppose you're absolutely correct, Darling. Mortal politics, or even Sidhe bickering, are both beneath our Goddess. But should they call on her?"

I nodded. "Okay. Yeah. I'll intervene." I chuckled at the thought of lifting all of Airi up like a big kitchen table, hollering 'I'm intervening'. Difference between me and Bob Parr is that I didn't skip leg day. Still wish I had his wife's butt, though. To walk around with or to fondle, either would be good.

At that point we all stepped back in and joined the family in bed.

Today was pretty much a repetition of yesterday, except I was teaching Math in Troll Home. Weird thing, but I'd had a little problem telling Manus and Furtim the Younger apart before, but now that they've got names, I can't for the life of me think why. They don't even look all that much alike. I mean, sisters, yeah. Part of the same clutch, and developing along the same lines, but...

Shit, I think I may previously have been falling into 'they all look alike' or some shit like that. Either that or the whole 'different names for colors helps you distinguish them' thing. I'm gonna go with that, because it leaves me feeling way less guilty, but I've got my eye on me, because I'm not gonna tolerate that shit going forward.

At any rate, Tallulah dropped by at lunch. "The Imperator thought you'd like more details on the Airish situation?"

I nodded, then patted the Altar next to me. She sat, prim and proper until I leaned against her, at which point she softened just the slightest bit, leaning back against me. "So... Two Courts?"

"Yes. The two Fortress Courts. They are traditional allies of the Hill, which makes this... Unfortunate, yet not surprising."

I pursed my lips. "Yeah, so... They don't personally like her or anything?"

She just shrugged. "Personal preference for political partners is more a Mortal thing. No offense?"

I chuckled. "None taken."

She nodded. "I thank my most forgiving Goddess for her forbearance." When I didn't respond to that, she smiled and said, "the inland Fortress of Beauty is, perhaps, the least aligned with the ports, and thus Blackpool siding with Sun's Harbor practically guaranteed the Lord of Beauty declaring for the Hill."

"Okay. Yeah. What about the other one?"

She nodded. "The Fortress of Oak is... Nominally a port, but more a naval base than a trading hub. Which puts them in a precarious position, since while they resent having to provide naval protection to the other ports, they also rely on the... I suppose while it would be a faux pas to call it tribute, functionally it is." She shrugged again. "Since you defeated her Pirate Armada and took London Castle, the other ports have made noises about being less generous with that tribute, since they obviously cannot rely on the Oak Fleet to protect their shipping."

"So... Wait, Oak's where those Cutters came from?"

"At least half of them, yes."

"Which means in terms of combat power...?"

She smiled. "Beyond their Fortress? Is minimal. At best."

I smiled back. "So, she's got two Courts, but one of them is landlocked, and the other one's still reeling from tangling with the Kraken?"

"That is an adequate summation of events, yes."

I suddenly felt way less need to go adjust Airish attitudes.