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Chapter 20. Pride and Prejudice

Nice and gentle. Soft

"I know you were here first. But you don't have class in 5 minutes

I felt my legs moving around and tried to pick them up, only to be told

"We're done with that part hon. You did great"

I blearily opened my eyes to find myself being put back on the ground into the waiting grabby paws of the little black Rat. The scent of babypowder, pawpers , and oil heavy in the air, along with the scent of a certain Rat who was in need of those. Small claws started grooming my headfur and angry chitters ensued if I tried to move so I found myself stuck in the doggie sit position.

"Little help here?"

Ms Rat chuckled and lifted him up onto the changing table , wiggling his arms in my direction. "He can't help it. you're so fluffy..." and ruffled the fur on my head. Apparently he wasn't the only one. Godzilla was removed from my paws and handed back to his proper owner... I hadn't even realized he was there.

"Up you go. You got art class next" she patted my slightly padded rump and shooed me out the door on all fours, almost walking into Brock's conversation with an even larger boy that had a pungent, acrid aroma even though he was coming to gym class rather than from it.

"There's nothing to apologize for. You earned everything you got. There's a reason no one ever suspected. You were the first in the gym in the morning and the last one running wind sprints up the stadium at night.

"Yeah Mom had some explaining to do but..." the young giant stammered dumbly

"But nothing. They didn't give you guts and heart. THAT'S how you got where you got. You'd be just as good with or without em." Brock was being way too nice to him for.. whatever it was Brock was being nice to him for.

"Hey. Maybe we'll find out next time. I didn't want them changing anything you know? " he glared waaay down to look at me "I'm sure you know understand. Erm. About. Ah uh. You you not what you were just... " he looked stupidly passed Brock and muttered "Igottago" and shuffled off.

"Seeya Gerry. Back in the Hall of fame I hope" Brock started to walk down the hall and gestured for me to follow

"What was THAT about?" I hoped my voice didn't sound as loud to the humans as it did to me.

"Somebody getting some flack they didn't deserve." the crashballer poked his wristwatch and pointed the light projection at the wall , then walked past the library and the up the stairs. "Well two someones"

I was actually early for class once, and my ears could hear a flurry of activity coming from inside the classroom. The kid in the red jersey had swapped it out for a red shirt and was surrounded on one side by boys gaping like fish, breathing quickly and laughing at each other.

"No no no, You don't gulp in the air you swallow it. It's like, all the way in the back of your throat. Push your tongue against the back of your throat and try to say URK"

A series of weird breathing and funny faces followed. The spikey haired kid let out a soft burp, earning some cheers. Brock tried to repeat the move and thumped his chest, without any effect. I lolled my tongue got a good gulp of air and let out a long reverberating "buIIRRRRRRRRrRRRp" echoing off the walls.

There was a moment of stunned silence followed by laughter. My tail tucked for a second before I noticed the smiles.

"Nice one!" RedJersey put out a hand "I'm Dave."

"Ronan." He shook my hand up and down vigorously

"I thought you hated" the spikey haired kid looked around. "her" making my tail bristle.

"What? No. Smack talks part of the game. " he smacked the Spikey haired kid on the shoulder "Not cool Mad"

The Door opened, revealing a human woman with large glasses and long hair streaked salt and pepper with gray, peering at the group through large round bottle like glasses.

"Making friends Maddorik?" She propped open the door and ushered everyone inside to a cornucopia of smells. Oil paint, acrylic paint, artificial cherry, wood, clay, playclay, and machine oil all drifted about the room atop the wafting ghosts of kin and humans. Large colorful name tags in various media stood at the art stations. Mine had a long flowing foxtail under Ronan done in orange over a cream background. Miguel's had a spire rock against a blue background and white moon. The large black Wolf from gym class picked up a titanium backing with raised letters in hematite spelling out "Andy" which he hefted in his paws a few times before setting back down with a great deal of care.

"Why art?" the teacher asked, without making it clear whether she meant it as a noun or a verb. "Why not just download something off the net and have one of Mister Niklaas' machines print it off for you?" Apparently she thought the colored chalkboard full of butterflies spelling out M. Lepo were enough introduction for herself.

"You're giving a bit of yourself. The only thing you can give in a world where everyone has everything else" Andy muttered, low enough that I was surprised the human teacher heard him.

"Excellent..." she picked up a swirling glass ink pen from it's well. and wrote that down "Borrowing that for next year...It also helps stir creativity, helps you with a sense of design in case you want to modify something for the printer, and very importantly for the Repeating crowd helps you get some manual dexterity back. So enough gibber jabber let's get started.

My ears drooped a bit at seeing my project , color in dinosaurs with gooey paint. At least they were accurate, even if the stegosaurus was depicted next to the dimetrodon. Brocks station was next to mine and he settled onto the built in chair on a potter's wheel and moved his leg back and forth experimentally making the axle let out an ear piercing squeeeeek. I ducked under the table and gave the mechanism a sniff, then searched the shelves. Linseed oil, nope. Turpentine, nope. Ah, here we go something silicon based.

"Crinkle crinkle...." the small human from gym class whose spun glass nameplate identified as "John Mangalore" whispered from his bench. I shot up and hit my head with on the table with a thump, tucked my tail and pulled my shirt down. Brock Chuckled a bit but rubbed my head soothingly and gave the wheel an experimental kick "Thanks Ronan".

M. Lepo shot John a glare and sat me down , opening a few jars of paint.

"Where's the brushes?" I asked, looking around.

"We'll work up to brushes hon, let's see how you do with this okay?" and guided me by the shoulders back to the oversized desk. She dipped my paws in the green paint and smeared them over the paper. The rough pads of my paws scraped the paper a bit, making my ears flatten and the teacher hmm. "Well hadn't counted on that. We can work on it though" she splatted my hands into the paint and mashed them onto the paper. With a bit of priming the paint went on a little smoother, but was even harder to keep in the lines. I grumbled a bit, my little paws not seeming to do what my brain told them.

"Relax..." she said, which just made me angrier until she pet my ears. "Look, Cloey. Show me what the picture would look like with that big one with the sail colored in this green" a computer screen half hidden behind some sort of twine showed the dimetraon all colors in. "and add some shading, and what the heck, some orange spots..." the picture changed as she directed. "If the point was to HAVE art I'd ask the computer. The point is to DO art" she said, splashing my paws in the paint and putting them on the paper. "See?"

"Now I have paint all over my shirt..." looking at the green splotches on my blue shirt and white belly.

"No..." she said, and smeared paint all over my chin, shirt, and even lifted it to rub my belly. "NOW you have paint all over you." leaving the class snickering.

I buckled down to the work and tried to ignore them, even with my tail tucking around the chair and getting paint on my shirt. There was something oddly satisfying about the slimy paint under my paws and splashing in the paint trays. Before I knew it I'd painted the dimetrodon in green and was trying to mix in a little brown to shade the edges when I felt a little tingle between my legs. The trickle of warm had barely registered at all until it reached my rump, but by then it was too late. Of course the human wasn't going to notice, but a quick look around showed that both of the nearby wolves were busy in their own project. Andy was doing laser etching on a sheet of metal while the white wolf was solidifying a gel sculpture with two opposing lasers.

"F,,,,..." Maldorik cursed and sucked on his finger.

"Maldorik, I don't care how you're used to doing it you cut AWAY from yourself when whittling in this classroom. Understood?"

"ywes mwam" he said through his finger. John Mimed sucking his thumb until Madorick punched him on the shoulder. At which point he mimed Bawling. The teacher rolled her eyes and glued Mals cut shut.

I shared a laugh with Brock who by this point was almost as muddy as I was covered in paint, but he had a perfectly serviceable vase in front of him.

"Sheesh, are you good at EVERYTHING?" I asked

He laughed. "Nah, Ex wife number... 2... three? Wow those memories are jumbled up. Thought it would be good couples therapy."

"Did it work?"

The Crashballer lost himself in thought and almost lost the vase "Would depend on if it was wife two or wife three... " he chuckled. "Wow, thinking about women now is really weird. It's like I KNOW what you do with them it just feels weir erm.." he stopped suddenly and focused back on his project, but the top got wobbly. My own sauropod acquired a fin as my paw went way outside of the lines. I added some black lines to make it look like it had always been there and didn't do a TERRIBLE job of it. Bad maybe, but not terrible.

"Yes excellent!" the teacher peeked over my shoulder. "Good improvisation Ronan. Brock, go ahead and call that one done and start the next one. My art teacher told me an old trick. He'd give an A to anyone that made 50 pots. Or he would grade one pot. People that spent 2 weeks trying to make the perfect pot usually failed. Those that made 50 pots usually made at least one or two perfect ones...I was stubborn and got a B" she pointed above the chalkboard to a beautiful butterfly pot with an antenna for a spout

"That definitely looks like an A... I think he was mad you were being stubborn"

The teacher laughed and ruffled my headfur. "I'll trust your expertise on the matter of stubborn" She wet down a rag and proceeded to rub some of the paint out. Or smear it around, it was kind of hard to tell.

"Andy?" she asked the black wolf, who by now and a slightly scorched snout and the scent of burning metal "How'd you like a head start on the lunch line?

"I'm good thanks..." and picked a wire brush and went to work.

"Fang?" The white wolf in question looked up. His opposing lasers met and his sculpture melted into a puddle. He sighed and flattened his ears. "Well it doesn't look MUCH worse like that" He gave his paws a quick wash grabbed his bag and tossed the gel in the trash. "Come on"

His big loping strides took him down the hall. I had to run on all fours to keep up, and he actually turned around and didn't see me for a second before looking down.

"Oh, there you are. Sorry. Not used to slowing down for ...non wolves.

I heyed! "I bet I'm faster than you."

"in your dreams shortfluff..HEY"

He objected as I took off like a shot, jumping down the steps in a single bound and rolling up to a run. I heard a loud THUMP behind me as he staggered on the landing followed by him catching up as we ran past the library. We hit the door to the cafeteria first though , or at least my head did with a loud heavy thump followed quickly by much louder crash that almost took the door off its hinges.

"Not bad for a fox..." he said into his own tail.

The door opened and a skinny human in an apron looked down. He tossed me a small sweet biscuit with a bit of jerky inside and shut the door.

"hey why s.he get one?"

"She won the race obviously. I don't think that was them on that second thump."

We both laughed and sat up against the door. He put his fist out and I fist bumped it back , despite my little glove paw barely being the size of his fingers.

"This is weird. Almost 80 years since I was in.. what are we in really? Second grade? And the old habits come right back. Sometimes it's like I only left for a summer vacation..." the big wolf sighed

"Well, I only got to college before....and this isn't that different"

He laughed. "I know college students would like to think so. And being a grown u..adult isn't much better. Either you're working and you have school like projects or you're just lazing around in a life long summer vacation. Either way, don't worry about how you got here and try to enjoy it okay? Live in the moment.

I snorted. "Easy for you to say, " I hmmed. You chose to go back right?"

"Yeah well.. beats the alternative doesn't it? I'm not one of those One Way Nutters " the wolf dusted himself off with an equally dusty tail. " Though I gotta say I regret putting it off so long. Those last few years were hell on the hips, meds or no. You don't know how much fun running around like that is till you can't do it" he ruffled my headfur, his paw taking up most of my head with room to spare. " This is a blast. even if we do have class." He started giggling incongruously into his paw at that.

"Some poet YOU are.

"Hey, Andy's the poet, I just work in publishing. Worked... I guess. Somehow I don't think my positions around anymore.

"Wait so you two DO know each other.

"That's speciest..." he put his hand over his heart and drooped his ears to look overly offended. "Well yeah he's my roomate so i know him NOW. But I THINK I did some line editing on one of his poems. AI edited poems always sound off so it's the one field where"

I mimed falling asleep on him and mock snored loudly. He gave my shoulder an overly gentle punch as a gaggle of girls marched down the hall single file behind a VERY tall human woman. She gave him a disapproving glare and a tap of her foot, and he did his best friendly dog face, brushed a bit of his fur off of my shoulder and helped me up. The Girls were peering around their teacher , awwwing and waving at... me?

"it's soooocute

"I wantone

"is that a boy or a girl"

"her fur looks so soft

"can I pet her

"awwww

"he's adorable..."

When everyone around you was a boy it was easy to forget that not everyone was so that you weren't... at least not in one respect. I fidgeted a bit thinking about the differences while hiding behind his big bushy tail.The squirming and hiding, which I couldn't stop, only seemed to make me look more adorable if the rising pitch of the awwws was any indication. Even the big sow bear in the back threatened to pass the normal range of human hearing.

"Where were you when I was dating? You're like a chick magnet. What are you doing in twenty years?"

"Soups on" I pretty much fell through door as it opened.