Dear Diary,

  I know I've talked a couple times about maybe missing my calling back in the day. Camden in general and Eastside in particular did not have much in the way of real outdoor disorganized sports. I mean yeah, there were things like basketball and football, but I said disorganized and I meant disorganized. In case it's not become abundantly clear, I'm not much of a team player. It's not even that I dislike teams, either, but I'm not exactly what you'd call organized enough to follow through on any kind of plan that somebody else gives me. I can barely follow through on plans I've made up, and half of the time I'm only doing that because I'm making it up as I go along.

  I think that's what turned me off of going into the military back there. Appearances notwithstanding, I'm not an idiot. Most of the training in the military, especially in the parts where they expect you to be out on the sharp end, is designed to follow orders, to conform to expectations, to act without thinking. I even get why; they're making weapons, and they want to make sure they can control the weapons they make. That did not appeal to me in the slightest. Even that tiny voice inside thinking 'but they'll teach me how to get my shit together' realized that my shit would not, in fact, be together my way. That whole deal is designed to break a trainee down and rebuild them into a soldier. Which, to be honest, might have been good for me. Even if I might not have come out of it entirely 'me' as I thought of myself.

  Of course, when I thought about it I always thought about something moderately safe. Something administrative, or maybe something in the Navy or Air Force. Airfield Management, maybe. Or maybe go even safer and get into the Coast Guard. A couple of the old heads at Eastside were all about getting us into the Coast Guard, mostly because it Guards the Coast. Right there in the name. Which, since nobody in the past century has been dumb enough to mount an actual land invasion of the United States, meant not getting involved in actual warfare. Maybe running down smugglers, which sounds a little dangerous, but then I think about exactly what a speedboat would do to the Black Dragon. Shit, if they loaded one of those skinny little smuggler speedboats with explosives and rammed her, I think she might need to go into drydock for a new paint job or some shit.

  Yeah, I know, it's not quite that safe, but it's still gotta be better than trudging through a village in go-fuck-yourself-istan tryna make things 'safe' for folks who don't even want you there.

  That's kinda the weird thing, though. All that thought to going into the least dangerous part of the military, tryna avoid any kind of actual combat, and then I get here and now, wind up throwing myself into combat time and again, and it turns out I've got a talent for that shit. Not even really a physical talent, either. I mean, yeah, by now I've pumped enough Mana into my here-and-now body while working out that even before I light off my Strong Arm and Swift Foot I'm pretty sure I could outfight most boxers back in the day. I don't know exactly how much I bench press, or curl, but it's a lot. But I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the whole mental thing. My responses, as duBois sussed out not long after meeting me, are all about bringing the hurt. Doing it fast and hard and without anything resembling mercy or restraint. Wrecking shit.

  So, y'know, if I'd have signed up to be a Marine or some shit like that, I might have wound up finding my place. Prolly not, though, because back in the day the US Military had this thing against women in combat. Like we'd ever avoided being in combat. But they weren't about to put us in the Infantry, which, to be clear, is probably where I'd have found my best life. Running around in the woods, learning new and interesting ways to bring the hurt, wrecking shit as a profession, vocation, and avocation. Not unlike I'd been doing for the past bit.

  All day yesterday we tracked that big bastard of a Dire Bear back to where it'd come from. Okay, the hunters and Chloros tracked it. Turns out her whole forensics thing left her with imperfect instincts regarding shit like vegetation and natural terrain, but her eye for detail might have been better than Panther's. Definitely better than Silk's, because at least twice in my hearing she pointed out details he'd missed.

  I honestly felt kinda sorry him by the end of the day. We'd pushed hard, and all of us were a little sweaty and worse for wear, but he'd started out so pretty that it showed more on him. Of course, even in that he wound up looking like he'd stepped out of a movie or some shit. Might not have had to have my Kitten push too hard at all to get him alone in the shower and help him get clean, then an entirely different flavor of dirty. Of course, when I suggested with eight of them they ought to do four watches to let everybody get a little more sleep, he said something about partnering up with Chloros to 'show her he could appreciate details'. I've never seen a man look so hurt and betrayed by life as when she looked him right in the eye and said, "thanks for the offer, but I've got a partner."

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  Then Ryan pulled an issue pup tent out of her tinker pack, and before he got over being turned down flat like that, the two of them had set it up and crawled in. With Ryan definitely smirking at him before she closed the tent flaps.

  Panther didn't help, what with the whole laughing his ass off thing. Worst of all was when Mackenzie rolled her eyes and said, "fine. I'll stand watch with you, Silk," and Panther absolutely fell over laughing even harder.

  Something about 'second choices' or shit like that. Silk, of course, earned a little respect from me by not only accepting Ryan and Chloros' rejection without throwing a tantrum, but by not acting like Mackenzie was, in fact, his second or third choice. They actually took first watch, in fact, and if they both rolled their eyes at the noises coming from Ryan's tent, they kept a decent watch. Mackenzie even kept a solid Alarm Ward up for the full time as well.

  For Ryan and Chloros' part, they even let Silk and Mackenzie borrow the tent when they took second watch.

  I, of course, did not get to sleep. Didn't want to lose even a second if another fuckin' Dire Bear wound up coming at us in the middle of the night.

  We started moving before dawn. Not long before midday, we found something I took as Not Good News. A big divot in a hillside, like something the size of an airliner had curled up there for the night. Which meant the fuckin' Dire Bear had been moving faster than us. When I mentioned that to the others, Panther shook his head. "Not the worst part."

  "What is then?"

  He sighed, straightened, then scampered up to the top of the hill. I stepped up there and joined him, and he looked around and climbed up the nearest tall tree. I hopped up next to him, then looked the way he was pointing. "See there? And there? And there?"

  He'd pointed at some of the more obvious signs of the Dire Bear's passage we'd spotted along the past couple ridge lines. It took me a second. "Son of a bitch."

  "Straight line."

  I nodded. "Yeah. I get it. I don't know how, but that thing was heading right for our fuckin' house."

  Kitten?

  Yes, love?

  Get a bell for the fuckin' West Tower, and keep somebody on watch.

  I heard the tension in her mental voice when she asked, Are you expecting an attack?

  it looks like that most recent fuckin' Dire Bear came straight at our place from a solid day out, at its pace. Don't want to find out it's got some smaller cousins we missed when they're coming over the fence.

  Understood. Marie?

  My Murder Mittens replied immediately. Heard.

  Mostly because my adrenaline kept spiking despite the most recent Dire Bear being dismembered and spread across several pantries, not to mention the bones currently being preserved to be added to our fence, I thought, Keep one of you in the tower until we can get a bell up there? Her only response was a solid burst of pure 'duh' energy. Oddly, that made me feel a lot better. Thanks, Mittens.

  Welcome, Vlickies.

  After that, we kept moving. Right into the face of another fuckin' snowstorm. As it started to come down for real, Panther waved me in. "You want to keep moving in this?"

  I nodded. "Yeah. If someone or something is sending fuckin' kaiju ursine at my fuckin' house, I want to find out who it is and explain that shit will not fly." I paused, took a deep breath. "Can you still track it in this shit?"

  He shrugged. "Probably. It's not small. It wasn't subtle."

  I looked around, and most of the Cadets nodded. Silk looked sour, and Chloros looked a little doubtful, but the others all seemed ready to keep going. "Okay then. If it gets bad enough two of the three of you," I nodded to Silk, Panther, and Chloros, "think you're losing the trail, we'll stop and weather the storm." When they all nodded in response, I waved northwest. "Let's keep moving then."

  We wound up having to stop about an hour before sunset. I only knew that because I knew the position of the sun despite the intervening cloud cover and ongoing blizzard. Would have been all kinds of pissed, except for some amusement from the absolute least expected place in the world. I shouldn't have been quite so amused by Silk looking so crestfallen when Mackenzie decided to bunk down with Panther for the night. It wasn't very mature, adult, or leaderly of me.

  Funnier watching Brown wink over their shoulder at the rest of us as they led him off to find a spot to take first watch.