Dear Diary,

I swear, I've spent so fucking much time trying to improve myself. To learn. To heal the trauma I came here with, become a better person. I've chased myself in circles about it, dragooned my entire family into helping me, and talked each and every repeated step to death here in my Diary. I think I've been making progress. Yeah, I still wind up getting my ass kicked a lot, but that's because I keep running into more dangerous situations, not to mention new situations I haven't had a chance to prepare for or learn to deal with. I beat the shit out of myself killing an army, might have killed myself fighting a plague, but just got some new scars and shit fighting a Primordial Dragon. I'm getting better.

Okay, I was. I thought I was. I've done my best fucking job at 'not doing the same dumb thing again'. Yeah, sometimes I do similar things, but that's because I think it's important enough to go through the pain again, and even there I try to do the thing better, whatever it is. But I try not to make the same damn fuckin' mistake I made that got me fucked over the time before.

I'd like to point out that this time it wasn't actually my fault. Not entirely, at least. Yeah, I put my power behind it. I knew that House Crow Blessing shit had strong enough metaphysical judo to flip me around like a rag doll, enough Mana Jiujitsu to fold me like a fitted sheet, its Magical Kung Fu anything but weak sauce. But I figured telling all that to the dude who straight up conned himself into immortality would wind up with him using all those brains, all that wit possessed by Witty Jack to maybe not fuck us all over.

Of course, I forgot one really important thing. My excuse this time is that I was focused like a laser on the whole 'House Crow Blessing' aspect of things, and I forgot the other part.

Love makes you stupid.

One moment I stood in Johnny's place, my tentacle resting along Adrienne's spine, full of Mana and ready to support her. Jack made his wish, Adrienne's Blessing kicked in, and then I wound up having to force a shitty, jury-rigged causality out of the shards shuddering around us like snow sliding down off a roof in big square chunks.

I stood in the swamp, and it took me a little bit to recognize the outskirts of Jackville. I only really recognized it because of a tree that split into two big branches, and had obviously lost a third, and wound up looking like a naked woman doing a handstand. Didn't mention it when I was doing laps because I see that kind of dumb shit all the time. The human mind is a pattern matching machine, and my brain in particular likes ferreting out the bits where Mother Nature showed that she, too has an inner Tomoko guiding her actions. Weirdest fucking thing, though; I stood within sight of the front of one of those warehouses I mentioned, but the guards who'd been there were nowhere to be seen.

No guards, no workers, nobody except Jack, Adrienne, and me, with my tentacle still holding them both. Okay, I know I'm me, and Adrienne still looked like Adrienne, but Jack? Jack wasn't the Jack we knew. He'd gotten taller, like a lot taller, while still being barely within human height ranges. He'd also lost weight. Dude looked like some kind of marionette, and moved kinda like one too. His shadow looked spidery under the noonday sun filtering through the Spanish moss dangling and lianas leaning away from the trees.

"Nimble Jack cannot be bound by any Mortal She!" He tumble-danced backward out of the grip of my tentacle, then spun about and pranced away.

Adrienne half turned to me as if to ask for, I dunno, advice or encouragement or something, but I wrapped that one tentacle around her waist and yanked her in Jack's direction. She might have been a little startled, but Adrienne isn't slow by any means. She turned that stumble into a skipping run after Jack, calling out, "but I am not just any Mortal She, but an Immortal Sidhe, Nimble Jack."

On the one hand, I didn't want to interrupt. This definitely had to be something Adrienne did for herself. If Jack were tryna hurt her, I might step in. I could try, anyhow. But I couldn't chase him for her, trick him for her, or seduce him for her. Shit, if this was a battle of the wits, I probably shouldn't even be giving her hints, except maybe in the most subtle of ways, like shoving her toward him to get her following.

On the other hand, I had to keep a tentacle in contact with her, keep power flowing into her, because holy shit was it ever. I shoved my Blend up until I was a fading dream, then chased after them, thanking duBois for all the Agility and Endurance training we'd done back at the Academy. Distance running is easy. Sprinting isn't hard. Parkour is challenging. Marathon Speed Parkour to keep up with the Fae idiot dancing through the swamp and the lovestruck idiot chasing him without doing anything to let either of them catch on to me following them was a bit of a bitch.

Stolen story; please report.

Nimble Jack danced through the swamp. I couldn't really describe it any other way. Honestly, he didn't seem like he had a destination in mind. He wasn't running to anywhere. Just keeping distance between himself and Adrienne. Trying to, anyhow, because she'd absolutely decided to cosplay a Jack seeking missile today. He flitted around like some kind of insect, where she came at him in as straight a line as terrain and obstacles allowed. Then, after she'd followed him for... some indeterminate length of time, just as she got to within a short dash and grab from catching him again, he turned and giggled out, "Immortal Sidhe? None such could ever catch me, for the noble Fae fear Death too much." At which point he turned and danced right the fuck across the surface of a pond, crossing on a series of 'logs' which started moving, swimming, acting very not log-like the moment his toes tapped them.

I thought about trying to help her somehow, but that absolute mad lady didn't hesitate, her feet hitting the Swamp Dragons while they'd still not quite focused on Jack. As she made her way across, following the lunatic she'd decided to woo, she called out, "Fear Death? Death is my Mother, I'll have you know. And Death runs in my blood, for I am of House Crow."

Yeah, I couldn't help her with her pursuit of Jack, but I sure as shit could keep pursuit off my shirt-tail daughter. I landed on the shoreline, turned, and growled at them, doing my best Menace impression. They all decided they had important Swamp Dragon things to do back in some other direction.

That pond had been the last big body of water before the terrain started rising. Jack took to the thickening trees, leaping from branch to branch, as Adrienne chased after him on the ground. He had to stick to branches that would hold him, but as I'd noted, he'd gone totally Skellington skinny, so he couldn't weigh all that much. Meanwhile the ground under the trees was anything but clear. Adrienne stuck to it like a champ, though, plowing through short grass and low shrubs, leaping over taller stuff, even parkouring off of a couple tree trunks to get over or around larger obstacles.

I'd kind of given up on being as quick or nimble as a dude whose defining characteristics were, in fact, 'quick' and 'nimble'. Even cheating by Translocating along beside the couple didn't make it easy, just possible.

Then Jack ran out of trees. He leapt down, spinning to face her, motionless. She leapt at him and snagged him around the neck, her legs going around his waist. Meanwhile he smirked at her and snarked, "the House of a Crow is a nest, and a Crow is a bird, but if you've not heard, plummeting is what a House does best."

The word 'best' Dopplered away to show Jack dropping out of a tree on the far side of a chasm, leaving Adrienne clinging to a vaguely Jack-sized bundle of sticks, which itself wasn't clinging to anything. Like bundles of sticks are wont to do, it fell apart, not to mention just plain falling. Adrienne didn't pause, didn't even fuckin' stop to think. As the bundle went down, she went up and forward, leaping away from the disintegrating stick-man, leaping up toward the cliff where Jack danced backward, turning away.

He stumbled when Adrienne flew upward, propelled to land with her toes on the cliffside, arms windmilling to keep her stumbling forward rather than falling backward. Hey, I still had my tentacle around her waist. I can fuck with perception too. Her gaze never left his eyes. He kept stumbling backward as she called out, "a House may fall, but love has given me wings, Nimble Jack. So very tall, my heart beats not but sings. So very fast, dancing over, under, and through the things, but though Jack may not last, to him my passion clings."

Okay, yeah, pretty awful doggerel, but it still threw him. He stumbled away, trying to keep away from her. They raced downhill, heading for the stream at the middle of the valley, his long lanky stride slowly losing ground to her absolute focus on pursuit. I might have waggled a little mana in certain spots, just enough to maybe inspire her to whip out momentary pearlescent Mana Blades to straight up hack through bushes he'd had to leap over. In one long leap, he crossed the watercourse, jumping straight from bank to bank. The moment his feet touched ground, he turned, spun, and held up one hand imperiously.

"As Fae, as Sidhe, as Crow Divine, the law you must obey! The law of Underhill states that none may hinder Nimble Jack! As Fae, as Sidhe, as Crow Divine, breaking rules will cost your life!"

I hadn't been sure if he'd been putting up barriers to stop her or puzzles for her to solve. Still wasn't sure, because something rippled under the surface of the stream, and by the way he ignored it I could tell he knew exactly what it was. Adrienne didn't try to imitate Jack's leap, but then she didn't need to. Instead of trying his twenty foot jump, she ran down the bank planting her foot as if to jump. As her weight shifted, something rose from the water, a long, crocodilian jaw. She didn't slow, but she didn't jump, either. She somersaulted forward, her heel hammering into the thing's nose, forcing it back closed, pushing her upright, until she used the thing as a springboard to launch herself at Jack.

As he stood there, jaw dropping, eyes bulging, as the maniac chasing him dunked on some kind of river dragon he'd placed between them, time seemed to slow. "The law, you say? Rules and words and oaths which cannot be taken back?"

She reached her arms out, going around him, but somehow she didn't tackle him. Honestly, given how skinny he was, she might have done some serious damage had she done so. Instead she swung around him, wrapping him up like the lianas wrapped around the trees, her face coming to rest right in front of his. "Then I hold you, Nimble Jack the Fae, to those same laws as well, for I am your Wife."

Then, in the light of the setting sun, she kissed him.

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