The Academy, Part 2

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The Academy

Part 2: A New Life

If someone had asked Emily what she expected to find as she came out of the forest and onto campus, it's doubtful she would have imagined a typical college campus: Large, scholarly buildings with paths between them, and grass plus ornamental bushes or trees wherever there wasn't a path; probably benches here and there. She did find that, but the occupants of this campus caught her rather more by surprise.

It was all girls. Everywhere she looked, without exception, the people standing, walking, or sitting around the campus all seemed to be young women like herself—that is, like how she currently looked at least—and a majority of them were also similarly dressed. School uniforms like hers seemed to be the majority's fashion, although they varied in exact color and style to such a degree that calling them collectively “a uniform” felt inaccurate. Besides that, there were exceptions: Some girls were wearing more casual outfits, others fancy dresses, and a very tiny minority were in shorts or pants instead of some kind of skirt.

A lot of them had unusual traits, too. Not only could Emily spot several with hair colors that appeared significantly less natural than even her own, but some of these girls seemed to have actual wings, furry ears and tails, or horns and a different kind of tail. A couple even had what registered to her as impossible skin tones like deep blue or purple. All of this was kind of a shock, and while she did keep moving forward in hopes of finding...someone in charge, maybe, or a building that was obviously for administration rather than classes, Emily couldn't help occasionally staring.

In truth, this was more of a culture shock than a full-blown shattering of her personal sense of reality. She had recent world events to thank for that; only a couple of years ago, along with the rest of the so-called “mundane” world, a man who was then in the final stages of presenting his thesis to his advisors had watched as the veil keeping the world of magic out of their collective view was deliberately torn off in full public view. Magic was real, it had been all along, and now everyone was allowed to know about it. But in the time since then, it really hadn't intruded much into his life. He'd heard news of some group of Kitsune making trouble, and a few other magical incidents here or there, but none of it had directly affected him. A couple of his students were openly magic folk of some kind or another, but it was quite the minority so far.

She had the sense that the world seeming relatively stable had something to do with authoritative and/or powerful figures in the “magic community” enforcing that stability. People didn't go missing any more often than before the unveiling, and there were no known incidents of anyone having their minds rewritten, which lent the sense that there was something like a law against doing things like that with magic. This was part of why Emily had chosen to go forward instead of back: figuring that whatever was responsible for what had happened to her surely had to obey that law, and so could be convinced to fix what seemed to be wrong without involving anyone else.

Seeing so many schoolgirls like herself, she doubted this premise a bit. Had all of them looked different before, had different names, been lured onto campus somehow and then changed like she had? Were they all trapped here, and was she trapped with them? Well, the mood of everyone around seemed normal if not unusually cheerful, so it was hard to believe that...

“Hiya!”
“Wah!” Emily jumped at a sudden, high chirp of greeting from not two feet in front of her. The voice's owner had interposed herself there during a pause in the redhead's gait as she stared around and tried to decide which direction to go next.

“Pffheheh, sorry! Didn't mean to startle ya.” It was a short girl (her eye level around Emily's chin, and Emily felt awfully short after all of the shrinking earlier) with waist-length black hair, dark skin, bright red eyes, and..big, fluffy black ears with white tufts of fluff inside, plus a huge tail wagging out behind her. She was dressed in a similar uniform to Emily's, only with the addition of a black coat around the shirt that hid the upper part of the skirt (thus making it seem shorter) and hugged her curves a bit more tightly. Her bust was somewhat smaller than the redhead's, but still more than enough for her size.

Still grinning up at the redhead, she continued: “You just looked kinda dazed there. Are ya new?”

“Uh—I, suppose so..?”
“I betcha...nobody told you about this place before you came. Huh?”

“Not..as such. Do, you know what's going on?”
“Sure! But, introductions first. Name's Halley,” she said, offering a hand up to the taller girl.
“Um—Emily? But..”
“I know, I know, you got a different name from whatchur used to. Happens to everyone,” she said swiftly and casually. “Now first off, there's no need to panic—if you walk back out through the forest and into town, you'll turn right back to normal, memories and all.”

“Oh...uh, that's, a relief,” Emily said.

“Mm-hm!” the stranger nodded cheerfully, her big ears twitching distractingly. “Now, I was on my way to lunch before I noticed ya. Maybe you could join me, and us two sit together while I explain a little more about this place? Unless you'd rather just leave now.”

Emily considered for a moment. Halley seemed...strange, from her looks, to her aggressive friendliness toward a complete stranger, to what felt like a slightly archaic way of speaking. But she seemed friendly enough, and none of the girls in clear earshot of her explanation so far had stepped in to contradict her. Besides that, what she was saying seemed reasonable somehow; the “powers-that-be” might actually allow memory and bodily alteration that reversed itself so conveniently. And...Emily was feeling kind of hungry, now that the idea of food had come up.

“Um..alright.”
“Heheh, alrighty then. Follow me!” she turned, walking across the grass toward one particular building. Emily followed, finding the big fluffy black tail spreading out from the lower hem of her jacket to be equal parts easy-to-follow and distracting. Surely Halley had noticed her staring at those ears a moment ago...but she didn't seem to mind a bit. Was this someone who'd had animal traits like that all her life?

---

Modern medicine was impressive. Amazing, even, one would think. It was good enough that a man who'd survived into his early sixties usually didn't need to worry about getting his affairs in order for a least a couple of decades. But there were still some things that it just couldn't cope with.

Four didn't seem like a very momentous number for most of the old man's life. He'd heard somewhere, at some point, that because of some linguistic pun, the Japanese considered it the number of death. But—after he came to see his doctor over some minor complaints, and had several tests done, "stage four" were the exact words he'd hoped not to hear. Even though he felt mostly fine now, he'd be lucky to last more than a year or two, and most of that time in a far less pleasant, exceedingly more painful state.

He was nearly finished getting everything together to ensure his family was taken care of, and waiting on a letter from the lawyer handling his will, when an envelope with no address or stamp showed up in his mailbox. It could have been one of those terrorist things he'd heard about, he thought, so he opened it carefully, with some gloves...but inside was, after all, just a single piece of printer paper with some few words typed on it.

What if you could live on, healthy and young, but everyone still had to believe you died?

A couple of numbers—which he eventually figured out were a latitude and longitude—followed, and finally the word Sage in a place that seemed appropriate for one's signature (although this, too, was typed rather than handwritten). Looking the location up on a computer, he found that it was some sort of school, or specifically "academy", situated in the middle of a forest next to a town. At any rate, it was a decidedly public location—not some kind of obscure meeting place in an alleyway that this "Sage" wanted to talk to him at. The coordinates were just the place that the online map identified as the school's location, so it seemed unlikely that this person even wanted to talk to him at all. This made the enigmatic offer even harder to make sense of.

Once his affairs were basically in order, and he was starting to feel the effects—but could still drive, and still move on his own power, the desperation weighed down on him. His family, just like himself, were anticipating his death anyway. He would be deceiving them if he survived on without their knowing, but it was still better than personally suffering and dying. Anyway—that line of thinking assumed that the mystery letter wasn't some strange hoax or prank. But either way, he didn't feel like he had much to lose at this point. So he drove out to the town, parked, and began the trek down a forest path to get to this so-called academy.

He paused partway down the path to catch his breath. Even disregarding the stage-four business, he was old and not in the absolute best of shape, and it seemed to be quite the walk. He hurried over to lean a hand against a tree, and once he felt sufficiently rested he resumed his walk.

It was, at least, a very pleasant forest. He'd always had a fondness for nature, and being surrounded by it like this was nice. When he'd been younger, he'd gone for walks or hikes in significantly wilder, rougher terrain than this. But the smell of the trees was here, too. He wondered idly whether the person who'd contacted him was waiting somewhere along this path to ambush him somehow—but he had nothing valuable on him besides the key to his car. And, realistically, how would anyone know that he was coming on this particular day, or picking this path out of the several options to get onto campus? He'd actually been careful enough to not pick the one closest to where he'd parked, even though his body didn't thank him for the extra distance.

He stopped again, thinking that it had been longer than expected since he'd needed a break. He breathed a little heavily, and was sweating a little, but didn't feel like he had to go steady himself on a tree this time. Instead, he just felt sort of stiff. He rolled his head, rotated his shoulders, and found it unusually easy to work out the stress. Come to think of it, the pains he'd been getting used to from his fatal condition seemed to be missing. They came and went, certainly, but there was usually at least something wrong at any given moment; right now, there wasn't.

Reaching his arms up, he stretched, leaning backwards slightly. There was this strange inkling he had, that this walk through the forest—the fresh air, the nature, the trees—was doing his body good. It didn't make any real sense, of course; folk cures were delusional myths at best, and he knew that. He let out a quiet "Aahh..." as he came out of the stretch, and then resumed his walk. Despite what he knew, he did feel better.

It hadn't looked like such a long walk on the map, he thought—and yet didn't mind. He could walk through this forest all day, or at least until he got hungry. A gentle breeze was blowing from in front of him, seeming at first to tickle his face. It was also playing across his hair; he could feel it being pulled lightly around, bangs fluttering along his forehead while the tips of other hairs touched his cheeks. It somehow didn't occur to him at this point that his hair wasn't supposed to be long enough to do that—that, in fact, the top of his head should be near enough to bald that it would feel air running across patches of bare skin. He was perhaps too busy enjoying how the cool wind picked up just enough to reach the rest of him through his clothes, gently tickling it the same way it was his face.

The next time he stopped, he didn't feel tired at all, and the sweat from before seemed to be gone too—maybe because of the cool breeze? Rather, he just felt an urge to stretch again. He reached his hands up to the sky and arched back a little farther than before, feeling strangely limber and flexible; a soft, relieved "Mmmmh" rumbled through his throat, coming out in a slightly higher pitch than expected. And, when dropped his arms and stood upright again, he had the curious impression that...perhaps he was shorter? That certainly wouldn't make any sense, however, so he dismissed it and began walking once again.

He realized after a few steps that he'd unconsciously picked up the pace. He wasn't walking like an old man at all—nor feeling like one, really. Instead, he was effortlessly and painlessly striding forward, feeling eager to keep moving and see what lay ahead. He could feel soft locks of hair falling across his cheeks, the weight of them touching the tops of his shoulders—and other, even longer hair falling across the back of his neck and shoulders with each step. Again, this was strange, but it somehow didn't quite catch his attention.

By now, the walk—even the brisk pace he was taking—left him not at all out of breath. He even felt a slight urge to hum. "Hmm~ hmm hmm..." His voice was hitting unexpectedly high notes; he'd been a bass for a long time, but sounded like a tenor now. "Hmm hmn hmm hmm~mmm.." More than that, a young tenor, like one of those pop singers these days. How strange, he thought...

Stopping to stretch once again, he felt the hair landing across his back all the way to behind his chest. And the feeling that he was shorter than he remembered was stronger rather than weaker—the branches of the trees all seemed noticeably higher than they should, the ground closer. But, while his mind was beginning to wake up into a suspicion that something wasn't right, the urge to stretch was too strong to resist. "Hmmh—" Reaching his arms up, he found himself suddenly very flexible; he was able to arch back to nearly ninety degrees, it felt like, and doing so seemed to release every last bit of tension in his body.

"Mm~mmh...!" The pitch of his voice lilted slightly higher, as he felt things stretch that really shouldn't have been able to. A wave of tingling raced all across his ears as they, somehow, stretched out, rapidly pushing their way past his hair as they grew larger and larger. "Mm—aa~aah—ahmm...!" And there was a strange feeling of something stretching from around the base of his spine, an unfamiliar appendage covered in sensitive hairs suddenly appearing and growing longer and longer, reaching nearly the length of an arm before stopping when he—finally—came out of the stretch to stand upright once more.

"Aa—aahhhhh..." A sigh of relief came out, in a high voice more fitting for a young boy than a mature man, as he suddenly found himself completely relieved of all tension, stress, soreness, and pain. Instead, he felt young, energized, happy...but also rather...small?

"Hmnh?" He looked around—everything seemed so big!—and then down, and suddenly became aware of a drastic change to his body. His shirt was falling down loosely around him, and his pants and underwear were slipping down off his hips, unwilling to stay on at all! "Wuh—wha..?" When had he gotten so small..? And, he was getting smaller still: His arms and legs visibly shortening and slimming, his shoulders narrowing and frame collapsing inward. The strange thing from behind his back was just about the only thing growing—getting thicker and fluffier by the second! Beyond all of that, he now noticed a tingly feeling down between his legs...

"I-I..what's...mm~mnnh..!" His confusion was interrupted by that tingling intensifying into a slipping, tugging sensation, the thing that made him male simultaneously growing excited...yet most definitely shrinking! "Aah, aa~ah..!" The rest of his body's changes settled down, leaving his lowerwear to fall down around his feet and his shirt to tent out around him down to the thighs, but the shrinking down there was coming on harder and faster, and his voice's pitch rose even higher—losing every last bit of maturity. "Aah, mm~mMMnh...!" Tug, tug, tug...he could feel it getting harder and harder to even think of himself as a man. Surely, with such a small, cute body, high, soft voice, and long, pretty hair...!

"W-waa~aaaaAAAhh..!" One last, especially intense sensation down there vanished away his manhood completely, and what was left behind could only belong to a girl. "O..oh..!" It was also flooded immediately with a deeply pleasant, fuzzy sensation that made her swoon, her ears lowering to point out the sides of her head while the tail that had appeared from her back whipped back and forth in an excited wag.

"Aaa~aAA~AAAaahh...!" This intensely feminine noise, accompanied by the sensation of the new girl's hips and thighs spreading wider, her butt puffing out bigger, was followed by a couple of less..human sounds. "Rrh, rr~Rrffh..!" She found herself barking like an excited puppy as her chest tingled sharply, and then letting out a high, cute "Y-yip!" as her nipples spread out wide and tall, each one raising up a small bump from beneath it.

Indeed, like any pretty girl, she was starting to fill out—to grow breasts. Panting heavily—rapidly, like only a canine should be able to—she found her cheeks burning with a blush, her heart beating rapidly. She felt even more full of youthful energy than before, especially as the fuzzy feelings between her legs intensified again, and a push came from her budding bosom so that it could blossom out to its full size. She found herself...welcoming all of this..!

"Aa~ah, oo~oOOoooh..!" Her voice changed a little bit more as it happened, deepening and maturing just slightly. "M-m~mmnnNNNgh...!" It shifted to a mature soprano tone—definitely an adult's voice, but still high, girly, and cute. "Aah, y-yip! Rrrfh, rrfh, aaAAaah...!" As her breasts continued to push forward, the new girl found herself increasingly overcome with a particular urge...and as they gave one last push out to their full, mature size, she gave in, unleashing a high, wolfish "AAHHWOOOOO~OOOOO~!" of a howl in response to a final climax of feminine pleasure down below.

She was left panting rapidly for a long moment, her cheeks still burning in the afterglow of the sudden burst of youth, femininity, and pleasure. She was somewhat aware during this time of her shirt pulling steadily closer against her body, shifting and shuffling its form around. Her underwear slid back up her legs and pulled snug around her hips as a pair of panties, while the pants she'd lost crawled up her legs only as far as the thighs, splitting apart and turning soft, pulling exceptionally tight against her skin.

By the time she'd regained her composure enough to have a look around, the new girl was dressed in a girl's school uniform: Tight shirt, jacket, skirt, stockings. Her hair was all the way down to her waist, long enough to tickle the base of her tail slightly as it involuntarily moved around. "M-my..! What, how..?" she mumbled softly, visually and physically examining herself. Her curvy bosom, as well as her furry tail and ears, seemed awfully sensitive to the touch—but not at all in a bad way! She felt small...but also healthy, young, and unbelievably energetic!

Next to her on the ground was a black purse, and quickly picking it up, she found the former contents of her pants pockets, along with an ID card. "Halley, huh..?" she said to herself, looking at it—trying to cope with the sense of familiarity she felt toward both the name and the cute, red-eyed girl looking back at her from the photo. "It's cute enough, I guess...heheh..."

After finding out a little more about The Academy, she had gone back to her original self only once—to set things up so his disappearance would be more convincing, so his will and insurance would pay out to his family like it should. After that, she said goodbye to that old man for good, and moved in to one of The Academy's dorm rooms. Halley couldn't be much happier with her new life!

In the years since taking on this new self, Halley had surely seen more than her fair share of beautiful girls. There were relatively few "permanent" residents like herself around, so she was treated to a constant rotation of newbies and repeat visitors. But despite that, when she'd seen this curvy, blue-eyed, red-haired girl walking around campus, looking around in a confused daze, her heart couldn't help but skip a beat! She just had to get to know someone as gorgeous as that.

She watched the taller girl slide in on the opposite side of the booth from her, wearing an uncertain, thinking expression. "All of the cafeteria workers look like young girls too, apart from wearing aprons and gloves..." she said quietly, seemingly mostly to herself.
"Mm-hm!" Halley cut in. "Culinary students make all the meals here, and anyone who wants to can learn and help out at the same time. I did a few months myself some time back—had to tie my hair back, and wear ear-nets. And a tail-net. Nobody wants fur in their food, after all!"

"Uh—yeah..." she mumbled uncertainly. If they hung out as much as Halley was hoping, Emily would get used to the wolf-girl's energetic way of talking soon enough...so she had to appreciate cute, flustered responses like that while she could get them!

"Anyway..what is this place? Why is..why does it..?"

"Well, first off, I couldn't hope to tell ya the root cause or anything," Halley started. "It's been this way since before I came here, for certain. Anyone who walks through the forest gets a 'new self' as a student, with an ID and all that. 'Round here, everyone is equal—we're all students, and we're all teachers. You can attend any lecture or talk ya like, or offer to give one if there's something you know a lot about. Or private tutoring, one-on-one or one-on-few, is on the table as well. Some folks just chat out on the grass or wherever."

"So..there's nobody in charge?"
"Not as far as I've been able to tell," she shrugged. "It helps that it's impossible for anyone to really hurt anyone else. Even the strongest girls around can't throw a real punch for some reason, unless it's at a punching bag. And folks with magic have it weakened to the point where it can't do no harm, either."

"That's..strange. Though a little comforting, I suppose...

"How..long have you been here, exactly?"
"Ohh, comin' up on eight years," the wolf-girl said. "I don't remember my 'real' birthday, so I celebrate the day I first arrived instead. My old body wouldn't have survived much longer, ya see."
"Wait. Are you...trapped here?"
"Hahah, 'course not!"
"But—if you try to leave, you'll change back."
"That's what the student ID's for. If ya wear that, you can go out to the town, but not much further on your own. You want ta go somewhere farther away, get some other students together and arrange a 'field trip'. It doesn't really have to be educational, just a bunch of us in school form goin' somewhere. And that doesn't have any limit to range at all, from what I can tell. I joined some girls on a tour through Europe a few summers back!

"Oh, hey—what broughtcha here in the first place, Emily?" She gestured at the redhead's suitcase, occupying the seat next to its owner. "Seems like you were at least expecting to stick around for a little while."
"Um. A mathematics conference I was invited to, starting tomorrow."
"Aah, right, I heard'a that," the wolf-girl nodded.

"Lodging was supposed to be provided, but..."

Halley nodded. "Again, nobody's really in charge. You can take a free room at the dorm—there's always at least one. Ooorrr, if you're alright with it, you could room with me for the week?"

"Are you..sure that's okay? You hardly know me."
"Yeah, but it'd only be for a short while anyhow. I'm used to short-term roommates; learn a lot from 'em. I never graduated high school back when I was young—went straight into the trade, and stuck with it for decades. But these days I know a little bit about plenty of things," she said, beaming.

"Um.." Emily paused for a moment, seeming uncertain whether what she was thinking of saying was inappropriate. "Did you have...fur...before?"
"Nope," Halley shook her head. "This stuff grew in when I walked through the forest. I got used to it, though—actually, I'm pretty fond of 'em. Take good care of 'em and all that. And, yep, I'm far from the only one to have some extra changes happen besides just becoming a young lady. But that don't mean everyone here didn't always have a tail or such."

"Excuse me for staring, then...I'm still not used to people having, traits like those, even after two years."
"Ooh, it's all good. You can stare as much as you want~," the wolf-girl said teasingly, flapping her ears up and down a couple of times. "Like I said, I'm proud of 'em."

Emily nodded slowly, paused to eat some, then said: "Something else was bothering me...the people presenting at this conference. When I was looking at its details online, I saw their real names, and recognized them. But if everyone here is under a different name..?"

"Yep," Halley nodded, "There's some information filtering thing that goes on, whenever someone from here posts to the internet—or reads from it, even. You look at the same stuff now that you're here, you'll see the student names of anyone who's been here instead. It used to be impossible to upload recordings of this place—sound, pictures, video—but that changed a couple of years back. Really annoyed some folks."

Emily had a cute, 'thinking' sort of expression—her index finger, seemingly unconsciously, going to her lower lip. "So what you were saying before, about everyone being equal...appears to be purposeful. Obscuring everyone's 'real' identity is an attempt to divest them of any sense of authority over others. And the rules changed in response to the unveiling...

"Are you..busy, this afternoon?" Emily asked. "Maybe I'll take you up on the offer of sharing your room, at least for a night..and, I could stand to get my bearings here."
"Oh, you are planning to stay?" Halley couldn't keep the delight out of her face—nor her tail! But she didn't want Emily to feel pressured into it, so she offered: "You could go turn back to normal and rent a hotel in town for not too much."
"Um, no—I feel like walking on and off campus, changing every time, would be more of a shock than just staying this way during the conference. Not to mention I'd have to get up earlier..it'd just be far less convenient overall. I'll be stuck, like this, during the talks either way."
"You don't have to go to the conference if you're uncomfortable being a girl," the wolf-girl pointed out.
"I'm aware of that. But it's—worth it. If anything, I'm...most apprehensive about how quickly this is feeling, natural?"

"Yeah, I hear that a fair bit," Halley said.

"Oh—ta answer your question, there is one lecture I was thinking of attending today, but I can just ask the host for a summary later. I don't mind giving ya a tour."

"Okay...thank you." Emily nodded.
"First place we'll go is the dorms—drop your stuff off," Halley offered. "After that, maybe the building the conference is in, so you'll know where that is?"
"That should work."

Emily spent a moment picking at the last of her food. "Something else on your mind?" Halley asked, knowing that the answer was obviously yes.
"I also.." she mumbled, then looked up. "Do you...know anyone who's been here longer than you? I'd like to get to the bottom of..why this place is the way it is. Someone or some-thing very powerful must be responsible, and it bothers me to know nothing of who or why. It seems especially strange to do something like this, but take no public credit for it."
"Ooh, a mystery," Halley said. "Well—I've wondered myself now and then, but never really looked into it. Too busy learning and having fun, I s'pose. But, for someone who's been here longer than me...maayybeee, Astra's roommate?"

"Who is Astra?"

---

Something I find really annoying about the Changing Island series is that, honestly, I went into writing it with absolutely no idea what the reason or purpose behind the way the island works actually is. Even now, I don't have a definitive "answer" to what could be considered the primary mystery of that entire story, which contributes to the difficulty of writing new entries. Once I had an idea for what the setting of this story would be, I felt that I absolutely needed to have an explanation in mind before I ever started writing it. Honestly, knowing the answer to a mystery before you ever introduce it to your audience is storytelling 101 stuff; I was just very inexperienced when I first came up with the Changing Island and the "mystery" present there was always kind of an excuse anyway. Anyway, this idea of just how The Academy itself works eventually served as inspiration for the actual events of this story. I don't promise the reason will be especially satisfying, but it at least exists, and is consistent and sensical.