The Academy, Part 4

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The Academy

Part 4: A Job Offer

"Head school janitor" wasn't what anyone would call a prestigious position, but it was a necessary one. And, for a publicly-funded job someone with relatively little education could do, it paid quite well. Some of the teachers seemed to be getting paid less than he was..which was a little ridiculous, but at least it was in his favor. He just didn't mention it to them. For a long time, he worked his job happily; the work was hard but the hours were regular, leaving plenty of time in between to have hobbies and enjoy his life. It felt as though he could keep this job until he was too old to work it, and then perhaps retire and take the rest of his life easy. But that just wasn't the way things were destined to go.

With public funding being the way it was, the county school system being reorganized periodically was nothing special. Time and time again, the school board or whoever was above them in government redrew the lines, shuffled around who went to what school, closed down schools or built up new ones. All of this was in the background of the head janitor's life, right up until the day that one such reorganization made his job redundant.

The school he'd worked at for years was a run-down building with all kinds of problems. He'd heard plenty of complaints from teachers, staff, and students, and often added some of his own; he knew the building's quirks inside and out and could often make things work that nobody else could, albeit on a temporary basis. But he never imagined that those complaints would reach the ears of those with the power to close the entire place down.

The students at the school, and the faculty, weren't just being kicked out, of course. There was a bigger, shinier, newer school nearby for all of them to join, built a couple of years back. But that school already had a full janitorial staff. They didn't need him, or the people who worked under him. All of them were summarily cut off—given a couple of months' extra pay as compensation for the sudden layoff, but otherwise advised to seek employment elsewhere.

This came at an unfortunate time in the professional cleaner's life. He had crossed middle age, and reached the point where he was too old to learn a new trade, yet still too young to retire. Nowhere he applied to saw his experience managing janitors as applicable to managing any other sort of workers, and he had too much pride—or at least a lifestyle that demanded too much money—to accept a low-level janitorial position and start all over. As the final month of his pay drew near, he desperately sought somewhere where he could work the way he always had—or at least be paid as much as ever.

Finally, he thought he'd found it. A college or something that he'd never heard of, branding itself as "The Academy", was offering a position with almost suspiciously good pay—better than he'd ever had before—and the job description practically matched his skills one-to-one: Janitorial and maintenance work, but especially training and managing others in doing said work. He applied immediately, sending in his resume and recommendations, and was very quickly invited to an interview. So he got in his car and drove the five-and-a-half hours out there, stayed in a motel in the town right out the school, and set out bright and early the following morning with the aim of having plenty of time to locate the building and the room inside the interview was to be held in.

Other people might have been suspicious of the high pay offered for the job; maybe that was why, as he found out later, he was the only serious applicant in the more than two months since the job had been posted. Others might also have found it at least a little bit weird for the campus to be situated in the middle of a forest with only footpaths to actually get there. But he was a relatively simple man, used to assuming honesty from others until proven otherwise. And he had no experience with higher education, so he figured that this was just how it worked. The Academy was probably just too small-time to want to deal with parking and traffic on-campus, and this was their solution to the problem.

He walked along the forest path, wearing his best suit and a blue tie, carrying a briefcase. Even though he wore much more casual outfits while on the job, he knew that looking like a professional at an interview was paramount. He thought he might regret such stuffy clothes with the long walk ahead, but the forest sported a pleasant, cool breeze, and after a few minutes' walk, he still hadn't broken a sweat.

It really was a pleasant place, too; he'd taken a walk in a park before, done nature hikes, and it seemed somehow like this place had the best of those experiences without any of the annoyances. It had the special, natural sort of not-quite-silence that put one in a meditative mood rather than on edge. He felt rather approving of The Academy's decision to have a forest like this right by campus, even if having it surround the whole school seemed a bit overkill. Perhaps the students came out here for picnics or whatnot from time to time, but there wasn't sight or sound of them now, nor any litter to be found. Thinking of it, that was a relief—with this forest as part of the school's property, keeping it free of humanity's mess would be part of the janitorial staff's duties, so if the students had bad littering habits it was going to be his problem very soon.

Goodness, but this forest was big! It hadn't looked like such a long walk on the map. He continued along the path, fully expecting at any moment to run out of breath and need to take a break—but that never did come. Instead, he somehow seemed to breathe easier, to feel less sore and stiff; it had been a couple of decades at least since he last felt like he had such stamina. The curious thing was that..around this time, he thought the trees seemed taller and more imposing than before. The thought that the forest was big stuck with him; it was very big, in fact, and beginning to make him feel kind of small.

The cool breeze playing across his skin seemed to make it tingle faintly for a moment. At first, it was just his face, but each successive gust of wind seemed to somehow cut deeper through his clothing, until he couldn't help but pause briefly to shiver as this tingling seemed to reach just about every inch of his skin. And, after taking a couple of steps more forward, he felt the light breeze playing with his hair, making it flutter across his cheeks and forehead. But...?

"Huh..?" Reaching a hand up, he put it on top of his head to find—hair. Soft, full hair, too. And running it down from there, he confirmed that he hadn't imagined hair touching his cheeks, as it was long enough to go all the way down the sides of his face. The strange thing about that was...he was supposed to be bald. Or, at least, he had been bald this morning! So, somehow..the forest...had made him grow hair?

No, no, that didn't make any sense. He pushed his hand through the hair another couple of times, thinking that he had to somehow be mistaken. He even pulled at it—"Ow!"—and found it firmly rooted to his scalp. And then his hand brushed down through the hair in incredulity again, and its palm found the lower-right side of his chin—where he usually kept a beard—and found it completely smooth, the skin strangely soft. "Wh..wha...?" Dropping the briefcase to run both hands all across his face, he quickly discovered the rest of its skin to be the same way. And then he looked down.

His suit..well, wasn't. There was still a dark, long-sleeved top sporting buttons all the way down the center, but it went all the way up to the collar of the shirt under it. Instead of the tie he'd put on that morning, a ribbon of the same color was wrapped around the collar of his undershirt and tied together into a neat bow at the front. And, most importantly, the shirt and jacket were not tucked into a pair of pants, but rather—a skirt. A short, pleated dark-blue skirt, with a pair of black tights hugging onto his legs shortly below there, a bit of strangely smooth-looking, hairless thighs showing through the gap between the two. Furthermore—and this registered only as the shock of the sudden wardrobe change was washing through him—the ground below seemed...closer than it was supposed to be.

"What th—my clothes?! How—aah!" His confused, half-angry shouting was interrupted by a strange pressure hitting him. It was sharp but not painful, like some bizarre massage, and it was particularly strong on the top of his head and shoulders. "Aa~aah..!?" Suddenly—seemingly as a direct result of this pressure—he found the trees rising visibly upward around him, the ground rushing closer. "Aa~ah, aa~ah..!" His strange new clothes hugged his body tightly as it shrank, not only losing height but size of all other sorts as well: His arms and legs slimmed down, his shoulders and overall frame narrowing, even his hands and feet getting smaller! "Aa~aah..!" And each involuntary cry from his lips came out in a higher pitch than before, and rose even higher as it came out. By only the fourth time, he sounded more like a young boy than a man.

"W-waa~aa~aah...!" One last, particularly strong push against his body diminished his height and frame to a positively tiny size, and at the very same time he heard the masculinity draining out of his voice entirely, the 'young-boy' voice lifting upward into a high, cute, girlish tone. But even though the pushing and shrinking stopped at this point, the changes were still not over, as immediately he was struck by a sharp tingling sensation down between his legs—on something down there which was already much smaller than before—followed by a tugging, slipping sensation as it grew even smaller.

"Aah, mm~mmngh..!" Feeling the heat of a blush hit his cheeks, the small, boyish man found that it was getting increasingly difficult to think of himself as male. After all—he was so small, and his hair was so long, and his voice was so high and soft and cute! Besides which, the one thing that really marked him as male was rapidly vanishing away.

"Mnnh—aah!" Along with an especially sharp tug down there, he suddenly felt something else very bizarre, an outward-push-plus-sharp-tingling of his entire right ear. Suddenly it was much bigger than before, and completely covered in soft hairs that could feel the slightest movement of the wind across it. And then—"Aa~AAH!" The same thing happened to his left ear, too, as he felt his manhood finally melting away, giving way for what a girl was supposed to have...!

"W-wa~ah..!" Girly parts formed down there, and then immediately assaulted her with a wave of pleasure. Her high, cute voice cried out in as girly a reply as possible: "Aa~aaAAAAAHH~HHNnn..!" At the same time, a third bizarre sensation hit her, this time coming from around the base of her spine—as something slid its way out rapidly longer and longer, covered in the same sort of sensitive hairs as her ears. The way it flicked back and forth excitedly, even before reaching its full length, let her feel the air rushing across its slim form—it was a long, feline-like tail.

"Mmn—MMMNH—!" Now that she was a girl, she felt her hips and thighs pushing their way out somewhat violently, growing her some fitting curves for her new sex. At the same time, something shifted in her mouth—her canines extending into sharp fangs. And then her chest erupted in a wave of sharp tingles.

"M-mewh..!?" A catlike noise came from her lips as she felt the tingling give way to a slow, steady push, drawing some tiny bumps of prepubescent breasts up across the cloth of something under her undershirt. "Aa~ah, m-mrrrh..!" A girlish cry was followed immediately by a feline purr as she felt the tiny breasts start to expand out bigger and faster, and their strangely-sensitive skin caused another wave of girlish pleasure to burst out down between her legs. "Mnnh, mm~MMNNh, mmRRR~ROOO~WWRRRH...!" Finally, with one last, strong push, her breasts blossomed out to their full size, and the fuzzy feelings down between her legs erupted into a final burst of pleasure that had her making the loudest noise yet.

"H-haa~aah...hfffh, hff..." The new girl was left panting heavily for a moment before finally, slowly-but-surely, collecting herself and getting a good look at the situation. All of a sudden she was tiny, and female—but very cute, even a bit curvy! And her gray-white hair had gone all-white instead, plus a slim, white, furry tail was now spreading out from behind her. Her ears were..probably the same way; they felt rather like a cat's ears, not to mention the catlike sounds she'd made while...that was happening!

This was utterly bizarre, and made absolutely no sense. But the diminutive catgirl had the distinct impression, somehow, that the forest—and by extension the college campus she was headed toward—had done this to her! So, huffing slightly, she picked up the briefcase in both hands and began a hurried walk forward to get to The Academy proper and demand an explanation. They'd better have a darn good one for putting her through that! Not to mention this—being a small, what, catgirl somehow?!

Well, she actually liked how young and full of pep she felt, not to mention the pleasant feelings that turning into a girl had brought on..but she wasn't about to admit to that! No, she'd go straight to whoever would be interviewing her and be purely angry about it to them. That way, when she—if she took the job, she corrected!—they'd feel bad for putting her through something like this and pay her better. Or—at least give her some good benefits and perks!

---

"So..this roommate of yours. What does she look like?"
Astra giggled mischievously. "Oh, you'll find out soon enough. But she is truly a sight to see. Positively adorable!"

"I suppose it's too much to ask her name—" Emily started, and was cut off by a high, almost shrill voice from a good ways away.

"How many times do I have to tell you!? Pick up after yourselves! Your momma ain't here!" Emily couldn't help but flinch at such loud scolding, but Astra's ears twitched, her eyes lit up, and she immediately took off in the direction of the source.

As they approached, she could pick up some other voices apologizing. "Sorry, Cassie..."
"We'll remember next time, I swear!"

"You'd better!"

The owner of the voice—Cassie, evidently—was a white-haired (and white-furred) catgirl with piercing, icy blue eyes. She was short—shorter than even Halley, even not counting her big, fluffy black ears. But standing there with her hands on her hips, glaring around at some other girls who were guiltily picking up the remains of a picnic, she seemed completely in command, the point of being intimidating. However...this impression was almost immediately shattered.

"Wha—!?" Astra had vanished from sight at about the point Emily caught sight of the catgirl, and now she suddenly appeared—complete with a brief puff of illusory blue smoke—right behind/above Cassie, immediately grabbing the much smaller girl in a hug that had the fox-girl's chest hanging across the top of her head. She struggled futilely against the hug, flailing her arms comically around, before seeming to realize who'd grabbed her. Her body language calmed down at once—her ears noticeably lowering to the sides—but she resumed the same glare as before. "Asstraaa! Leggo of me!" Even this expression seemed to have suddenly lost its bite; now, it even looked cute. Maybe it was the fact that her cheeks had lit up with a brilliant blush.

"Awwh, but you're so keyy-oot when you're angry!" the Kitsune protested, letting go with one of her arms just so she could use that hand to ruffle the fur atop the catgirl's ears.

"Mrr~rrh..." Cassie purred softly, perhaps involuntarily, for a moment before interrupting it with a "Hmph!" and forcibly pulling herself out of the embrace. "I thought I asked you not to pester me when I'm workin'!" she said.

"You have a lot of confidence to be ordering a five-tailed fox around~," Astra replied teasingly, still smiling (but also blushing, Emily noticed). "Anyway, I brought a newcomer with me who has a terribly urgent question to ask you," she said, gesturing Emily and Halley's way.

"Oh? Who're you?" she demanded. "...Friend of Halley's?" Her tone of voice didn't make it sound like she liked friends of Halley's very much.

"Err—my name is Emily—at least, here it is anyway," she answered nervously, half-mumbling the last part.

"Yeah yeah, we all know how it works," she said, annoyed. Astra had come up next to her and started petting her ears again, but she didn't seem to react this time—except for her blush brightening again and her tail moving a bit faster. "So what's your 'terribly urgent question', huh?"

"Er..Astra might have oversold it," she said. "I, could, ask you later. If you're busy?"
"I've already been interrupted once, so just ask it now and let's get it over with," she snapped.

"Err, alright. Well—you..that is, do you work for The Academy?"

"Sure do," she nodded. "The cleaning club wanted an expert, and I've been running it ever since."

"But, The Academy pays you, for this?"
"Obviously. You don't do menial labor like cleaning without—mrr~rrh—being paid for it," she said, her speech briefly interrupted by a purr when Astra's tail swung across to touch hers near its base.

"So..do you know..who signs your checks? Or, where the money comes from?"
"Hmm..they're just standard company checks with 'The Academy' as who's paying," the catgirl said after thinking about it for a second. "And there's a signature, sure, but it's pretty much unreadable. Can't say I know where the money comes from—f'rall I know, it just magics up into existence and then into my bank account.

"How come you're so interested, huh? Looking for a job here too?"
"No. It's just—even though there's nobody 'in charge' here, the...effect we're all under, must have some source. Someone, or some-thing, with immense magical power changed all of us into these, err, forms," Emily said, gesturing. "And a conscious mind has to be involved somehow, as there have been 'rule changes' in the recent past. I was hoping you might have some sort of clue."

"At least, you've been here longer'n I have," Halley pitched in. "Thought you mighta heard something from someone, at least."

"Hmm.." The catgirl seemed visibly to be thinking. Astra kept playing with her ears, which clearly distracted her—but she didn't even seem annoyed by it at this point, instead just purring occasionally.

From what Emily understood of Kitsune—or at least of stereotypical ones who enjoyed being pranksters—they tended to like two particular personality types the best. There were people like Halley...and then there were people like Cassie. A little like the way cats seem to cling all the closer to people who are allergic to them, Kitsune sometimes seem particularly attracted to serious-minded people who, by all appearances, hate their pranks with a passion. But she had the distinct sense by this point that the two of them had a very...different relationship from what one might expect of a prankster and her perennial, unwilling victim. Was this sort of thing...normal here? Maybe it only stood to reason, given that everyone—including people who'd been male the entire rest of their lives—were pretty girls here.

The catgirl sighed, "Sorry, nothing comes to mind right away. Kssss—" (she hissed like a cat) "—and now you've got me curious about it! I'd hate to find out magicking up money is counterfeiting and I'm involved in a federal crime somehow. Tell you what, though, I do know 'bout some girls who've been here longer than I have. Think there's even one girl who told me she was 'one of the first'. And if we can find the very first person who ever came here—if we're lucky enough that she's still here anyway—maybe she'll know something."

Emily nodded, realizing: "That's right..someone had to tell everyone else the way this place works—not everything about it is necessarily obvious. So someone had to be the first."

"Soo, who's the 'oldest' student on campus?" Halley asked. "Maybe we can start with that 'one of the first' girl, if she's around?"
Cassie nodded. "Sure...follow me," she said, turning abruptly in a certain direction at a brisk walk. However, it didn't escape Emily's notice that she slid the tip of her tail across the tip of Astra's as she went.

---

Since the first few parts had established a particular pattern, I thought it'd be best to reverse the order in this one to keep things interesting. I also feel like it helped this part flow a little bit better overall. I do enjoy a certain level of formulaicity in my stories, and it's definitely present in this one. I obeyed certain rules, such as a title gimmick (which you might have guessed by now) and only ever giving each character's "school name" (with one exception you'll see later!). I feel like some small amount of formula helps me know what to write to some small extent, and the structure hopefully makes things more satisfying to read at the same time.