The Talent was a little shitbird, but he's also not a liar.

I can feel myself learn faster, heal faster, endure stress better. The spear I took from the farmhouse - strange abilities have awoken in it, and they give me a confidence I did not have before. I feel like the Highlander when he discovered his Quickening - and I have contacts now who have experienced the same.

It is time to plan something big.

The first step requires the acquisition of a new identity - someone useful, the kind of face I can get a delivery truck registered to. Lavaz gave me a good target - some rich white douchebag who spends his money golfing and probably buying indulgences from his local church so he can keep his Venezuelan chocolate slaves or whatever the fuck. She's a viper, that woman, but I will put up with her for now. I should have the liquid assets to pay her fees once I take him out anyways.

I met a colleague on the job - I don't know who he works for or what his real name is, but he's a man after my own heart and just as paranoid as me. I introduced myself as Eowyn, and he as Merry, and between the two of us the job went a la mode. Stuck around and had a dinner the next day and got to attend the Pensacola Yule Armory Convention, which was a good way to unwind after an assassination. I got his number - once I get a new phone, I'll have to contact him.

Speaking of people I will need to contact, I should reach out to Blanche when I can - that creepy ass doctor has very, very smooth skin, and they let me do all sorts of things I wanted to to pay me back for how the farmhouse job went. Good taste in restaurants too, and they make the cutest noises, just like a pigeon.

Damn.

I need to get laid more often.

Maybe after I turn the world's biggest muskrat into a grease stain on a concrete block.

This contract business is addicting. New powers, new capabilities, new avenues - it's like a high that never ends, a train that can only get faster. New power flows through me - biblical power, the power to bind oaths on the stones of Hell itself. It's exhilarating - I don't know if God or Lucifer or anybody else is doing this for me or if I've simply found some way to tap into the nature of the universe, but wherever this comes from, I'm not going to squander it. My plans are coming along quickly - I have the trucks and the burner business, and I've made some headway with the Donna. We have a trial period - apparently her accountant wronged her somehow and she's been keeping him with some kind of lycanthrope as punishment, but it created the perfect opportunity for me to get a wedge in with the organization. I'm not where I want yet, but I've forged a covenant between Moreno and Lavaz written in blood in basalt diabolical. I have no doubt that soon, Donna Lavaz will come to understand what she could accomplish with these powers, and how little the price I ask truly is.

Soon, the tweetybird will tweet no longer, and hopefully those god-awful trucks will die with him.

I am extremely lucky that I know Blanche.

It was pretty opportune, all things considered - Cinder needed my help with something but wouldn't tell me what until I got up there. Turns out she wanted me to take out the head of some gang which has her under their thumb; I'd have done it, but she wasn't willing to talk price, so it wound up being a moot point.

What was not a moot point was who just happened to be staying with Cinder at the time: Blanche.

Blanche is... extremely, extremely capable.

Being down an eye is not ideal, but it is a lesson, and it's something I can compensate for.

Being down a hand? Being down a hand is a problem - one, it turns out, Blanche can fix.

We went on... I think it was a date? I'm not sure - but it ended with a dead neonazi, a new hand, and the best night I've had in recent memory, and all I had to pay for it was the promise of my spare time. Blanche has some sort of obsession with me, it seems - they're willing to help me at next to no cost. More than willing - eager.

Blanche might be my favorite person now.

It's a start - it's a fucking hell of a start, but it is a start.

Blanche got themselves into serious trouble with the Silver Cross - thank fuck we saved that pilot, Elijah, and that he got me there in time. I got to witness something truly horrifying - a parasite that made me trust easy. It was horrible - a violation of the worst kind, but it got me what I wanted: Blanche safe, and opened a door for me to form a lasting relationship with the Cross. Funny how the world works, that the truest and most faithful Catholic I have ever met now tends the wounds of a servant of the Adversary. They confirmed the boba monster isn't growing as well, which is always nice.

I also met with Trinity - I... misread her, but we're still collaborators, at least for now. I thought she was an idealist, like me - that her need to kill the false kings and lying prophets burning the world for cash was to save humanity from their jaws, but she's more short sighted than that: she wants revenge. I suppose that's understandable; I forget the privilege of others, sometimes. I forget they cannot understand the way I understand, cannot accept the brutal necessity of what must be done; cannot accept that in order for a new world to be born, the old one must burn before Apocalypse that the reckoning may come to pass and Eden be restored. She provided a safehouse and she provided contacts, and the trade was a favor - that I use my Gift in her service. She didn't even need me to seal the bargain with an oath, which was a surprising relief.

It is a start. I am meeting others - perhaps not always like minded, but at least aligned. Blanche. Trinity. Are they friends? Perhaps - Blanche certainly more than Trinity, but I hope that I can call Trinity friend too, someday.

It is comforting that though my role is to walk the path of Darkness, to console the Devil in His necessary torment, that I too am not denied the comfort of companions.

It is comforting to have friends.