The Academy, Part 1

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The Academy

Part 1: A Conference

For a mathematical postdoc, going to conferences to hear and give presentations on research was a part of the job—a necessary step in one's career. Whenever the opportunity to attend one was first announced—usually appearing in his email inbox—he took a quick look at the topics being presented, who was going to be there, and the location—and from that made a decision on whether or not to apply.

This one had struck him as slightly odd from the start. He was surprised to find a conference being held relatively close to his "home" university; he hadn't thought there was any institution of higher education in that particular location. It wasn't unheard of for conferences to be held in more general-purpose venues, of course, but the location was still referred to as an "academy". However, what really caught his eye was the list of participants. A long-time expert in his field, someone he'd thought retired a few years ago, was apparently presenting some brand new research of his. From that—even if he couldn't present something himself—he had to go.

There was no fee to attend the conference, surprisingly. Even transportation would cost very little—essentially a short trip by train—and they were offering lodging on-site. All of this wasn't quite too good to be true, necessarily, but it all remained a bit strange. Yet every detail he could find about the conference seemed perfectly legitimate, and a senior professor he was working with encouraged him to go. So, ultimately, he went.

The institution hosting the conference was situated next to a modestly-sized town, seemingly just big enough to have the kinds of conveniences and attractions college students might want. He arrived by train around mid-morning and started toward the academy. Another curious point about the place, although it didn't concern this postdoc, was that it had no parking on-site. There was a large lot in the town that advertised long-term parking at an unreasonably good rate, but the only way to actually get on campus was to take one of several roads though the forest surrounding it.

That, of course, raised the question: Why was there a forest surrounding the campus? Well, "forest" was something of an exaggeration; he'd seen actual, wild forests before, and this one wasn't thick and dark like they were, and didn't give the impression of someplace wild or dangerous. There were multiple footpaths cutting through it to get onto or off of campus; the one he chose to use (the one closest to the town's train station, naturally) was extremely well-kept, and the only wild animals he encountered were small and harmless: Squirrels, chipmunks, and the like, which ran off as soon as they sensed a human's approach.

He was walking along the forest path, simultaneously enjoying this somewhat tamed version of nature while trying to fit together all of these strange pieces. Perhaps..it was a fairly new institution of some sort, hosting a conference in such a particularly generous way as an attempt to gain prestige? Maybe whoever was financially responsible for the place had decided to try to eliminate the problem of student parking, and give the campus a unique feel, by surrounding it in forest so nobody even could drive in and then subsidizing the lot outside? Or...?

The postdoc's musing, and his walk as well, were both halted; he didn't consciously register why right away, needing to unbury himself from his thoughts before trying to discern what physical stimulus had interrupted them. Even then, he had to take more time to do a mental double-take because the answer didn't make sense: The forest seemed bigger? Or rather, the trees around him, that he'd been walking between..taller?

The trees were all quite tall already, and it wasn't that he'd walked from a place with a majority of lower branches to a place with the branches higher up. No, it was the same trees that had been around him a second ago that simply seemed...taller. And this..gave him the distinct impression that the forest was bigger? Stumbling through all of these thoughts, looking around him, he felt equally certain that these thoughts didn't make sense as he did that the forest...the trees were growing larger still around him. He could just about trace the upward motion of some nearby limbs, slight though it was, and when he shook his head to look down, trying to get a sensible point of reference to convince himself he was wrong, he could swear he saw that coming closer. Furthermore...

“Wha..?” He realized now that, when he'd shook his head, he'd felt its soft locks moving through the wind, some of them touching his ears, his cheeks...even his chin. “That doesn't..” he muttered quietly, reaching a hand up to put it through his hair, and so only confirming that it was trailing nearly down to his shoulders on the sides. In fact, he could feel the ends of some locks quickly making their way down the back of his neck, followed by the slight weight of hair landing directly on his shoulders and upper back. “But..?”

“Aah!” All of this confusion was interrupted by a sudden chill down his spine, making him shudder violently for a second, and then a tingling sensation radiated out from there all across his skin. Still shivering slightly from that, he moved his hand—the one still hovering near his head after it touched his hair—to touch his chin, and found the skin there unusually soft and smooth. As clean-shaven as he usually was, this was still not how he expected it to feel. “Wha, what is...?” At the same time, the tingling seemed to progress into a slight sort of inward push all across his body.

The feeling that the forest was getting bigger intensified, and—finally putting things together—he realized that, actually, he was shrinking. Looking quickly downward (and feeling even longer hair than before flutter out behind and around his head as a result), he spotted not only the approach of the ground from below him, but also an extremely visible slimming and softening of his entire frame. His shoulders were narrowing, his waist slimming, and his arms and legs growing thinner and shorter; his hands and feet were getting visibly smaller. All of this resulted in his clothes swiftly loosening, then spreading and fall out around him. They, like the forest, seemed ever bigger...

“Wha~ah, h-ho~oowh..?” As he incoherently expressed his confusion, he found his voice cracking and squeaking strangely, refusing to sound as deep as he was used to. “Aa~ah, m-my vo~oice to~oo..?” It lilted higher and higher, seeming to lose maturity—to grow smaller in its own way. And while the strange pressure that had come with the shrinking started to lose its intensity, his loss of height decelerating seemingly as a result, he became distinctly aware of a tingling sensation right between his legs, which started at a similar intensity to the one he'd felt before, but soon grew stronger and more intense.

“Mmnh—!?” A high, extremely young-sounding voice came out while he found that this tingling was making his face grow warm and his heart beat faster. “Aah..aaa~aah..!” All of a sudden his clothes began to shift and move around on him, primarily starting with shrinking to fit his diminished size. However, his underwear did more of this than seemed necessary, losing its leggings entirely while pulling extremely close around his waist and rather snug...down there. And his pants shrank considerably less between the waistband and the thighs, that part instead puffing out before finally detaching from the lower legs entirely. It fluttered out into a single piece of cloth encircling both of his legs, folding itself into pleats. The material of the leggings then turned thin and soft as they hugged his slim legs as closely as possible, merging with his socks—which had already shrunk to fit his smaller feet.

“Nngh..aa~ah..” The tugging down below seemed to progress into a tugging, slipping feeling, which seemed to excite it while also making it noticeably smaller and smaller, allowing the underwear to pull ever closer between the legs. His pants, he realized, had turned into..a skirt and stockings. And his body was so small and slim, his voice so high and cute...and his underwear was changing into a soft pair of panties. “Aa~ah, oo~ooh...” The conclusion was obvious enough: He was, for some reason, turning into a girl. And as this realization hit him, the most definitive part of that change was fast approaching..!

“Mnnh, aaa~aa~aaAAAa~aahh!” The tugging feeling gave way to a bizarre sensation of something he'd had his entire life slipping inward and vanishing completely, leaving something entirely unfamiliar behind. The new thing let the panties fit snug and flat down there, and came with a sudden rush of fuzzy, undeniably pleasant sensation. “Aah—aa~aahnn...!” She felt her legs squirming around, her body rocking back and forth, and heard a..sound from her lips all at the same time as she realized that this was a girl's pleasure. It was accompanied by a gentle push from her hips and thighs, further tightening the panties as they grew a bit wider and plumper, forming some much more girlish curves. And, at the same time, she felt a strange sensation deep in the pit of her belly, undeniably the rest of feminine...equipment...forming into place.

“Oo~ooh...mm~mmnnh...” The new girl cried out helplessly, listening to her voice seemingly mature again—deepening, but in a decidedly feminine way. A sharp tingling, then sudden push, from her chest seemed to have stimulated her...down there...once again, and as she felt two small mounds rise up from beneath her nipples, she understood full well what was happening. “Mnn~nNNgh, aah, aa~aah..!” Even as her voice's natural tone deepened to a mid-alto, she found a couple of much higher-pitched, cuter cries occasionally coming out. Her initially small breasts continued to push out, steadily expanding out into a bra that seemed to have appeared under her shirt when her attention was elsewhere. They seemed to just keep getting bigger and bigger...!

Finally, she let out a helpless, high and breathy “Aa~aahnnn~nnh...!” as one final, slight intensification of the pushing caused her bosom to fill the bra completely, briefly straining against it and seeming to fight to stretch its size out a little bit more to accommodate it. After this, she was left to gasp breathlessly for air for a moment as her body slowly began to calm down from this...episode.

“I...w-whaah...?” She felt a haze of confusion even as she resumed enough presence of mind to understand just what had happened. She pushed a hand into her chest, finding it was quite real, and ran another down her slim waist, along the skirt with her hips beneath, to the couple of inches of exposed skin between its hem and the top of the leggings. “Th-this...why..?” She ran a hand through her hair, finding it as long as her waist in the back, and brought some of it up in front of her face. Its fiery, bright red caught her eye right away, a far cry from the dull auburn it usually was. But..?

Taking a deep breath, she tried to calm herself and focus. The confusion she'd felt a moment ago wasn't completely gone; while she could obviously remember that she'd been male until..whatever this was had happened, and her hair length and color was easy enough to recall...she was having a hard time remembering other details. Exactly how her face had looked, or what her height or weight had been, for example, slipped off. “Wh-why can't I..wait.”

Unconsciously adjusting her glasses (she was pretty sure she'd been nearsighted before; this felt like a typical thing to do), she found only one word coming to her when she tried to remember her name: Emily. Not a man's name, and no middle name nor last name to accompany it. She was...just...Emily. That couldn't be right; she could clearly remember her own students calling her doctor...something.

Shaking her head again—as if hoping to shake off the confusion—the redheaded girl tried again to remember something useful. She knew what topics she was teaching, she knew what her students looked like and many of their names just as well as before. She knew the name of the university she was employed at, and basically in what direction it was from this town. She could remember her research, and various mathematical facts, in meticulous detail, as effortlessly as ever. But she could not remember her name, or her original appearance.

“Urrrgh...this makes no sense,” she said, holding her head for a moment. Looking down at herself again, she took it all in: A white, long-sleeved, collared shirt with buttons...more like a blouse, really, with a bright red ribbon that matched her hair tied around that collar and into a big, neat bow at the front. That blouse held close enough to show off some fairly large breasts, although it hung slightly looser below them because of how quickly her body's shape tapered toward a slender waist. This top was tucked into a pleated skirt, and below that were the stockings, going all the way from her lower thighs to where they were obscured by a pair of dark loafers. Said shoes at least fit her now-smaller feet, although they didn't necessarily seem appropriate for a long walk or other exercise. She thought aloud: “I turned into a woman, somehow...and I seem to be dressed like a...in a student's uniform? Like at a high school? W-wait!”

Emily remembered at this point that, until the strange impression that the forest was getting bigger had interrupted her, she'd been dragging along a suitcase behind her. Turning around—thankfully—it was still there! Furthermore, lying next to it on the path and leaning against it, was a bright red purse. My purse, her brain spat out in recognition the instant she saw it. Reaching down and picking it up, the curvy redhead also noticed that her suitcase was a bright shade of pink. She was pretty sure it had been...some other color before; which one escaped her. But certainly, logically, the man she'd been until a couple of minutes ago wouldn't have wanted a pink suitcase.

Her hands were busy at this point rifling through the purse. Inside she found everything that had apparently vacated her pockets at the point when her pants became a skirt and stockings—which both conspicuously lacked pockets: Keys, wallet, pencils, markers, phone...and one additional item, which she pulled out for a closer examination.

It was a laminated, rectangular-with-rounded-corners card attached (on its back side) to the kind of metal clip that one would typically use to hang something on a shirt. Actually, she recognized its function before even mentally registering the clip, as she'd seen plenty of these back at her home university: It was a student ID card. The front side had something impossible in the upper-right: A square picture of her face, glasses and long bright red hair and all, smiling back as if welcoming the photographer to take it. She had, of course, not been photographed in this form at any point, and certainly hadn't smiled like that as a girl yet.

The ID had other notable details, too: The places where one would expect the branding of whatever school it belonged to said The Academy with a symbol resembling a triangular pediment with three columns coming down from it. Also, where one might expect the student's name, such as beneath the photo, it said Emily. “Wait..” Taking a small mental step back, she wondered why she even recognized the face on this ID in the first place. She hadn't looked in a mirror yet! But it was impossible to look at the smiling girl in the picture and not think my face.

She sighed, putting the card back into the purse. The most sensible conclusion was that everything bizarre here had the same root cause. She'd turned physically into a..young woman, by the looks of things, although seemingly still at least eighteen years old. Her mind had been divested of the details of her true appearance, including her name, and replacing them were this new look and the solitary name Emily. She'd been afforded clothes that fit her, a purse, an ID card with the new name and look, and probably a new suitcase with new contents of its own, such as clothes that would fit her altered form.

As for what that root cause was, well, it had to have something to do with the so-called “Academy” itself. After all, the spontaneously-generated ID card suggested that she was somehow a student of the place. Therefore...although she was a little nervous about confronting whatever might have the power to do something like this to her body, possessions, and especially mind, the new girl took a deep breath and began to resume her trek down the path toward the campus. Hopefully, there would be some kind of explanation, and ideally an easy way to turn back.

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Here it is, finally! I had the idea for this story some months back, and have been quietly working on it off-and-on ever since, with the express goal of having it 100% written before even mentioning it here. Since I have finished writing the story beginning-to-end, I'll be able to post its parts one after another across the next week or so, so look forward to that!

This is an unusual case where I had an entire idea for a story in my mind, and (not having very many to any good images already around that would work for it) decided to try telling the story using entirely images generated for the express purpose of doing so. As a result, you should be aware going forward that this entire story will make use of purely generated images. But I hope that won't dampen your enjoyment of it!