The Academy, Part 4

 First / Previous / Next / Last

---

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!"

(old image)

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.

The Academy, Part 3

 First / Previous / Next / Last

---

The Academy

Part 3: A Challenge

"Well—here we are!" Halley leaned against the door to hold it open, gesturing inside. "It's not much, but to me, it's home." The redhead walked inside with her suitcase, taking the space in. It looked less like a dorm room and more like an apartment. There was only one bedroom, but it was fairly large, and it adjoined a mid-size bathroom, a kitchen, and a small office with two desks in it (one of which was occupied by a desktop computer, and the other of which was empty).

"This is..larger than I expected," Emily said.

"Hahah, I hear that a lot."

"And, you said this building always has an open room?"
"Right, right—seems like it 'grows' when more students are on campus. I was here when the fourth floor appeared," said the wolf-girl.
"You saw it happen?"
"Nah. It must've been in the middle of the night, when most everyone was asleep and nobody awake was looking."

"Of course...excuse me a moment."

Emily found that one of the...less immediately noticeable alterations to her mind was an almost-instinctive-feeling knowledge of how to properly use the restroom as a girl. This was convenient, if slightly disturbing. After taking care of that, she returned the bedroom. Both beds were made up with pillows, covers, and sheets, but the one with several stuffed animals decorating it, and a full nightstand next to it, was obviously Halley's. So she put her suitcase up on the unclaimed bed and unzipped it, having realized that she'd never actually checked if or how its contents had changed.

Her laptop, for one thing, was still in the same place, and appeared to be fully intact—both the computer itself, and the charging cord and USB peripherals it usually traveled with. There was little else unchanged, however: The contents of her suitcase were organized in basically the same way, but with feminine replacements for all of the wear and toiletries. In place of men's underwear were bras and panties like those she currently had on; casual wear was mostly replaced by additional uniforms in a few different colors and styles, plus a couple of casual outfits that nonetheless featured skirts; formal wear was now a couple of fancy dresses; and even her toiletries had shifted somewhat, to include a pink toothbrush and more heavy-duty shampoo...plus the addition of some other less-mentionable items. At least, she reasoned, it would all fit her.

Halley watched her rifle through her belongings quietly and patiently. Emily felt this was evidence that her claim of having had a large number of short-term roommates was truthful, since she was seemingly used to newbies acquainting themselves with their transformed things like this. After confirming the suitcase's contents, she shut it again and stood upright, turning to the wolf-girl. "Sorry, we should get going."
"No problem~! Oh, here's your key to the room," she said, holding it out. She'd probably retrieved it while Emily's focus was elsewhere.

"Thanks," she said, accepting it and, after briefly attempting to put it in the pocket her skirt didn't have, stuck it in her purse. Halley giggled softly watching this, but didn't otherwise comment.

According to the wolf-girl, Astra was a relative newcomer, having arrived shortly after the dropping of the veil and largely stuck around since then. However, she wasn't someone surprised by the presence of magic; rather, she was a Kitsune. She'd always claimed to "really" have five tails, but The Academy had restricted her to just one, which apparently also meant her powers were significantly weakened. That didn't keep her from living up to the stereotype of her race and swiftly becoming known as the campus's biggest prankster. Halley had gotten to know her after enduring a few of her pranks (although she seemed quite cheerful when talking about this part, like she'd actually enjoyed them), but didn't know her roommate nearly as well despite how long she'd been living on campus.

Emily followed Halley across the campus lawn, watching the other students around them go about their business. Some were running around or playing sports, others sitting reading books or tablets, and still more were walking between the campus buildings, alone or in groups. They passed five girls sitting cross-legged on the grass talking about...well, maybe she misheard, but Emily could swear they were discussing the finer points of quantum physics.

"Nobody really has a set schedule here, I suppose," she mused aloud.
"Nope. A lot of us settle into routines, though. And I happen to know where Astra likes to take a break and people-watch for opportunities."

"Opportunities?"
"You know, for folks to mess with."
"Oh."

"So I'll take you by there at the end of our little tour, then?"

"That works."

---

"If you're content with five, then live your life happily." That's what the young Kitsune's great-grandfather had said after awarding him his latest tail. "It's not often anyone earns four before living a century, after all—you're an early bloomer like I was."

"And—what if I'm not content?" He actually was pretty happy with this latest burst of power; he could wait a century or three to get another if needed. But he was curious, eager to hear his ancestor's wisdom anyway.

"Well, in that case, you ought to seek a challenge. The Ruler notices hard-working, ambitious foxes, you know."

A challenge, huh?" He wasn't hungry for power or impatient for another tail, but..that sounded like fun all the same. He would just need to find one.

For some years, the young Kitsune sought to use his power with subtlety. He mixed in with the mundane human society, pretending to be one of them even to other beings on his side of the veil. It was a convincing act, and provided him with plenty of opportunities to secretly use his power to pull interesting tricks on both the magic and the mundane sides of society. This was perhaps less of a challenge than was needed to earn a sixth tail anytime soon; he was fairly sure there were a lot of fellow foxes with very similar habits, so it wasn't likely that he even stood out from the crowd like this. Yet he was happy enough in this life until everything suddenly changed.

If the fox felt frustration from the lifting of the veil, it was a feeble emotion at most, swiftly buried under eager anticipation. Suddenly humans knew that beings like him were real, and might be on the lookout for them—including being a little bit wiser to their pranks. That, at least, was a little bit more of a challenge. But, he thought, the people he'd been living near for a while now were sure to figure him out based on his prior history of tricks alone, and that wouldn't be much fun. So he decided to move away and get a fresh start somewhere else.

The midst of that move was when he found something very interesting—an intense power, yet incredibly subtle; beings with less sensitivity than himself were sure to miss it altogether. And it existed right in the middle of what appeared to be a normal, human-run town, of all things! While he wasn't entirely sure whether this power belonged to a person or some ancient artifact, the Kitsune thought: Wouldn't it be fun, challenging certainly, to try to fool something that strong? And so he made his way into the forest that served as the outermost border of this immense power's domain.

The Kitsune could feel the strange power exerting its control on the trees, the very nature around him itself. It was just barely perceptible even to him, so he couldn't quite make out what it was doing besides just keeping the plants healthy. This might be, he thought, one of the rumored Fae; perhaps he was approaching the garden of a nature-oriented one. But if that were so, the owner would be obliged to appear soon and warn him if he was trespassing, or welcome him if he wasn't—and no being of any kind was forthcoming as he continued his walk inward.

Once he was deep enough into the forest, the fox could feel the power reaching in toward him: Up from the grass and the roots, in from the trees beside, before, and behind. It wasn't hostile; he would even describe the mood behind this power as welcoming. And yet it was noticeably assertive, exerting an increasingly strong pressure against his own magic. He stopped walking, sniffing the air and reaching outward ever so slightly, trying to read or even perhaps ask that power: What did it want?

The scent of the forest was pleasant and sweet. Beastfolk were as a rule more attuned to nature than your average human, and Kitsune were no exception. This patch of trees and grass was not as wild as real nature might be, a certain artificiality being imposed on it by the very power that kept it so strong, but it was close enough to natural to be comforting to him. The Kitsune could feel the power spreading into him through his contact, feeling like an extension of the calm from the scent of the peaceful forest. It felt like...this was a peaceful, safe place. He shouldn't really need so much power of his own to protect himself here.

At this point, he could feel one of his tails...shrinking. Even though it was hidden from view—as he was most comfortable just having one or none of them out most of the time—the Kitsune could distinctly feel it getting smaller and smaller, retracting away into his back. Most importantly, it was taking with it the portion of power that he'd gained when he earned it. At the same time, he could feel the immense power starting to press in on his body, causing it, too, to shrink. His eye level sank very slowly, and his clothes began to loosen around him.

"Ah..I see..." he mumbled quietly. He should feel more panicked about his power waning—especially as he felt his fourth tail beginning to vanish away just like the fifth had—but there was the distinct sense that this was temporary. If he wanted it all back, he needed only to leave. But, while he was here, there was no need for such power. The hair of his head burst outward then, all at once growing long enough to frame his face and tickle the back of his neck. As his fourth tail—and its accompanying power—left him, the Kitsune found himself shrinking a little bit faster. Even if he'd been pushing against the immense power of the forest with all his might, he'd be unable to resist it successfully; it was simply too much. But that was all right; he'd let it do it what it wanted for now.

The fox unhid the three tails he had left, pulling one forward to brush his hand across it as he felt the immense power channeling through the forest touch it. Before his eyes, the fluffy fur shrank, slipping across his hand as it pulled its way behind him to disappear into his back. He could also see his hand shrinking, its fingers turning small, slim, and delicate. His hair burst out longer again, falling across his shoulders and partway down his back, and he shrank a little bit faster still. "Aa~ah, mm~mmh.." He observed that his voice was changing now, lilting into a less masculine tone, and felt reasonably sure he knew where the changes (other than the loss of his tails) were going.

Indeed, he stopped getting shorter at this point, yet his frame continued to narrow down. He felt a distinct tingling between his legs, which spread out from there to all across the rest of his skin—softening and smoothing it, vanishing away body hair. It was a curiously refreshing feeling that made him shudder slightly, letting out a soft, rather cute "Aa~ah". While this tingling faded from the rest of his body, it only grew stronger between his legs, soon progressing into a tugging, slipping sensation as the manhood he'd spent all of his life with began to go the way of those last few tails...

"Mmn~nh..aah, aa~aah.." He found his heart beating faster, his face warming with a blush. His legs squirmed back and forth, his ears hung low, and his two remaining tails began to wag a little faster—even as one of them started to shrink away. "Ooh..rr~RRrrfh...mmh, mmm~mmrrrRRRR~RRHHH..!" With a few more tugs, the fox felt his manhood melting away. It was an indescribable feeling, yet unbelievably pleasant—more than enough to crowd out the vanishing away of that tail and the further waning of his former powers down to what he'd had as a young teenager. Finally, a soft "Aah—" came out as the fox became fully female, followed by a helpless "Ooo~ooooh...!" in a deep, sultry alto tone as she felt a wave of girlish pleasure coursing through her.

"Mnnh, aah!" The pleasure only grew stronger as the new vixen felt her hips and thighs spreading themselves out wider and thicker, her chest tingling sharply in anticipation of some breasts befitting her new, sexy voice. She found..she really wanted that! If she was going to be a woman, let her be the curviest girl around! "Aah, aa~ah..mmn—Rrrfh!" A high bark came out as she felt the first push from her chest, two small bumps appearing around her nipples. And then, "W-waa~aah..!" She squirmed around a little more as she felt them steadily pushing outward and forward, expanding out bigger and bigger.

"Oo~ooh mmyyy~yh...!" The wonderful feeling between her legs grew ever stronger as the sensitive skin of the growing bosom slid out across the cloth of her shirt. She could feel her clothes shifting around on her, the top pulling tight around her torso, only for the breasts to burst themselves out even bigger, popping it apart at the top. "Aah, mm~rrh...aa~aahnn...!" Then they gave one final push, growing into an enormous pair of globes to match the rest of her incredible figure.

"Mmh...rr~rfh.." The fox-girl blinked her eyes open after a moment, turning her head down and twisting around to examine herself. Her clothes had become...what appeared to be a blue schoolgirl's uniform, including a short skirt and some black stockings reaching up to her thighs—leaving a couple of inches of soft, bare skin exposed between the two of them. Her top had indeed been unable to completely hold in her chest, so much so that an upper button of both the shirt and vest were undone to show some generous cleavage.

"H-heheh...it's just as well these are blue," she said. "Matches my fur quite well~." The Kitsune resumed her walk through the trees, thinking: Such a specific enchantment couldn't be responding to only her. There must be something inside that people go to—perhaps a large group of people? And, pulling off pranks when she was so weak that even just hiding her ears and tail for a while could make her tired? Now, that would be a challenge!

(old image)

Foxes—at least those who enjoy playing tricks—tend to gravitate toward two, polar opposite, sorts of people. One group is those who behave a bit like fellow Kitsune—taking their pranks in stride, laughing when they're fooled, and sometimes giving as good as they got. Halley the wolf-girl was one such person, so naturally she'd hit it off with Astra ever since their first mutual prank-off. And now she was walking up with a very confused-looking redhead in tow. That bespectacled girl looked like an excellent mark! So she couldn't help but grin as she saw them approach, her tail slowly swishing back and forth across the back of the bench.

"Hello there, Halley!" she greeted, waving to them as they approached. "Out on a date~?"

"Wh—no!" Judging from the way the wolf-girl's face flushed, maybe Astra's teasing had hit the wrong target; the redhead, for her part, just looked confused. Well, one was just as good as the other in the fox-girl's book. "Uh, th-this is Emily, a mathematician!" she said, excitedly waving in the taller girl's direction. "And, new to the Academy! Just walked in this afternoon. I was showing her around, i-i-is all."

"Oh, I see~. Well, pleased to meet you!" she hopped up onto her feet, offering the redhead a hand. "I go by Astra in these parts." She'd been lucky enough to wind up pretty tall for a girl, and always enjoyed the flustered looks that girls of more average heights invariably gave her chest when she stood right in front of them. Emily suffered some of the same fate, but did her best to keep her composure, taking the offered hand.

"Uh, nice to meet you."

"Likewise, heheh! Now, allow me to guess.."

The Kitsune leaned forward slightly, just enough for the front of her nose to probably be in what Emily considered her personal space. The redhead's face featured a faint blush that looked like it hadn't faded since she first arrived on campus. "Male, right? Before you arrived?"

"Uh—yes."

"I thought so," she said, standing up straight again. "Halley was a boy too!"

"Oh, r-really?" Emily glanced at the wolf-girl for a second.

"A lot can change about a person in seven-odd to eight years," Halley said, grinning and seeming to take this in stride.

"Anyhow, we came looking for you 'cause Emily was curious about something. You know where your roommate is right now? Or, could you text her or somethin'?"
"I'm certain I can track her down~," Astra said, her tone of voice not hiding her anticipation of that girl's reaction to an ambush. "If you don't mind telling me what you're planning to ask her about?"

"I was trying to work out—who's responsible for this place. Or, what, if it isn't a person," Emily said. "An effect this...drastic, with such a clear line of intent—it just worries me that someone hasn't publicly claimed credit. Halley said that your roommate has been here longer than her, and might have some clues?"
"Oooh, maybe! She's one of the few who actually 'works' for the Academy, after all!" Astra said. "I'll join you two, then—this sounds like fun! Anyway, now that you've mentioned it...I'm curious too."

---

One of the advantages of generating images for a story is that it's possible to actually arrange for the backgrounds of said images to actually be as the story describes. With drawn images, one's best bet is for the background to be blank, or else to arrange the story to fit the background depicted, which can sometimes be very clunky and awkward to do. But this does come with challenges of its own, since image generators don't really "understand", for example, how a tail and a bench should physically interact. It took a while to get an image for Astra that had neither a hand melting into the wood, nor a tail phasing through the back of her seat.

The Academy, Part 2

 First / Previous / Next / Last

---

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!

(old image)

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.