Dear Diary,

"Redemption is all about, Every turn improving, Because that's how a drill works." - Tabitha Diaz, Doctrine of Tabitha, Book of Redemption

In this, the final Verse of the Book of Redemption, Tabitha tells us once again what she means when she speaks of Redemption. Here she once more focuses more on how Redemption is supposed to affect us, showing us how and why via the metaphor not of a weapon or mark of rulership, but of a drill, a tool used by craftsmen. She explains that with each turn, each attempt we make to reach our goals, we ought improve, do better than the previous attempt. While she has over the past Verses made it clear that our attempts may fail, she also exhorts us to stay the course in pursuit of our goals, even as we adjust our methods, so that each attempt brings us closer to our goals. For most of us are not Gods, or Nobles, or Heroes, or even 'above average'. That's what average means, after all, the most common thing of a group. In this, Tabitha speaks to us all, gives those of us not born with wealth, or power, or talent the secret to success in the face of adversity. Like a drill, which with each pass of its cutting edge scrapes away the smallest layer of an obstacle, each and every one of us can scrape away at the obstacles preventing us from reaching our goals. Step by step, inch by inch, layer by layer we advance, until each and every one of us stands in the light of our own success, our own personal Redemption. - Priestess Most High Above All Others, Archmage Imperator Saffron Aetos-Diaz, Commentary on the Doctrine of Tabitha

Y'know, maybe it's the exhaustion talking, but this one kinda blew me out of the water. Seriously, my Kitten, and by this I mean the big one I have sex with, not the little ones that are a result of me having sex with Marie, took an obscure Anime reference from back in the day and turned it into an inspirational message for folks here and now. Shit, I think I'd be inspired even if I'd never seen that show. With Simon shouting that shit into my brain, I hear it and I'm absolutely pumped.

But the thing is, she hasn't seen that show either. She looked at my dumbass in joke nonsense and connected it to something huge chunks of the people of the Alliance, my people, know and understand. Something they can relate to, and apply to their own lives. Not just the folks up at the gifted end of the bell curve, either, but the folks in the middle who, like she said, didn't win the birth lottery in any fashion. Fuck, that shit would work even for somebody who lost that lottery.

Okay, maybe not the folks at the very bottom. The ones born poor, and disabled, and underpowered in any way you can think of. I'm sure at some point there's a tier of folks where Kat Williams would say 'you have done all that you can, you have permission to sit this one out'. But just like poor 'ol Tink Tink, some of those folks are gonna read this and push themselves to scrape their way forward too. Y'know, if I find somebody like that, somebody that everyone in existence from the Fates to the street cleaners have shat on, and somebody reads them my Doctrine, or more likely Saffron's Commentary, and they drag themselves along until they hit a goal? Like, any fuckin' goal, because sometimes you gotta take wins when you can? I'd be proud to have followers like that.

Because sometimes it's not about talent, or connections, or anything but sheer, raw tenacity.

Speaking of tenacity, I had none left in the tank to make dinner yesterday. I lay there with Marie and the kittens, cycling two kittens at a time onto my tits as Marie attended to things like giving them cat baths with that big rough tongue of hers, massaging them and getting them to squirm around a little rather than just lying there completely motionless, and checking them over with eyes, nose, and claws.

Saffron brought us all dinner. I couldn't really blame Tallulah; Saffron had at least worked at Drivers' at one point in the past. As a waitress, not a cook, sure, and she didn't have much faith in her own cooking, but she had actually worked in a kitchen adjacent role. I think the closest Tallulah had been to the kitchen was sitting in her big dining room in the Overlord's Keep eating dinner brought out by those unseen servants of hers. So we all got sandwiches for dinner. I didn't recognize the bread. Which, to be clear, that only meant it wasn't mine, wasn't Academy bread, and I didn't think it was Drivers' bread. For all I knew Saffron baked it. It took me a couple times to make bread that wasn't grainy and sad, but I'm me. She's Saffron.

The kids helped carry ours up, and everybody ate in bed, despite my worries about crumbs. I mean, I didn't say anything. I was too tired. Couldn't figure out why, I'd only been up like thirty six hours by that point, I think. Okay, maybe forty eight. Numbers were hard. My nipples, after being nommed for like twelve hours straight by the time dinner was done, were not, and probably never would be again.

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On the other hand, Tallulah, Ria, and Maze took turns hand feeding me big scoops of scrambled eggs. I could only guess Saffron made a bunch to make sandwiches out of, and that bunch got out of hand. Took them like an hour just to shovel it all into me one mouthful at a time. Part of me wanted to tell Tallulah to just yeet it all into my Mimic Maw, but I told that part on no uncertain terms that it was not going to convince me to send one of my ladies to the Maw in person when I was this ravenous. Because I was. I ate everything they put close enough to my mouth.

Dreamt of my ladies parading Marie around my Maw like she'd just won the Indy Five Hundred or the Triple Crown or some solo Olympic event like, uh, I dunno, I was too tired. I just watched and surreptitiously slipped ladies into my Maw when they weren't looking. Took me until morning to realize they were totally looking, and that's why they giggled as I yoinked them out of the procession. Also, got woken up twice during the night as Marie swapped out kittens.

I drifted back to wakefulness to the smell of spicy eggs. Saffron had a tray just barely cracked open, waggling the lid to waft the smell across my face. I think it was actually kittens cranking at that which woke me, though. I scooched myself up, remembering at the last minute that I had tentacles to help shift pillows behind me while not dropping Erato or Hailee. Kind of neat, seeing the two girls with non-grayscale coloration side by side. Okay, I'm not sure why I thought that at the time, but I did. I also kinda thought they'd both filled out a little over the twenty four hours since they'd been born, but that might have just been me hallucinating.

I stroked them as they nursed, and they purred at me, and I kinda melted as my Kitten shoveled spicy eggs into me. "Tabitha?"

"Mmm?" Took me a second. Yeah, Kitten?

"Why are you me?"

Yeah, I'd totally forgotten. Uh, nursing?

She chuckled. "May I?"

I blinked. You wanna nurse them? Sure, I guess. I had no idea why she wanted to, but I surprised myself with how little I wanted to hand them over. Okay, I guess I understood why she wanted to.

But she just shook her head and kept shoveling food into me. "I meant may I do something with your Shapeshifting?"

I shrugged. Sure. Everything shrank a little bit. Then I realized that I'd grown. I Co-Located to look at myself and saw... myself. Okay, myself but with my breasts swollen all out of their normal proportions. My here and now body's breasts aren't small by any means, but they're normally nice handfuls. These were the kind of knockers that would cause traffic accidents. The fuck?

As I collapsed back into myself, she chuckled. "I just Shapeshifted you back to look like yourself."

So I'm me Mimicking you Shapeshifted into me?

She thought about that. "Pretty much, yes."

Neat. I yawned. Why am I so tired?

Her grin got wide. "Likely for the same reason that, while I'm not averse to taking a turn nursing later, once they're partially on solid food, I'm not doing so now. Nor will Tallulah." I must have looked particularly mystified, because she said, "You remember your appetite before you found your first Worshipper?"

Who?

"Me, silly. But you remember how you pushed even the Academy's kitchens?" I nodded. "Powering a Divine being with nothing but Mortal food?" I nodded again. She just stared at me, shoveling in spicy eggs, until the lightbulb flickered.

I glanced down at Erato and Hailee. Really?

"With a Demigoddess for a mother, and a Primordial's Demigoddess Avatar as a Sire, did you really expect any less?"

I laughed a little. Our food bills are gonna go through the roof.

She shrugged. "I'm putting it on the same part of the Alliance military budget as the Academy kitchens."

That put a frown on my face, although with the way my brain was moving about as fast as molasses running uphill, it took me until lunch to really understand why. "I'm not sure I'm totally copacetic with that, Imperator Sexypaws."

She shrugged as she sliced my chicken tendies up into bite sized pieces. "With Marie and you as parents, I find the likelihood of at least one of them maturing into a particularly effective Hero high enough to consider it an investment."

"But..." She shut me up by application of chicken tendies to my mouth region.

"Love, consider this; the only place that's producing enough food to feed you right now while you feed our daughters easily is the Academy. At the same time, even you didn't impact the Academy food budget that much."

Really?

"Love, you ate as much as any ten cadets, certainly. Maybe twenty on a good day. But the Academy's budget is for five hundred Heroes, not to mention another five hundred Cadets." She shook her head. "If it makes you feel better, we'll be sure to find a way to pay it back somehow."

Pay it forward.

She blinked, and I realized that I didn't ever remember saying that around her before. She mouthed the words, then said, "pay it forward. I like the sound of that." She smiled at me and shoveled more food into me. "As my Goddess wishes. We will pay it forward."

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