Dear Diary,

  Yesterday's creepy unknown shit left me a little paranoid, I think. Okay, a lot paranoid. Which, to be clear, could be considered a survival trait, what with Dire Bears and Hostile Gods and Cities of Questionable Alignment and, y'know, Sparta, not that I think they're the sort to send assassins. My point is more that I've got plenty of legitimate stuff to be worried about, but none of that shit feels like the thing I need to be watching out for.

  Again, it's weird that I no longer put Lenny Lancaster or even Ophelia Orange on that list. Like, they're pains in the ass, and I'm pretty sure Ophelia would cross the street to kick me if she saw me down, but being a anal retentive jerk and a spiteful bitch aren't really things I'm all that worried about. She's not stupid enough to actively plot or act against the Alliance itself, especially now that we're the ones defending New Amsterdam's borders and negotiating with their next northern neighbor. But if she could do so with plausible deniability, I think she'd totally fuck with my social life, my career, or other shit like that. Thing is, she has next to no influence over my career, and she sure as shit has zero ability to impact my social life. I seriously think if she came up to Saffron after a Grand Council meeting and said something about me sleeping with someone, Saffron would tell her she knew about it already just to spite her.

  Still kinda fucks with me that she wouldn't be pissed about the actual 'sleeping with' part, even if it were true. She'd just be irked that she didn't hear about it from me. I mean, shit, Panther was entirely focused on me, and she just watched, kinda bemused, while all the goings on went on. As the song says, I may be a sucker with no self esteem, but even I can get the point when someone's carpet bombing my skull with bunker busting hints. It's just so fuckin' weird, and right now weird shit is rubbing me the wrong way, because paranoia.

  Equally weird is that when it come to Lenny Lancaster, I think I'd actually get support from him if I needed it. I mean, I'm even planning on testing that next week. I dunno if he's some kind of narcissist or not, but he clearly does whatever he does for the good of House Lancaster. Right now, I think he's decided that his son and the Alliance are both better for Lancaster than him and Odin, and that's gotta be a bit of a kick in the crotch for old One Eye. Then again, maybe he's just biding his time and shit. I dunno. But right now, I think I can trust him; not because he's trustworthy per se, but because he's smart and 'happy Tabitha helping his son' gets him what he wants faster and more reliably than 'pissed off Tabitha Mineral Bonding his own severed cock up his ass. Seriously, Larry's a friend of mine, I wouldn't off his dad off immediately just for pissing me off.

  When I think about saying things like that I realize how much I've changed. Back in the day I wouldn't be serious about offing somebody unless I thought I could hide the body or my involvement, because I lived in a constant state of fear. On the other hand, if I could have gotten away with it, I would have totally offed some rich bigoted snob just for being a rich bigoted snob. Now I'm absolutely sure that if I walked into the Grand Council chambers, tortured Leonard to death in full view of rest of the Council, the worst consequence I'd face would be George and Mrs. Driver's disappointed disapproval. Shit, if I had some kinda reason, like he was involved with something shitty, I might not even face that. But I wouldn't do that, entirely because he's my friend's dad, and Larry might feel some kinda way about it.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Anyway, had a lot of time to think about that shit overnight, because while I was not happy about another fuckin' kaiju bear on the loose, I was not about to be that dumb bitch who leads her squad into a 'stand of weird trees' in the dark, only to realize that we're walking under the kaiju's belly. Yeah, I can see in the dark, but it's far from perfect, and not all my Cadets have anything like better than human night vision.

  So we rested, them taking watches and me doing slow, quiet laps while I thought about stuff.

  Hey Kitten?

  Mmm. Yes, love?

  Remind me next week to talk to Lenny Lancaster?

  Yes, love.

  With that she fell back to sleep. I didn't want to use her as some kind of glorified secretary, but let's face it, she actually has a chance of remembering. She good memory person in charge, me attack dog. We each have our roles, and while we have fun playing with those roles, there's a reason we have them.

  Bright and early in the morning, the seven of us broke camp and followed the Dire Bear. The one bit of possibly good news was that it wasn't making a bee line for anywhere. It kinda meandered along in a mostly southerly direction. A little more southeast than south, maybe, but the meandering path we followed made it a little hard to tell.

  Of course, that path showed us that the new Dire Bear was, if anything, bigger than the last one. There were a couple trees it had pretty clearly just nommed all the leafy bits from. Not, like, sucked the leaves off, but ripped off leaves, little branches, even some bigger ones and just ate all of it. A few places we saw blood splotches; about what you'd expect if a Great Dane ate a fuckin' mouse. One of those blood splotches had an antler in it. A moose antler.

  It also didn't take much effort to track it. No matter where it stepped, short of solid rock, it left footprints. If we'd found a boulder with a bear paw shaped indent, I wouldn't have been super surprised.

  So we moved faster than we had while tracking the other Bear back to its den. We weren't quite sprinting, but we definitely ran as often as we could, only slowing when we had to scale a cliff the fuckin' bear had just kinda stepped over or shit. By lunch Chloros said the tracks were less than twelve hours old. Not sure how she knew, except maybe something about them not having been there before dawn? I got no fuckin' clue, but I trusted her training and judgement.

  Unfortunately, some time around midafternoon we stopped gaining ground. We'd gotten to maybe eight hours behind it, but weren't closing the gap any more. Right around nightfall, I looked at the Cadets and said, "keep moving, I gotta check something in M-Space. Heads on swivels, Cadets."

  I stepped over to M-Space to check my tentacles. I'd meant what I said, the reach of my big tentacles in the Mortal Realm was kinda curtailed. I rose until I could see them clearly on the horizon, then reached out to myself. Here in M-Space the big ones could reach, no problem. I lay my hand on one of them, pulling in Mana to keep myself fresh and topped off, hoping that if we did come across a Bear that made an AT-AT look like a matchbox car, me having all the Mana in the world to hit it with shit would make a difference.

  Right before I stepped back to the Mortal Realm, where I half intended to test my tentacles' reach on that side, I noticed a figure leaping toward me. Paranoia still tickling at the back of my brain, I had Mana Blades extended before I recognized her.

  Lily slid to a stop in front of me, skittering away a couple steps, as if that would matter. "Tabitha Diaz! Rabbit sent me to find you! The town is in danger!"