Diary of a Teenaged Mimic

Dear Diary,

Marshall duBois deserves some kind of award for Playing Way Stupider Than He Is. Seriously.

So today started out pretty normal, at least normal for my days here at PCHA. Saffron knocked on my door, I answered naked, she gave me a really awful frown and asked, "Won't your boyfriend get jealous?"

I shook my head with a little chuckle, "Omigod, he is so not my boyfriend. Really not my type at all." A not very little white lie there, but just because he's my type doesn't mean he's my boyfriend. Especially considering the whole 'Patron / Devotee' relationship turned the entire concept into a sexual harassment nightmare. Nope, not even going there.

Whatever she saw in my eyes must have convinced her, because her awful look melted into a smirk. "More fool him, then. See you at breakfast."

She turned and walked off, and I got dressed for the day and followed her. Oddly enough, I got to breakfast before her. As she sat I paused my devouring for a moment and said, "You take the long way or something?"

She blushed and replied, "I had to stop at the infirmary."

I put on my best 'concerned friend' face and asked, "Are you sick, or something? We can cover for you during PT and CT if you want." I nodded to the others, who both nodded agreement with me. The gobbos at the table didn't chime in, but didn't interrrupt either.

Saffron shook her head. "No, I... I was... I had a condition. I'm good now, but I need to stop by the Infirmary at least once a day to deal with, ah, the aftereffects."

I frowned at her, mentally telling her not to bullshit a bullshitter, but I only said, "If you're sure?"

She nodded, so I shrugged and went back to demolishing tray after tray of food, watching duBois out of the corner of my eye. Right after I stood to go, he called out, "Cadet Diaz, come up here."

Pretty much every school I'd attended prior to this I'd have been accompanied by a chorus of 'ooh, somebody's in trouble', but here all I got were looks from the ROTC kids; I shrugged and waved them off, and they headed for the Practice Yard in a rush. I got to watch the rest of the Dining Hall react, something I normally couldn't do, what with me being the front of the pack. First like half of our PT class got up and jogged after the ROTC kids, including one of the gobbos at our table who I hadn't recognized all hunched over and gobbo-ing. Next, Larry and his wingmen stood, brushed down their uniforms, and almost-marched out of the room, followed by the rest of our PT. I say 'almost marched', because my old ROTC DI used to drill it into us that a group of soldiers marching had a certain sameness to them, above and beyond any formation they kept in. A proper marching unit looked like a unit, not just a bunch of guys. Larry and his Losers seemed like each and every one of them had to make themselves distinct somehow, whether by not keeping pace with the others, strutting, walking out of line, or whatever.

At any rate, I watched while they all left, then watched the Marshall taking his time finishing his food. He didn't, like, deliberately fuck around or anything, but he wasn't just shoveling in food as fast as he could. A minute after everybody left, he closed his eyes for a minute, and I barely made out his lips moving. Praying in the middle of a meal seemed kinda weird, but yesterday I literally sat down and had lunch with my own Personal Jesus, so I figure I'm not the best judge of odd.

After that he went back to eating, and I just stood there at a reasonable Parade Rest while watching him eat. At one point I opened my mouth to ask if I could go back to my table and finish breakfast, but before I got a word out he held up a hand, forestalling me. To be fair, he'd almost finished everything on his plate, and he scooped up the rest into a single big mouthful and washed it down with the remains of the very-much-not-water in his stein.

"Did you want to ask me something, Cadet?"

"Doesn't seem relevant any longer, Sir."

He just nodded, wiped his mouth with a napkin, stood, stretched, and left the table, waving for me to follow him. We didn't head for the yard. Instead, we climbed straight past that level of the Practice Yard, leaving the steps on the level above that. Doors lined the left wall, and in the daylight I saw nameplates on all the closed ones. Tall, skinny windows into the Practice Yard lined the right wall, and I caught glimpses of the other Cadets doing laps as I followed duBois. About a third of the way down the hall we turned and went through the door with the Marshall's name on it. His office furniture matched my idea of him, all heavy indestructible shit like in the dorm rooms, albeit with slightly comfier chairs, and three of those to boot. I did not expect the papers covering almost every horizontal surface, and the shelves upon shelves of books above his desk really took me by surprise.

He turned, spun his chair around to face me, and sat down. Slipping into Parade Rest seemed safer than trying for a seat. "Cadet Diaz, do you know why I've called you here?"

"Not a clue, Sir."

"At ease, Diaz." I relaxed a little, and obeyed his implied suggestion that I stop staring over his head at his bookshelf. He nodded and said, "Are you sure you have absolutely no idea why you're in my office?"

"Have I done something wrong?"

He sucked at his teeth for a second before saying, "That remains to be seen. Humor me; if you had to guess why I called you up here, what would you guess?"

I shrugged and looked at the ceiling for a second before replying, "Well, it's got to be something extraordinary, either good or bad. Since I know it can't be about my Patron, I know it's not about anything I've done on Mondays, despite what Sister Trease said."

DuBois interrupted saying, "How do you know it can't be about your Patron?"

"You wouldn't be giving me credit for something he did, and based on the laws about religious freedom in Phileo City, it would be illegal for you to punish me for my choice of Patron or anything I did as a Devotional Act to him." I laid that line down with sublime confidence, but let me tell you my asshole puckered like never before at the thought of straight up telling duBois what he could or couldn't do.

I tried not to let my relief show when he gave me an appreciative nod, "So you've been studying Phileo City Law in your spare time?"

I shrugged again, "I get bored sometimes, and I read for fun. I can't say I made any kind of real coordinated study of it, but I've got a copy of 'Law and Custom of Heroic, Phileo City Edition' back in my room, and it's good for nights when I can't sleep."

Marshall duBois managed to stifle his grin, but a small bark of laughter made it out of him anyhow. "So that's where that copy went. Sister Cheryl will skin you for making off with one of our books. She'll rub salt all over you if you've actually damaged it."

I held one hand to my chest in the classic 'well, I never!' pose and said, "Hurt a book? I don't care what my Patron thinks about it, that's sacrilege!"

I'm not sure to praise you for a perfect lie, or be annoyed that you're telling the truth.

Ignoring my Patron's buyer's remorse, I smiled a little and said, "On the other hand, freeing poor imprisoned knowledge is absolutely an act I Devote to my Patron."

I cannot wait to see where you take this next.

The Marshall lifted both hands to cover his face, rubbing at his temples. After a few moments, he rubbed his face, shook his head, and exhaled explosively, like a whale blowing out steam or something. He looked at me and said, "Point to you, Diaz. Now. How did you get that cut in your uniform?"

I gotta admit, that blindsided me just a little. Still, I don't think I'd done anything wrong, so I just shrugged and said, "Some guys tried to mug me on my way home Tuesday afternoon."

"And..."

He wanted the whole story. I thought about it a second, figured if anything I'd done was against the rules, they were rules I didn't know about, so just went with the straight up truth. "One guy a little taller than me, two shorter guys with knives, and three others behind me I didn't get a good look at right away. I offered to just give them the stupid fake jewelry they wanted, but then they suggested they were gonna molest me, so I broke the big guy's nose, stomped one of the shorter ones, and ran back to the Academy."

His questions came at me rapid fire, as quick as my answers. "Just like that?"

"Just like that."

"How did your shirt get cut?"

I thought a second, "Honestly? I'm not certain, but I think it got cut when I broke past the one little guy with a knife."

"I thought you said there were two guys with knives?"

"Yeah, but I never got close to the other one."

"Can you describe them?"

"The short guys not so much; just really short and wearing a lot of concealing clothes. The big guy's name is Rocky. He looks kinda like some of the maids. Like, do you know Marie?"

That made duBois pause a second. "You want me to bel..." He shook his head, "How are you even..."

Finally, with a huge sigh, he said, "You'll need to curtail your outings or take a guard with you." He held up a hand to forestall my complaint. "Not on Mondays, obviously. But if this Rocky comes looking for you while you're on your own." He paused, shook his head. "I don't even want to think about that, really."

"He won't."

I'd heard the term 'piercing gaze' before. Now I knew what it meant. "What. Exactly. Do you mean by that?"

"I had some aggression to work out yesterday. I paid him and his thugs a visit, explained our relative places in the social hierarchy. He failed to object, and his lackeys seemed to agree with my assessment."

He sucked on his teeth again, closed his eyes and said, "Is he dead?"

"No! No, no, really, he was breathing when I left him. Hell, the worst thing I did to him was a healing spell."

His eyes popped open. "A healing... you Stabilized him?"

"Kinda, yeah?"

"How bad did you beat him that he needed that?"

"I didn't, really. I hit him with it and that kinda ended the fight."

I watched as he just kind of worked his mouth, no words coming out. I swear it looked like he couldn't find a way to wrap his mind around the idea.

"You put together a Stabilize in the middle of a fight? How did you keep him from seeing it?"

"I kept it behind my back."

The Marshall's eyes went a little wider, "You put together a Stabilize without being able to see it?"

"I mean, it's a Cat's Cradle, just with Mana. We used to do Cat's Cradles all the time back in Camden." I'm no critic, but I think I nailed the 'we used to bull's eye whomp rats' energy with that line. Marshall duBois didn't appreciate it. Philistine.

"How did you avoid getting hit with both hands behind your back?"

"Oh, I don't think I could do that. I held him off with my right hand."

He closed his eyes and very visibly counted to twenty. When he finished he spoke without opening them, "Cadet Diaz?"

"Yes, Marshall?"

"From this point forward, if you are in any altercation of any type with anyone on or off campus, you will tell me as soon as practicable. Since I have never known you to miss a meal, I expect that to be within eight hours. Do you understand?"

I slipped back into Parade Rest without thinking about it, "Yes, Sir. Report any altercations to you directly as soon as possible, no longer than eight hours."

"If you fail to do so, I will make you regret ever thinking of becoming a Hero. Do we have an understanding?"

"Sir, yes, Sir!" I figured, 'fuckit', and snapped off my best salute.

He just shook his head as his eyes slid open. "You're confined to quarters for the rest of the day. I'll have Marie bring you your meals. Consider this a punishment for... ah, hell, I'm not even going to enumerate everything you might have done wrong. I'm pretty sure there's more you haven't told me, either. Consider this your blanket consequence for all of it, known and unknown."

"That sounds more than fair to me, Sir." I mean, 'go to your room', when I didn't mind being in my room so long as I wasn't locked in? Oh, no. Anyway...

"Git. I've got to document all this in such a way that Trease doesn't explode on reading it."

"Yes, sir." I left his office, stopping at the Practice Yard window opposite his doorway. I leaned out to see how my friends were doing.

Marshall duBois stood in the middle of the Yard, hollering at various Cadets to run faster, lift more, jump higher. I spun, and there he sat, and the same words, just muttered instead of screamed, filtered out of his office.

Goddamn sneaky fuckin' bastard. Fighting him would be a nightmare.

Funny, I swear I heard him think something very similar about you.