Diary of a Teenaged Mimic

Dear Diary,

Okay, yeah, apparently the list of shit that can legitimately hurt me isn't very long, but it's also public knowledge, more or less. Also, none of the things are really super common, or at least less common than I've been led to believe, what with living within a day's travel of the world's biggest source of Cold Iron. Okay, I'm not sure it's the world's biggest source, but the way Saffron described it made it seem like Calverton has more Cold Iron than all of the Med put together. Dunno, maybe there are other sources, but it feels like instead of dealing with somebody kitted like Garland or Gregor, each of whom managed a full set of plate armor made of that shit, I'm dealing with folks who have to limit themselves to a couple pounds each. The metal bits of a mostly wooden shield, or the head of a spear. I'm not sure any of them are gonna have something as cumbersome as armor made out of it.

Not just cumbersome, either. From what I can tell, Cold Iron can't be alloyed. It's iron, not steel. Yeah, you can make armor out of iron, but it's heavy as shit, and it's just plain not as strong as steel for the weight. Yeah, somebody with a Cold Iron breastplate has their precious torso meats protected from being Mana Bladed, but if I stop being a dumbass and remember to bring my swordstaves, I'm pretty much sure I can cleave right through something as soft as iron.

Laughing at myself right now saying 'soft as iron'. Like, shit, 'iron' is one of those things people use to describe really hard shit, and here I am thinking, no, really more knowing that if I had good traction and room to wind up, I could totally chop right through a dude in an iron breastplate. Maybe not steel. Maybe not. But iron I'm pretty sure on. Anything softer than that, like bronze, is gonna wind up splattering more than rending. Somebody with Cold Iron chain armor or ring mail or something like that designed to deflect and distribute impact might fare better.

Yeah, I know that technically all armor does that. Deflects or distributes force. But there's a difference between the old school plate steel that just no sells the impact and spreads it across the entire torso and modern ballistic shit that deliberately shatters and winds up with the impact almost literally pounding sand. That's before I even get into the shit my science teacher talked about once where they put little overlapping packets of oobleck in pockets, so it gets hit, hardens, shatters, then goes back to being goop ready to harden again. Okay, I know it's not oobleck, but it's a non-Newtonian fluid, and everybody who went to fifth grade science class knows what fuckin' oobleck is, but people get all stupid when I say shit like 'non-Newtonian'.

I kinda wonder if that would work as armor against shit here and now. Not fancy super high tech shit, but basic oobleck in little overlapping containers inside of, I dunno, some other kind of armor that normally has problems with impact and denting and shit. Gotta talk with Saffron about that.

Back to my point, and I promise I did have one, or at least I had a list of shit that I wanted to mention, there are things here and now that can hurt me, and I need to remember both that I can actually get hurt and that each of those things has some kind of counter I can employ, usually one that's less resource intense than the thing that soft counters me. I say soft counters, because lets face it, unless it's a Deity using one of these things, I think the worst they might do is mangle this particular tentacle tip. Which is shitty for me, but I think it might put the entire fuckin' east coast of Atlantis and the eastern half of the Atlantic Ocean on the warpath against whoever managed to make me require Revivification.

Cold Iron. Dragons and Draconic shit. Deities, and I guess Deific weapons. Mana Shapes, although most of those require Divine levels of Mana to really have an impact. Or, I guess, Divine Skills. Shit, that might actually be a problem with the Spartans. They're Mortal, so they don't have the problem I do with Cold Iron, but they managed to put hurt on Lemmy, and he's gotta be somewhere near as Skilled as I am; the only reason I can manhandle him is my edge in being an Elder Primordial to his Demigod status. Which means I'm gonna have to fight dirty if it comes down to it.

Like locking them all in a tower and burning it down.

At any rate, after my surgery yesterday the ladies took me home and fed me. Total pampering, even Siobhan took a turn sitting on my lap and feeding me. Yeah, there was definitely some lap stack going on there, with me in Marie's lap, Siobhan in mine, and Hailee in hers. Really fuckin' glad our chairs were built to Academy specs.

Not even sure what we had for dinner. Not soup or stew. I think it might have been some kind of noodles in sauce with meaty chunks. By that point I was kinda at the end of my tether, and I let Marie carry me up to the Bath when everybody else had eaten their fill and my ladies had each taken turns feeding me.

As we lay there soaking, Isnomi paddled over. "Id Mama ohtay?"

All I could do was kinda hum an affirmative, but Saffron tugged Menace to us and quietly said, "Mama got hurt fighting some Spartans who'd invaded one of our watchtowers."

Before Saffron could say anything else, our daughter growled. "Wheyah awe dey?"

Yeah, that got me sitting up despite my post op fatigue. "Yeah, you're not going hunting them yet, Menace."

"Why nod?" Without letting me get an answer in, she muttered, "nevah led me hewp."

I reached out, tugged her to me, and settled back down. "Someday, Menace. Someday. Not yet though."

"When?"

I shrugged and snuggled her. "Dunno. Kinda tired at the moment."

"Isnomi Aetos-Diaz, stop harassing your Mama. She promised to take you along when you're big enough, did she not?"

"Yeth, Ma."

"Then you will wait until she says you are big enough." Saffron sighed, then wrapped her arms around both of us. "It frightens me too much for me to ever let you go, but Mama is wiser than I am, I think." Menace went to say something, only to get interrupted by a big hug from Saffron. "Asking her if you can go along is fine. Being childish and pouting when she tells you no is only proof that you're not mature enough yet."

Isnomi just sighed, then said, "yeth, Ma."

"Besides. Your Mama already dealt with them. Locked them in the tower and melted it into slag with them inside."

Some part of me thought that was a little gruesome for a two year old, but most of me realized that the original Brothers Grimm had shit way more gruesome than that. But I wasn't about to lie to my kid, and needed to make sure Saffron knew the detail in any case. "All but one." Both of them looked at me, and I explained, "the officer. He made it out. I threw him."

"Where?"

I shrugged. "Not sure. East. Big tentacle, yeeted him as hard as I could."

Saffron snorted. "He may well be the first indication the Spartans have that their little punitive expedition hasn't fared as well as they hoped."

"Mmm... Needa talk t'you. Bout that. Military stuff."

"In the morning, if you're feeling recovered enough from your injuries."

"Kay." I barely got that word out before everything sort of faded into dreaming of my Maw. Karen, Orla, and Mads already had a bunch of chibi chefs doing telekinetic massage on that poor abused tentacle. One by one my other ladies showed up and joined them. At some point after that things got way less 'telekinetic' and more 'therapeutic massage'. Which kinda inevitably segued into 'erotic massage', followed by 'old school tentacle hentai'. Good times.

When I drifted back to consciousness, before I even opened my eyes, some tiny part of me thought that maybe my ongoing nocturnal erotic cinema might have something wrong with it. Then I very deliberately told that tiny part to shut the fuck up with that puritanical bullshit. That shit was literally a shared dream, one my ladies begged, bribed, and bullied me into letting them return to doing.

Stupid assed self imposed guilt trip averted, I let my eyes drift open to see the bed's population down to Siobhan, Hailee, Isadora, and me. I checked the position of the sun; not long before lunch. "You guys let me sleep in?"

"You seemed to need the rest," explained Siobhan. "The Imperator would let us know if you're needed."

I rooched over, kissed my Darling thoroughly, then said, "thanks, Ice Pop." Then I gave Hailee a hug. "Thanks for your help yesterday, too."

"It's okay, Mama." She paused, considering her next words. "I like helping."

"And you are a very helpful girl, and I'm proud of you for that." I pushed myself up to my knees, then before getting out of bed leaned over and gave Isadora a gentle kiss on the forehead, so as not to interrupt her napping. She didn't stir, didn't say anything, but she smiled. "Welp, I gotta get going. Need to talk to Saffron today."

"Have a nice day, Mistress."

I rolled out of bed, slipped a uniform on with a thought, and stepped to the Grand Council Chamber. Saffron looked up from where she'd been talking with Lenny and Mrs. Driver. "Hey Kitten, you got time for lunch?"

She exchanged looks with the other two, shrugged, and said, "certainly." Then to the other two, "let me know if more manpower is needed to keep everyone supplied until the first thaw."

They nodded, and I snagged my Kitten and stepped us both to her office in our Academy suite, Co-Locating one of me down to the kitchens as I did.

"Here I thought we'd be visiting that cafe again today?"

I scrunched up my nose. "Isn't it a little cold for that?"

She sniffed. "Not like either of us is susceptible to such things."

"Meh. The cafe owner probably still is. Besides, I thought you'd like," tentacles slipped around her, lifting, separating, stealing away a few square inches of silk as I Co-Located another of me to settle her thighs on my shoulders. "Something warmer?"

She leaned her head back on my shoulder, turning to whisper breathily in my ear. "So is this to be a pit stop, then?"

One mouth full, another nibbling at her shoulder, I stepped back from the kitchen and held a petite dumpling out for her to nom. "Nah. No rush today. I think you need a full servicing today."

She swallowed, chuckling. "I thought you didn't..." When she caught her breath she continued. "Like that word?"

"Eh. This is more of a metaphor. Besides, more important thing. Do you like it?"

I chuckled as I slipped another bite between her lips, careful not to choke her with it. Not like she could die from that, but it wouldn't be pleasant. Okay, probably wouldn't be pleasant. My Kitten, she can get really freaky at times. She breathed into my ear. "That depends entirely on the quality and comprehensiveness of the servicing."

"I dunno. I service you too hard we might have to find a new Imperator."

Swear it did bad things to my self control when she snorted and said, "if I'm that fragile, I'm not fit to be Imperator."

"Willing to risk your job for this?"

"Really?" I shrugged. All three of me, which jiggled her physics in ways she very clearly reacted to. "Oh. Oh, my. I insist then. Thorough it must be. Attack dog?"

"Woof!"

"Service me."

Turns out the impact of me throwing Mana into Gift Ecstasy is even more pronounced on Mortals. No actual death, but the little ones conspired to steal my sweet Kitten's consciousness away completely. Had to go tell Lenny and Mrs. Driver I needed my wife for the rest of the day. Lenny's frown might have made me feel guilty if it weren't for Mrs. Driver's sappy grin. Took Saffron home, settled her into the bed snuggled in with her head on Siobhan's breast, and spent the day playing with the kids and making dinner.

Hey, the woman spent most of the prior day doing surgery on my dumb ass, she deserved an afternoon off.

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