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Level 5: Graduation!

Part One of: The Pink and Blue Diaperfur Finale!

kitcnub

Author's Note: This is a diaperfur story for readers 18 and over only; if you're under--do your homework! It involves furs in diapers who are not (chronologically) babies, and furs in dresses who are not (biologically) girls, often doing things of a sexual nature. The story is fantasy and emphatically not a representation or recommendation to do anything in real life. It is part of the Pink and Blue series, so if you have not read any prior stories in the series, this is probably not the place to start.

This story continues directly from the cliffhanger ending of [Open House, Episodes 15-17](%5C)

Rapid recap!: The war between the boyish AB/DL fraternity Baby Blue and their enemy Sissy Pink diaperfur faction has come to a head! The sinister scheming of sissy leader Calliope turned out to be a pretext for a Sadie Hawkins dance where her students would invite good caretakers after unmasking the insensitive ones! Baby Blue's leader Roger crashed her party not by launching an attack, but by throwing a bigger and better boy-themed bash at the same time -- and digging tunnels under her academy to give curious cubs direct access to his playsite!

Just as Baby Blue's victory seemed assured, the sissy furs set in motion a secret plan to kitnap a high-ranking boys' team member! But the effort may not have been necessary! A long-buried secret has come to light and drama has erupted within Baby Blue's highest ranks! The sensitive raccoon martial artist, Dex, stumbled upon evidence that Baby Blue's bunny engineering genius, his boyfriend Twitchy, has been lying about his age! Distraught and guilt-ridden both about almost sleeping with a minor, and about nearly hitting him when they fought about it, the incontinent raccoon ran off into the night. At the same time that his frantic best friend learned what happened and began a search for him, an unhinged Dex reappeared on the doorstep of the boy team's worst enemy-- begging for the sissy team's help in ending his distress and disappointment by using their most extreme sissification methods to release him from boyish sexual desires!

Character Fun Facts!

Rian , the boy team's lupine second-in-command, has just dumped Twitchy on Roger and arrived at the Boy Scouts in his frantic search for Dex! If not for Dex's flight, he'd be doing one of the three things he does best -- modeling cub gear, romancing his sissy fox love Serafina, or hanging out at the boys' playsite helping every diaperboy he could get his paws on realize his regressive desires with an encouraging friend. Rian mistakenly thinks: That his best friend Dex and romantic love Serafina would automatically get along because he loves both of them. They wouldn't.

Roger , the boy team's Labrador leader, has just had the truth about closet teenager Twitchy dumped on him! If not for Dex's flight, Roger would be doing what he does best-- taking pride in the fun everyone else is having, looking after his diaperboys, and providing anyone who needed one with a change or a sympathetic shoulder to cry on.

Twitchy , the bunny engineer who's been responsible for Dex's recent triumphs as well as his current heartbreak, has been trying to wean the raccoon off of his best friend Rian and get him to stand up on his own. His pocket-sized engineering partner Squeak has mysteriously vanished from the boys' playsite. If not for Dex's flight -- the bunny would be dealing with a crisis of his own. Twitchy mistakenly thinks: That every problem has a solution and that trying to solve a problem is always a good idea.

Lin Lin , a scheming transsexual girly panda and longtime enemy of Baby Blue, has just had a surprising visitor turn up on her doorstep--a raccoon she reluctantly partnered with on a mission to a fairground long ago. If not for Dex's flight -- Lin Lin would be kidnapping him! That is what she was getting chloroform for -- isn't it? _Lin Lin mistakenly thinks:_That loving girls and hating boys go paw in paw.

Ex-Boy Scouts Ace , a tough trailblazing lynx, and Jax , a sensitive tracking hound, would be having sex this minute if not for Dex's disappearance. But the coon is their buddy so it can't be helped. Besides, their meddling is what brought Twitchy's secret to light. Ace's favorite fictional character is: Jack Bauer.

The transgendered sissy fox princess Serafina , love of Rian's life and controversial star of a local Shakespeare festival production, would be sleeping if not for Dex's flight because she has rehearsal tomorrow night after all of this. Serafina mistakenly thinks: That she's protecting Rian by keeping the controversy about her starring role from him. The wolf, who found out anyway, is massively worried about her and it's added to his general state of hysteria.

The sissy team leader and academy headmistress Calliope would be cat-napping now if not for Dex's disappearance. Instead, she's been locked out of her own academy by her loyal second-in-command!

And Dex , well--if not for this crisis--the repressed diaper coon would still be holding on tight to the final secret buried deep in his unconscious... his most shocking secret of all!

Episodes in this part:

Episode 1: Coming Out!

Episode 2: The Hop-along Kid!

Episode 1: Coming Out!

Rian was sitting in an easy chair with a puffy blanket covered with baby animals thrown over him, sipping a cup of warm tea, feeling the reassuring crinkle of a fresh diaper, and feeling a little confused. The drumming of fast, heavy raindrops against the windows was only making him more nervous.

"This isn't what I thought was going to happen when you said you'd get to work," he said, sounding a little miffed. "I thought it would be zoom, zoom, zoom, spring into action, let's rescue Dex! Instead we're sitting here and he could be out there shivering in the rain by himself right now. Wheeeeen will you have some leads for me?" He fidgeted. It was the most comfortable he'd been in hours, but he started to force himself up. "I need to get out there looking for him."

On the other side of the room, Jax had covered a small whiteboard with a grid of squares in which he periodically drew x's, o's, or other marks that Rian didn't understand. Ignoring the wolf, he looked up as Ace, his boyfriend, who had changed back into his own clothes, walked out of the kitchen after concluding another phone call. Ace shook his head.

"The civet's heard nothing," the trailblazing lynx said calmly. "He's going to check at Roddy's and I asked him to swing by Dex's dojo and look in the windows, since no one will answer the phone there." The tracking hound nodded and filled in a few squares on the dry-erase board. As far as Rian could tell, he seemed to be filling the squares that represented furs they had talked to with some marks, and squares those furs were being sent to look at with different ones. He couldn't figure out the code beyond that, though. "Is he....?" Ace asked vaguely, shaking his head in Rian's direction.

"Calming down," the dog said. "I cleaned him up a bit. He'll be fine."

"Of course I'll be fine," Rian snapped. "What's the matter with you two? I need to get moving. We've wasted enough time here. Dex needs me. Fine, I see your little grid, that's some places we don't need to go ourselves. Good work. Now I need to get to my friend. Give me the keys to Kit's car back. It was a mean trick to take them away when you changed me."

Jax and Ace exchanged glances and the tracking hound padded across the room to Rian, as his boyfriend returned to the Baby Blue member list he was holding and began another call. "Now, Rian," Jax said calmly, "no one here feels worse about Dex running off than I do."

The little wolf looked up at him as the tracking hound got down on his knees and nosed at his paw. He felt so tired, but he was forcing his eyes to stay open. "That's okay, Jax," he said grudgingly. He had heard Jax's cell phone story while the Scouts were changing him out of his soaked diapers and pants, though he now realized Jax's story had largely served as a distraction while Ace hid his car keys. "You were obviously right about Twitchy hiding something. I should have listened to you earlier and maybe I could have cushioned the blow." He shook his head and whimpered. "How could I have let this happen? He never should have just found out like that. I should have known and sat them down and made Twitch tell him. I was so happy Dex had somebody. How could I have missed this? Twitch spent my whole 24/7 party practically hiding in the kitchen doing kitchen stuff, while I was, umm, playing with someone, when his boyfriend who he should have been talking to was in that room with me. How could I not have found that weird? Of course, he was hiding from the pawing stuff. Now that makes sense. How stupid am I? I need to get to Dex and tell him it's my fault if anything. I knew both of them and I should have been looking out for him. He's my best friend." Increasingly agitated, the wolf set his tea down on the small endtable and struggled under the heavy-feeling blanket, but Jax restrained him with one paw, pushing him back into the chair.

The dog patted his head. "None of that who did what when stuff is important right now," he said. In the background, Ace, who was on the phone, was making marks on the two Scouts' grid as he talked. He seemed to understand Jax's code without needing it explained to him. "Now, it's started raining out there hard, Rian, and it's going to keep raining for a while. How do you think Dex will feel when we find him if we have to tell him that you skidded off the road and had an accident looking for him? Or if we lost track of you somewhere in the middle of your wild zigzagging around town and no fur knows where _you_are? Then we'd just have another fur to look for and we'd be back where we started. You stay put right here for a little while until Ace and I have a better handle on things. See, Rian, Dex needs you to be strong and ready for him to lean on when he comes back," the dog said gently.

Rian's ears flicked. "You sound sure that we'll find him before anything bad happens," he said, sniffling.

Jax picked up the Boy Scout sash he had left on the coffee table earlier, dropping it into Rian's lap. "You see there?" he said, pointing at one of the badges, which showed a larger and a smaller fur holding paws, the smaller one with his tail between his legs. "Furs would run off into the woods now and again when I was a camp counselor," Jax said. "We would have to look for them and believe me, Rian, it really helps those cubs to be found by a rescuer who isn't in a panic himself. See we aren't telling all these furs who might run into him a whole long story that will make them angry and confused when we call them. All most of them need to know for the moment is that Dex is missing and we're a little worried about it. Ace and I know what we're doing here. Now you trust us. You can help just as soon as we can figure out a task that makes sense for you. The important thing is you get your nerves together before you send yourself and half the team into a panic. Get yourself together for Dex. You'll have the most important job when we find him and you should be getting ready for it now."

The lynx, who had just finished another call, rested a paw on his boyfriend's shoulder. "Conference," he said, jerking his head toward the kitchen, as the tracking hound looked back at him. What did that mean? Rian squirmed. Neither of them had said that after any other call. Had he heard something that made him worried? Did he have a lead?

"I'll be back in a minute, sir," Jax said, patting the little wolf's head as he took his tea cup. "I'll bring another cup of tea for you."

Rian stared down at Jax's Boy Scout sash and fiddled with it in his paws, scanning the badges, running his paws over it and wondering idly what each of them meant. "Please, Dex," he whimpered. "Don't be out there soaked and lonely. Hold on. I'll surround you with love and support the minute I find you. There won't ever have been a more cosseted coonkit on the planet. I know all you need now is for someone to reach out and cuddle you, cutie."

******************************************

"You're wet all over," said Lin Lin, shaking her head scoldingly, as she pushed the door shut behind her, one ear pricked, and added as though it were the more surprising detail, "And with water."

The room was illuminated only by a small lamp with a fairy-covered lampshade on her nightstand she had flicked on when she got up at the first knock.

"Very funny," snorted the bedraggled looking coon, who stood there hesitantly, looking around for a chair, but not seeing one in the small, sparsely furnished academy bedroom. "You don't have a chair. I guess I shouldn't sit on your bed?"

The panda seemed to relax after a moment as she relatched her door. "Must have been a false alarm," she said, then turned her attention back to her visitor. "So what's going on again, Dex? It might help if you took a few breaths and inserted some background information this time."

The coon was still quivering as he gazed out between the pink curtains on her window, but he seemed to be breathing a little more regularly. "It's started raining out there," Dex remarked absently, before turning around. "It's picking up fast. When I was a cub Mom used to say it rained because angels were crying. Did your mom say that?"

"My mom doesn't speak English," Lin Lin answered curtly, "so no."

Dex's ears flicked. It was too short an answer, and there was something familiarly evasive in her tone. He looked over his shoulder slowly. "She doesn't know about your sex change, does she?" he asked, still sounding distant.

Then he shrugged and rambled, without waiting for an answer, "I would ask who they were crying for sometimes. She would say, 'All of us. Because we haven't learned to love each other yet the way they do.' I had a good cubhood. A great one, I realize, now that I've heard about others. I mean we didn't buy everything we wanted but both my parents went to all my karate tournaments. They didn't complain about having to cook different when I went vegetarian on them in middle school. They took me to health food stores. They would say I was educating them when I picked out stuff and explained it. A lot of my friends had unhappy cubhoods. But mine was happy. There was never anything for me to be angry about then."

"Are you angry now, Dex?" the panda asked. "I'm a little confused about that. Are you here for yourself? Or are you here in search of a way to make some other furs feel really, really terrible?"

Dex turned his forepaws pads up and looked down at them. Was he just here to hurt Twitchy? He hadn't thought of that. Or even . . . No. He could never be angry at his best friend. Why would he think that? He owed everything to him. He walked back to the middle of the room and turned to face the panda.

"Why are you worried about my reasons? Why aren't we moving yet?" he asked slowly. "Isn't this a big coup for you? Are the wheels turning in your head? Are you trying to figure out a way you can tie me up and take sole credit for bringing me in? Will you not get any points if I just showed up? Is that why you were worried about someone coming? I'll say you captured me if you want when we go out there. Put me in handcuffs maybe."

He half-smiled. "For old time's sake. That act's worked for us before, right? I told you, do what you want. I'll do the sissy routine for a day or two, the rest of the party weekend anyway, it should come naturally when the boy sex hormones are blockaded off, right? Please. I can't go back there and see any of them feeling things the way I feel them right now. It's hard to explain but . . . I'm not used to feeling such a mess of things like this. Ugly, awful things. I almost hit Twitchy a couple hours ago. I had a flash and, you know, I felt so angry I didn't care one bit for a split second whether I hurt him as long as I could get some of that out of me somehow, by shoving someone, or hitting something or--" The coon shook his head. "My friend Ace looks up to me. He said I'm one of a pawful of furs he looks up to. I can't tell him I got on all fours and begged a minor to have sex with me. How can I look at him and tell him that?"

The raccoon still looked frightfully unkempt, but his breathing had slowed down and there was something calmer about his eyes and his tone since he'd entered the room. Lin Lin looked up at him and shook her head. "The bunny's a teenager," she deduced, biting her lip, and added, sympathetically, as she reflected on the short time she'd spent handcuffed to her quick-thinking, nervous, and emotionally oblivious tactical rival, "That _does_explain some things about him. You found out after the two of you had sex?"

"Before," Dex said, breathing a long sigh of relief. "Thank goodness. Or my first time would have been . . ." He shuddered as though the rest were too terrible to say, adding quickly, "He turned 18 a few days ago." He frowned. "Come to think of it, it was the day before the fire. I have a feeling I shouldn't think too hard about that right now. When I'm calmer and less paranoid."

"First time?" Lin Lin asked, looking at him askance. "_You're_a virgin? Still? How old are you?"

Dex looked up at her sadly. "Please. I obviously don't feel or process things in that department the way I should, the way I'm supposed to. I should have known about Twitchy. I mean I felt so desperate and worried about whether we'd ever have sex, and if I'd be able to do any better with him, if I was too tight, if it could even happen, if we'd both just end up crying, that should have been a clue that something was up, right?"

Lin Lin regarded him with disbelief. "You_were playing bottom to _him?" she asked, raising an eyebrow, and the raccoon rapidly changed the subject.

"You don't know what a mess I've made of things with my best friend either. He's so happy and in love and I _want_to be happy for him. I do. He still needs me, you know. I don't _want_to feel jealous. But it's like I can't help what I think sometimes. I can't handle this any more. It's one disaster after another. No more sex stuff. My sexual orientation is anything sexual makes me a bad fur, that's what it is. It's obviously all screwed up. You're right to look at me weird. I'm all crushed and pathetic at best no matter what boy I'm with--at worst--who knows?" The coon was becoming visibly agitated again, his whiskers twitching. "We have to get moving. You wouldn't be stalling like this if you didn't really have a way to do it. It makes sense, right? Isn't that like your ultimate sissy weapon? Take sexual release away from a boy? I'm telling you I want it. I'm still so confused! I need to clear my head! My life is a rolling disaster. I've done terrible things. All I need now is--"

"Dex," the panda interrupted him, and he looked down at her curiously, only to see the back side of her paw just before it connected with his muzzle, fast and hard, and sent him tumbling backwards, with a soft whump, on to his rear on her bed. "Get over yourself and stop wallowing in your muck like a baby," she snapped, shoving the chloroformed rag into the rear of her sweatpants, tucking it between her diaper and the pair of pink panties slipped over its plastic casing. "I haven't decided what to do with you yet, but I do _not_have time to watch you have a meltdown."

"Owwww," the coon whined in his wet and dirty karate uniform, looking up at her, his wild-eyed look slowly fading into one of annoyance, then asked, after a moment, "So . . . sitting on your bed _is_okay?"

******************************************

Rian, who had dozed off into a light, restless sleep, sat up with a jolt as he felt the tracking hound's paw on his shoulder. "Dex, I'm--Oh," his stomach churned as he recalled where he was, "Jax. What's going on? What were you two doing?"

The tracking hound pressed another cup of steaming tea into one of the wolf's paw and guided the cup to his muzzle, blowing on it and watching him take a sip. "I was getting you another cup of tea," he said gently. "How are you feeling, sir?"

Rian fidgeted. The form of address seemed ironic, even though Jax didn't mean it that way, since the wolf hardly felt in charge at the moment. "Like I want to know where Dex is," he said. "Did you two find out something?"

"Maybe," said the tracking hound, crouching on his knees next to the easy chair. Where was the lynx? Rian wondered, looking around the room. "Ace is checking some things. He'll be right back." He crouched there for a moment without saying anything, then squeezed Rian's arm. "Drink your tea," he said. "It will help calm you down."

The little wolf blew on the cup for a very long time, then carefully took a sip. "I'm glad you two are on our team, Jax," he admitted after he swallowed.

"Be glad after we find Dex," the dog said.

Rian yawned in spite of himself. "What's the empty spot on your Boy Scout sash for?" the wolf asked, pointing with his free paw. "Dex told me once that you had practically every merit badge. Why did you leave a spot right in the middle open?"

"Oh," Jax patted the wolf's head. "You know, you might be the first fur in Baby Blue who's noticed. I left that open from the start. Those are my first two badges on either side," he pointed. "Knot-tying, and citizenship. I planned since I got them to put my Eagle Scout insignia in between them."

Rian looked up at him, mildly curious. "I thought you were an Eagle Scout," he said. "Maybe I just assumed, I mean, scouting seems so important to you."

The dog smiled. "Well I did the service project and all that," he said gently. "But I resigned before anything could be officialized."

"What do you mean resigned?" The wolf tilted his muzzle and looked up at him curiously. "I know plenty of furs who dropped out of the Boy Scouts. Don't you just stop going to meetings? How do you 'resign'?"

"In a letter to the editor of my local newspaper," Jax gestured at the wolf's teacup, guiding it up to his muzzle. "With cc's to all the members of the Scouts council. By my last year of high school, Rian, it had become clear that the national Scouts and I had some, ummm, ideological differences."

Rian narrowed his eyes after he sipped. "Do you think it made any difference that you did that?" he asked.

"Maybe not." The tracking hound shrugged. "I know it wouldn't have," he said, "if I didn't."

******************************************

Dex held his arms out to his side uncertainly as the panda untied his sash and removed the top half of his yellow karate gi. "I know these are a mess," the coon warned her, "but I don't have any other clothes with me to change into."

"Well," she said, "If you're going to go through the halls here, Dex, you can't wear your uniform. We'll find something more appropriate. You won't be much of a prize captive if you die of pneumonia. And besides," she steadied herself, "girls just do not get that dirty."

The coon looked relieved as she stripped off his sodden white undershirt next. "You are going to take me to Level 5 and help me shut the boy juices off so I can clear my head," he said, relaxing. "I was starting to worry just because I wanted it you'd play some kind of game to make me beg or something." His breathing had slowed down to a normal rate again. "I thought we connected for a minute when I said goodbye to you outside the fairground, but ever since it's been like you hated me more than ever."

"Take off your own pants. You're dreaming if you think I'm helping with that. It's bad enough I'll need to watch you change your diaper when we get to some cloth supplies," the panda snapped, then shook her head. "What's the deal with you anyway, Dex?" she asked as she tossed his sodden clothes into a pile by her nightstand and watched the coon bend over, raising his bottom enough to maneuver his pants downwards to his knees, his ringed tail brushing against her as he did. "Who are you trying to impress all the time? Who is the goody two shoes act for? Like what was the big idea," she said accusingly, "charging into a fire? Of all the stupid... How did you put it out anyway?"

"With my diapers!" the coon said proudly, his ears perking up. "Cloth really is better. I keep telling furs this!"

Then, as Lin Lin snorted and held a paw to her forehead, he frowned and exclaimed as though he had finally calmed down enough to realize it for the first time, "Oh no! I left my backpack at Twitchy's. My cell phone and my changing supplies are in there." He groaned. "That means I'll need to get it back from him. Crap. He's probably sitting around with it right now saying that it means subconsciously I didn't want to break up with him. Gaaaaaa, why is he so inside my head that I know how he can rationalize things?" The coon shook his head as though trying to get something out of it. "Well, maybe I can have Ace or Rian get it for me. I don't care if anyone's trying to call me right now anyway. Not until I'm done here. What do you mean," he asked absently, "who was I trying to impress? It was the right thing to do. I've done things like it before. It was coincidence that some reporter kid was there that time."

The panda squeezed her eyes shut. "You really are a problem for my team, you know that? That stupid newspaper story plays into your propaganda, doesn't it?" she said, sitting down on the bed next to him to open the drawers on her nightstand. "All this knight-in-armor crap. Boys are _not_like that," she insisted as she slammed one of the drawers shut after taking out a blouse that might fit Dex, turning around and holding it up in front of him experimentally.

"You want to know my beef with you, Dex," she said as frowned at the blouse, "it's that you're rolled into one grimy package all the things boys pretend to be, but they never, never, _never_are. Not once they have what they want anyway. I spent part of my childhood in places where I felt ashamed to be born one of them. I rotated for a while when we moved around, in China, then here, do one kind of sport, do another kind of sport, do math league, do ballet, that ought to get rid of the bad ones, right? But you know what, they're all the same. The smart boys are no different than the athletes are no different than the cool ones, at least when it comes to how they treat girls. Or boys that are different."

Dex frowned and brushed her loose paw with one of his. "Well I'm sorry you've known boys like that," he said simply. "But you also know me."

The panda leapt to her feet as she heard a sharp knock at the door. "Get down," she snapped, shoving Dex down on to the bed, and rolling the pliant coon off of it onto a small purple rug on the side of the bed nearer the window.

"Owwwww," he moaned as he fell to the floor and she scampered to the door.

"And stay down!" she commanded him in a firm whisper as she turned her attention to the door and cracked it open cautiously, then did a double take.

"Oh," Lin Lin said, sounding surprised, and rested one paw on the chain latch cautiously, "it's you. What do _you_want?"

******************************************

"After this thing with Dex and Twitch," the little wolf admitted to Jax, "I guess I see the appeal of dating someone like Ace, I mean at least he's not complicated. No deep waters there. The only thing you need to know about _him_is that he can't keep his muzzle shut."

Jax frowned, and Rian started, unsure how much the lynx might have heard, as Ace stepped into the room in his woodland clothes with an uncomfortably tight grin on his face just as Rian finished speaking. The tawny cat looked from one of them to the other.

Rian was starting to feel nervous again. "What's going on?" he asked. "What was your conference about before?"

"Ben raised a possibility we need to think about," the lynx said, ignoring Jax, who was standing behind the wolf, shaking his head and waving his paws to silence him. "He said if we hadn't found him yet we might need to consider," the lynx took a long breath, "that Dex may have left the village."

"We don't know anything yet, Ace, it's premature to worry him--" Jax started to say, but the lynx continued speaking.

Ace shook his head. "If he were heading into town it seems like someone would have found some trace of him by now, I mean, at the least he's going to need to get diapers from somewhere if he doesn't get his backpack back, and Dex can't buy them from a drug store. I asked Kyle and Diesel to log into one of the cameras Jax and Twitch put up in the woods and scan back over the last couple hours, they caught a shot of what looked like him passing by."

"He's in the woods?" Rian asked, sounding worried. "It's raining out there. If he's in our woods, do you think he's going to the playsite?" He looked relieved for a minute. "Maybe he's going to Rog. Twitch is there but -- Rog will know what to do. Everyone else will be there too. This is good. It's a sign that he's thinking straight."

"He's not in our woods," Ace said, ignoring the slitting motions the dog next to Rian was making across his throat. "He's in theirs. I'm thinking if Dex is too distraught to see any of us right now--he might have gone to the one place with supplies he knew no one from our team would go this weekend. Or maybe," the lynx looked down at Rian uncertainly, "maybe he's angry at all of us for not figuring things out or telling him. Maybe he wants to do something that will really spite the group."

Rian stared down at his footpaws, shivering, and concluded Ace's thought. "Maybe he wants to . . . to give himself up . . . to them? When he heard what we did about what's going on in their dungeon over there?" He shook his head, then looked up with a fearful gleam in his eye. "No. They _cannot_get their paws into Dex's head right now."

******************************************

"Can I come in?" Serafina asked, tugging on her bathrobe, and peering past the panda. "Where's Shelley? I thought you and she were running security against this supposed attack?"

"Attack?" Lin Lin blinked.

The sissy fox waved one paw in a circle, repeating what she had heard in a skeptical tone, "Cassie's waking up people. The boys broke their word; we've seen vague signs they're going to raid the academy and try to finish us for good; we need to activate our defenses and keep anyone out of the building. Is any of this ringing a bell?"

Lin Lin narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "The dog is shifting to containment mode already?" She looked her over shoulder, then back at the fox. "Not good," she muttered to herself. "She changed the plan."

"Well it's the phoniest story I've ever heard," Serry said bluntly, lowering her voice. "Cassie is a rotten liar. She's making it sound like Rian is going to charge in here in fifteen minutes at the head of a personal commando squad. He and Rog don't hate us that much. And she won't let me talk to Callie. You went off with her earlier. What's _really_happening that might require putting this place in lockdown?"

Lin Lin narrowed her eyes. So, this would be the fox's chance. Payback. She wouldn't fall for it. "I can't tell you that," she snapped. "If you don't know what Shelley and I are supposed to do then you obviously aren't cleared to know. They might think you're not trustworthy." She added with an edge in her voice, "I can't imagine where they would get _that_idea."

Serafina kept trying to look past her. "I heard voices in here," she said. "I've actually been standing outside the door for a little while."

Lin Lin rolled her eyes. Of course. Those were the pawsteps. She hated foxes. "I listen to the radio when I nap," she said. "Talk radio. It's better for putting you to sleep."

"No you don't," Serry said. "I've never seen you do that once."

"Sometimes," the panda added. "Sometimes I listen to the radio when I nap. And I was napping before Shelley and I went active," she looked at her watch. Where was that squirrel? Well, she hadn't exactly been on time for much during her short stint at the academy.

"Fine," Serry said. "I'll see if Callie is up yet."

She watched the fox pull her bathrobe tight and retie the sash as she moved off down the corridor, then relaxed and turned around, walked over to the bed and slumped down on to it. Dex's head popped up next to her. "What was that about?" the raccoon asked, failing to lower his voice. "What's going on here?" He tilted his muzzle and looked up at the panda, mildly concerned. "Are you in some kind of trouble?"

Lin Lin took a long breath when she heard her door rattle open as far as it could with the chain lock still in place. She instantly grabbed a puffy Tinkerbell pillow and whapped Dex with it, holding it up in front of his head as he sunk back down behind the bed.

"Who was that?" Serafina asked, standing back at the door, and holding it cracked open with one paw as she looked in.

"No one," said Lin Lin as she replaced the pillow on the bed. "I threw my pillow at the door and said something nasty about you. You snoop. I was just picking it up."

"Then whose tail is sticking out from behind your bed?" the sissy fox asked, pointing down. "Is that De--" She shook her head, a sparkle appearing in one of her eyes, and suppressed a chuckle and the start of a smile. "_You're_sneaking a boy in?" she exclaimed quietly, sounding more congratulatory than accusing. "Wow! How long has _this_been going on? Does Twitchy--"

She started herself as she heard a large pawstep around the corner and turned, pulling the door shut behind her. A large dog's voice called, "Serry?"

Lin Lin raced over to the door and leaned against it, pressing all her small bulk against the frame as though prepared to hold it shut. "You idiot!" she scolded Dex in a loud whisper. The coon reached for his ringed tail and pulled it up between his legs, staring down at the tip of it accusingly. "Didn't you ever have a girl -- or, uh, a boy I guess -- over your parents'? Three minute rule! You wait three minutes after someone leaves before you start acting like they're really gone! We're screwed now! That fox hates my guts. She's just been waiting for a chance like this to stick it to me."

"Screwed?" Dex sounded confused for a moment. "What are we doing? Can't you just turn me over? Oh, right. We need to make it look like you captured me."

The panda pressed an ear to the door and braced herself.

"She's not in there. You know Lin Lin, Cassie," she heard the fox saying. "I'm sure she got an idea and she's out cooking up trouble for the boys already."

After a brief, muted exchange, Serry could be heard again, saying, "Well then maybe Shelley knows where she is? No, I can do it. I'm up now, right? Might as well pitch in so another fur can sleep."

Dex sat uncertainly on the other side of the bed. "What's happening?" he asked.

The panda shook her head. "I'm really not sure," she admitted as she opened her small closet and found a broom, which she slipped through the chain lock and positioned diagonally, pressing a pink toy chest against the other end to hold it in place as a primitive bar that could at least keep the door from being cracked open. "But it sounds like she covered for us." She eyed the raccoon uncertainly. "I think she thinks," Lin Lin fidgeted as she approached the bed and sat down on it, "that you're here because you and I are doing," she waved one paw in a circle, "you know."

"I know? Oooooohhhhh!" The coon stood up uncertainly and sat down next to her, looking down at his stiff cloth diaper. He needed a change, but there were only disposables in this room, and anyway none of Lin Lin's would fit him. "That would be crazy!" he laughed, waving a paw dismissively. "I mean, no offense. It's just, as far as she knows, we hate each other and I'm committed elsewhere. Well, that might not seem important to her. Anyway, you're a girl. A very girly one. I mean, not in the sense of being helpless or clingy or needing to be rescued or whatever being a girl means for most of your sissy teammates or the girls who hung around us athletic types in my high school. Not like that. The independent version."

The panda fidgeted and suppressed the start of a smile. "It is a little more complicated than--" she said, but Dex waved a paw dismissively.

"Nah," he said as he flopped back on to the bed, spreading his arms out to his side. "You're a girl to me. Not like some of these others. I heard Serry's been getting more serious about the transgender stuff because of whatever's going on with her play. Maybe she has more respect for you."

The panda didn't say anything for a minute, then Dex propped himself up, resting his head on one elbow. "She doesn't know you had a sex change either, does she?" he asked with a sigh. "Jeez, Double L."

Lin Lin shook her head. "Most of the furs who know about all that are scattered far and wide. Only a few at the academy know who need to know," she admitted. "Certainly not someone like her who hates me." She frowned. "Or hated me. I'm a little confused about that at the moment. This has been a confusing night."

"How can you not tell your teammates?" the raccoon asked. "It's like a physical thing you might need help with at some point, isn't it? I mean, shouldn't _they_understand? And the diapers, don't you--"

"No one changes me," Lin Lin said, "and I told you I virtually never use them, it's a comfort thing. For a while, literally a comfort thing." The panda patted him on the head. "I'm the real version of something they only want to be the pretend playtime version of, Dex," she said. "It's really not the same thing. They like it because they can turn it on and off. No, most of them wouldn't get it."

The incontinent raccoon look down at his own cloth diaper, which was starting to dry, but was uncomfortably dirty from his trek through the woods, and bit his lip, recalling how reluctant he still was to tell anyone on his team about his involuntary diaper dependence, and how alienated from the rest of them, even a recreational full-timer like Rian, he still often felt.

"I can relate to that," he said, and rested a paw loosely on her wrist. "I'm sort of the same way."

The two sat there for a minute uncertainly, each seeming to be on the verge of saying something. The panda was clearly doing calculations in her head and kept reaching for the rag hidden under her pants, then stopping. "Well," the coon said at last, "I guess it's easiest if you bring me straight there instead of risking an inquisition. We should get moving. How do we get to Level 5?"

"We really need to make you look like a prisoner if we're going to move through the halls now just in case we're caught," Lin Lin said. "That fox might be coming back here with all of them to surround me. She's probably just hoping I'll have let my guard down that way. Besides," she added, wrinkling her muzzle, "you're filthy."

Dex slipped his arms into the blouse the undersized panda had left on the bed and raised them above his head, but after a minute of effort, he hadn't succeeded in doing much other than getting his arms and his head entangled, and he stared at her through the gauzy pink silk, looking at her wide-eyed and helpless. "I don't think any of your clothes are going to fit me," he admitted with a sigh.

The panda bit her lip. "Well it needs to be something _you_would never wear, something that will make you convincingly squirmy and captive-like." She snapped her fingers. "I have an idea."

******************************************

"If he went there, he's not thinking clearly," Rian said, steeling himself as he cast off the blanket and stood up, stretching his legs uncertainly. "I can't let that manipulative leopardess or that scheming panda take advantage of Dex when he's coming apart like this. Not with the stuff they have over there. Dex has too much bottled up in his head. He cannot be put under their hypnosis screening thing, for goodness' sake. Or," he eyed the Boy Scouts, who had been with him when they heard Ben's report about Shelley's hormonal repressants, and shuddered, "drugged or anything. You have no idea what he can be like if an idea really gets into his head. He can convince himself of anything. I mean, he trained himself to regress, for heaven's sake."

The lynx nodded. "I'm with Rian on this," Ace said, eying Jax cautiously. "Dex is a black belt in beating himself up, and that place preys on feelings of guilt and inferiority. The longer he's gone without talking to one of us the more convinced he'll be that everything that happened with Twitch is his fault. The academy is not the place for Dex to be now--not alone, not without someone by his side who's looking out for him. Besides," he added smugly, "they have every reason to stick it to our team after we showed them up in the battle of the bands. If they seem he's vulnerable, who knows what they might do and how he might respond to it? We may have to break the usual rules."

Jax looked more reluctant but, after a moment, the tracking hound nodded. "Okay," he said, "I don't like it, but yes, it might be necessary. You can open the boxes." Ace nodded and walked off into his bedroom. Rian looked from one of them to the other. Boxes? What was going on now?

He was about to ask, when he heard his phone vibrating on their coffee table, and dived for it, flipping it open. Just a text message, obviously written hastily, in answer to one of his. He squeezed it in both paws and squeezed his eyes shut.

"Thank you, Serry," he said aloud to himself. "You're my princess forever. I knew that in the end, you'd do the right thing." He looked up at Jax. "Dex _is_at the academy. Serry can't get away to talk but she thinks she caught a glimpse of him and she's going to look into it. Ohhh," he whined, "but I'm sure Serry doesn't know about the evil things they're doing."

He clenched his right forepaw into a fist. "That's two clues. I can't wait to hear more, sweetheart, I'm sorry. I'm not going to let anyone talk me in circles about this when they don't know what's just happened with Twitchy. I don't have time to explain it to half the world and put out brushfires either. Rog already said he tried calling Callie and she won't talk to him. No surprise after the party. I'm getting my buddy out of that place before anything terrible and humiliating happens to him."

******************************************

"All done," announced Lin Lin, standing up on her bed, as she finished pulling the shirt on over Dex's arms, which he had obligingly raised in the air over his head. "You can look now."

The coon opened his eyes, and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror beside the panda's door.

"This is terrible and humiliating!" Dex exclaimed, squirming in his uncomfortably stiff cloth diaper as he looked down at Serafina's old Dragonball Z tee shirt, which hung slightly lower than his waist. The raccoon crossed his arms and bit his lip, and began shifting his weight from one footpaw to the other as though trying to wriggle out of it. "I would _never_wear this shirt," he pronounced haughtily. "Dragonball? _I_think _my_taste in cub entertainment is a _little bit_more discriminating. I mean, flying? Shooting laser beams? Blowing up planets? _I_practice _real_martial arts."

"Of course you do, cutie. You could punch your way right out of a playpen," the shorter panda said, still standing on his bed. She patted the stripe that ran across the center of his headfur condescendingly, and the coon, although he didn't realize it, flicked his tail. "I got this from the fox's give-away bin."

Dex rolled his eyes. "Figures," he muttered.

"See, I thought this would work well enough," she said, sounding pleased with herself. "Screening goes better if you're embarrassed, it helps break defenses down and keeps you distracted and less alert. It needs to look like I'm bringing you in for that."

"Screening?" Dex fidgeted. "But you're giving me what I want, right? Secret serum stuff?"

Lin Lin let out a sigh. "We'll talk about it on the way. Since you got us caught before I could think of anything else, I don't have any choice but to run things this way. I still think that fox is going to sell us out and they'll be on me any minute. I told you, she hates me. So we _better_make it look like I'm taking you in. Just follow me."

******************************************

The lynx returned carrying a wooden crate in both arms and set it down on the living room floor. Rian eyed it suspiciously and poked it with his foot, bending over to look at the label on top of it.

"ROTC eq-uip 1?" he sounded out the label on the box, questioningly. "What is this stuff? ROTC? Isn't that like an Internet chat abbreviation? Rolling on the . . ." Rian trailed off, looking at the Scouts exchange glances, as he feebly concluded, "counter?"

The lynx smiled patiently and set an open backpack on the floor. "It's an army officer training program. Helps pay for college."

Rian tilted his head and looked up at the lynx, who he had never particularly liked, but put up with since Dex and Jax seemed to see something more in him. "I didn't know you were in that, Ace," he said noncommittally. "Dex never mentioned it."

Ace shrugged as he bent over and got on his knees to lift the top off the crate, opening the layers of wrapping that were inside. "I was out of it already by the time Dex and I met," he said simply. "I told."

Rian frowned and looked at Ace's tracking hound boyfriend, who had changed back into his Boy Scout uniform. Jax studiously looked away from him.

Rian, still wearing the top of his sailor suit now over a pair of borrowed, dry black jeans, took a long breath and rested a small paw on the lynx's shoulder. He wasn't sure how much the lynx had heard when he walked in earlier. "Ace," he said, "I'm sorry."

The lynx chuckled. "What for?" he asked good-naturedly, looking up over his shoulder. "There are no sad stories in this room. You know as well as we do, Rian," he said, smiling, "life before and life after you've found out, and come out, I mean, life with yourself, there's no comparison. Suddenly you're twice the fur you were before. You understand it's not your fault that everything seemed so hard for so long. And besides you were right," he patted the wolf's paw, then turned back to his box of supplies, adding as he did, "All you need to know about me is that I can't keep my muzzle shut."

******************************************

"You should give your teammates a chance," Dex whispered as he trailed behind Lin Lin, pantless, in a faded Dragonball Z tee-shirt, through the academy's darkened corridors, she occasionally redirecting him as they heard pawsteps in the distance, or pausing to glance around corridors. "My friends are wonderful furs," he said. "Rian, Ace, Rog, Twi- well," he frowned, and added, as though reminding himself he was angry, "definitely _not_Twitchy. But _apart from_Twitchy, they're all wonderful furs. I love all of them. I mean all of them except Twitchy. I'm mad at him."

"This is so weird," the panda remarked, largely to herself, as they made their way through the hall. "Why hasn't anyfur gotten in our way yet? It's like everyone's been redirected away to the perimeter. Are your boys really going to attack? Is that story true?"

Dex, following his own train of thought, didn't even seem to hear her question. "You just don't realize how lonely you are, Double L. That's your real problem. You told me because you wanted to reach out to someone. I see that now. I didn't even know how lonely I was either until Rian and Roger reached out to me. The boys in Baby Blue are special people, it's like they put my life back in color when I thought it would be black-and-white forever. I'd take all their pain on myself if I could. Rian, Ace, Jax, even Roger. There's no reason a guy as nice him should still be living by himself having weekend flings here and there," Dex continued as he stumbled along behind her. "I want them all to feel as accepted as they've made me feel."

Lin Lin looked over her shoulder at him curiously. "Do you know what it sounds like you're saying Dex?" she asked, squinting at him.

"What does it sound like I'm saying?" the coon asked, perplexed, but before he could answer, Lin Lin, who had stepped forward, tumbled as the floor panel she had stepped on gave way under her, flailing to catch her balance.

Dex, alarmed, leapt forward, wrapping his arm around her waist and yanking her forward before she fell, and the two tumbled over the trap door to land on their sides on the floor beyond it. "Thanks. We're getting close, and this place is shifting into lockdown mode," she warned. "There'll be other traps switching on. And the test if the boss lady catches us. That could be a problem for you if you really want the full-blown sissy treatment."

"Test?" Dex asked, his ears flicking.

The panda rolled her eyes as she got to her feet and brushed herself off. "I thought you all knew from your wolf friend? The screening is a sissy orientation test. It could be dicey in your case. Having bad sexual experiences with boys and coming here to forget about them doesn't exactly make you a sissy, Dex." She held a paw down to him, adding with a snort, "I'm no expert on the garden variety, but when you put it that way _that_wouldn't even make you gay."

"What do you mean," the coon asked in a bemused tone as he took her paw and let her pull him up, "not gay? I'm a babyfur. I like my diapers -- I mean, I didn't at first, but now -- if I were cured tomorrow, I would -- I would wear them sometimes anyway. Maybe more than sometimes. I'm an officer in a boy diaperfur group! All my friends are gay. Every one of them. We support each other. I'm there for my friends. They can be themselves around me. They know I'm on their side. Of course I'm gay. I'm totally gay."

"Quick!" Lin Lin grabbed his paw and opened a side door, yanking him into a small, cramped closet and pulling it shut behind them. "I hear someone!"

"I went to the classes and everything," Dex said to the air, as he stumbled in after her.

******************************************

"All right, listen up," the mercenary grey squirrel said, not sounding very excited about it as she adjusted her white tennis skirt and tapped her riding crop against one paw to the pawful of yawning sissy students, "I'm supposed to say, those boys aren't satisfied with crashing your party, they want to get in here and wreak havoc, and that would be bad because we have guests having post-party sex. At least I hope they're having sex and not only doing diaper-changing and dress-up stuff, because if that's all they're here for then frankly you're all a lot weirder than I thought. You lot who either have skills, or for whom this night is less important because you haven't earned any playtime yet," she eyed a jackal-skunk hybrid wearing only an apron, a puffy purple diaper and ballet slippers, "or because you already have some boy or other inside you half the time," she eyed a golden retriever, "are watching entrance and exit points, activating traps, and sounding the alarm if you see anything suspicious."

"Where's Lady Lin Lin?" asked the golden retriever, kneeling in front of a bunch of shorter sissy furs -- she had gotten pretty comfortable on her knees in the aftermath of the Open House dance; in fact, she had been on them most of the night.

"The panda?" the squirrel shrugged. "I didn't wake her up. It would confuse the chain of command and I'd just have to listen to her argue and second-guess me about everything and recite trivia about those diaperboys only one of whom is of any interest to me. I'm running point on defense here, that's what I was hired to do. We have a plan from earlier so there's no use reinventing the wheel. We just use that. Girl Scouts teaches you to be organized and not waste effort like that."

"Whaaat's going on?" asked a cross fox in a pink nightie rubbing his eyes with the back of his paws as he joined the tail end of the small group.

"Good, one of the rare diaperkits who might actually be useful," Shelley said, tossing him a bundle from the floor next to her.

Swifty unrolled it with his footpaw and squinted at the bundle, which contained his Baby Blue outdoorsman uniform and the prize paintball gun the spy had earned during the boys' field trials. "Ewww, boy clothes from before," he whined, clutching his nightie protectively. "I thought I didn't have to wear those the rest of my vacation. The princess and I had a deal."

Shelley tapped her riding crop against her paw. "You're one of the plants," she said. "The boys come in a big group, you hang back and fall in with them, see how they deal when there's fire coming from inside as well from out. We'll make their numbers work against them. The traps will slow them down, and if they try to stop to free whoever's caught, it will break them into clumps that are easy to pick off."

A sissy bear raised her paw shyly. Shelley just glared at her. "You're kidding, right?" she said.

The bear cleared her throat. "What about the spy the boys had here? The lion? He knows about the crawl spaces."

The squirrel yawned and waved a paw in front of her muzzle. "He thinks he does. That's the first thing I thought of. His little shortcuts to and from the dungeon are all going to be trapped in the middle. Anyone who crawls in there will find either end sealed off and it'll be hard to avoid tripping an alarm."

"And the tunnels?" the sissy bear asked.

"They lead into the lower levels. With security on and in lockdown," the squirrel smiled, "no fur is getting through there. Anyone who does get through, deals with us, I'll make some postings that make sense once we have the traps active. And I'll check the perimeter outside myself."

A gray hyena in a purple sleeveless shirt and pink women's jeans tight enough to make an extra bulge from his chastity cage visible, got to his feet hopefully as she started moving. "It's raining outside. I can hold an umbrella for you, Miss Shelley," he said eagerly, waving a closed one that he seemed to have carried in hopes of such an opportunity. "I can hold it over you the whole time. It doesn't matter if I get wet!"

"Women's jeans? I give you a shopping allowance and that's the best you can do? Do any of you lot think he's a girl in those?" Shelley asked, ignoring his offer and looking askance at him.

The sissy golden retriever snorted and shook her head. "Femboy poser," she muttered.

One of the sissy bears was stifling a chortle at the occasional slight clinking audible as the hyena moved. "Needs something under his tail to balance the extra weight on front if you ask meeee," she whispered to the fur sitting next to her. "Then maybe he'd walk like a girl."

Shelley shook her head and brushed by the hyena, ignoring his offer as he hung his head shamefully. "This is easy peasy. If the boys come in a big group, they're finished. If they bring their lion, they're finished. If they come through their tunnels into the basement, they're finished, and how else are they going to get here in bad weather? Most of them will get caught in the traps and we'll clean up whatever's left. They'd have to get by me if they made it inside anyway. You all check and make sure the traps are active according to the little sketches I passed out, everyfur has windows or other spots to seal and lock and keep checking on. In the meantime," she wiped her forepaws together, "I have like three months' worth of magazines to read."

******************************************

"It's still raining out there," Jax observed. "Only getting heavier."

Rian shuddered. "Poor Dex," he said. "He'll be soaked if he tries to run away, and they'll do who knows what to him if he stays there while they're in lockdown. I can't imagine how confused and frightened he must be to have gone to that place when he knows about the terrible things they're doing." Rian rubbed his paws together, warming himself. "He doesn't even know anyone there. Hold on, baby brother," he said, sounding worried. "I'm coming and I'm going to get you before anything happens and I'm going to make everything feel better. Just don't do anything you can't take back."

Jax had turned the white board flat so it was now a horizontal surface, and on the reverse side of it from the Scouts' city sketch, had drawn a crude map of the area around the academy. He was fiddling idly with a compass and chewing his lip as he stared it. "We won't be able to drive very fast in this rain," the tracking hound said. "If we want to go back to the playsite and go through the tunnels--"

The lynx's tufted ears sprang up as though a blaring alarm clock had just gone off next to them. "Go through the tunnels?" he asked sharply. "The tunnels they expected us to attack through?! Into booby trap city? I don't think so."

"Well, if you have another idea--" Jax started to say, as he turned the compass he had taken from Ace in the woods a few days ago upside down.

"_There's_that compass!" the lynx exclaimed, grabbing it with a swipe of his paw and turning to survey the map. "Give that to me! I've been on more raids than you. I'll run point on this one. And I _do_have an idea. By now, the rain will have made the whole river navigable, and some of the branch streams will be deep enough part way." He pointed at his boyfriend's nose and said decisively, "We're taking your boat. Up and off into one of the streams as far into their territory as it can go. We'll be able to get him in close from there and it will be a route they won't be expecting. Even if they have sentries we ought to be able to find a crack coming in from behind. If we don't find a crack, I'll make one. But the girls might not be our biggest problem."

He turned to Rian, assuming a take-charge posture. "Just in case Dex is," the lynx took a long breath and said cautiously, "not himself, I mean, seems like he's bent on hurting himself, and he resists, you won't be able to stop him with toy weapons."

Rian frowned. "Baby Blue doesn't have any weapons that aren't toy weapons," he said, looking up at the lynx warily.

"Baby Blue doesn't," Ace said, turning back to the crate on the floor he had been unpacking supplies from, and removed a small box from within it. "But I do."

"We are not going there!" Rian insisted, raising a paw and pointing at the lynx firmly. "Whatever is inside that box, Ace, do _not_under any circumstances open--"

"Relax," the lynx said, ignoring Rian's instructions and opening his case, "It's a stun gun. Voltage should be just enough to faze him for a few minutes and give us a chance to get our arms around him and disable him, or get anything iffy out of his paws."

"You are not_bringing that with you," Rian insisted, stamping his footpaw hard and sounding no less upset. "Those can hurt furs! They're dangerous. We are _not_going to use a stun gun on Dex. I don't care how upset he is. _I will be able to get through to him. Just because you think you can't--"

Ace and Jax exchanged glances. "Rian," the tracking hound said cautiously, "I don't like it either, but you weren't with me to see Dex take apart a fairground pavilion and a good part of its crew with his bare paws. I don't know if any of us quite know what Dex is _really_capable of. It's a last resort, just in case he is . . . freaking out worse than when he left Twitchy's, and really seems like he's out of his head. From what you said about their fight, I'm a little worried he might," the tracking hound looked down at his feet, "keep us away by threatening to hurt himself somehow. In that case Ace is right, we might need to get our arms around him and drag him out of there."

"How many of these do you own?" Rian asked, and Ace held up one finger.

"Good," said the wolf as he snatched the weapon from Ace. "We are _not_having this argument. _I_am our last resort to get through to Dex. He would _never_hurt me. No matter how upset he is. If you two insist on bringing this thing, I'm going to carry it." He eyed Ace suspiciously. "Not some trigger-happy cat. If you pull out something else that looks too real, either of you, I'll use it on you. We'll see then how you feel about zapping furs with these things."

Ace rolled his eyes. "You know it's a whole lot less dangerous," he warned, "if the fur who's holding that knows what he's doing?"

"I'm not going to use it," Rian snapped. "We won't need it. You'll see. I'm leaving the safety on and holding on to it so neither of you wingnuts will get heroic ideas and sneak it along to pull out behind my back."

"Fine," said Ace, holding out a holster, which Rian snatched from him. "That's stupid but," he looked up at the small wolf, whose appeal to someone like Dex he had never understood, and remarked, as though it surprised him, "you have guts. Just if things look really dicey when we get there and I ask for it, hand it back to me."

"Do you want me to call anyone else?" Jax offered, retrieving the member list. "Ben? He knows his way around the academy. Some of the recruits, or . . . ."

Rian considered for a moment, but Ace shook his head, retrieving his safari hat from the table and setting it on its head, adjusting it to its usual rakish tilt.

"Naaa," he said, clapping a paw on the little wolf's shoulder reassuringly. "We might not be in agreement about everything here, but, look, all three of us share some blame for pushing Dex into this mess. If there's going to be blowback from the pink team about this raid, we should be the only ones to catch flak for it, not Rog and the rest of Baby Blue. We owe it to Dex to put ourselves on the line for him."

The little wolf, adjusting the top of the sailor suit, looked up at the lynx in his safari outfit and nodded as he tugged on his own blue neckerchief, somewhat surprised that the cat had given any thought to team politics.

"That's what I was going to say next," he said. "We should run this as a rogue operation. So Rog doesn't get blamed for going back on his word to the sissies. I'll text him that it's happening and then we're going radio-silent except to each other until we have status on Dex. And besides, anyone else," Rian continued, picking up the trash-talking lynx's usual blustery tone, as he smiled up at him cautiously, "would only slow us down."

The lynx, caught off guard, half-smiled back down at Rian while the wolf, looking determined, bent over to pick up one of the walkie-talkies from Ace's supply kit. "And that's what I was going to say next," the lynx said.

*********************************

Lin Lin stuck her head out the door as the giggling couple she had heard stumbled into an open classroom and pulled the door shut behind them. After a moment, it clicked locked. She took a deep breath and pulled Dex out of the closet, leading him into a stairwell.

When she stepped on the first step, though, she felt his weight go heavy behind her. "What's the matter with you now?" she snapped, tugging on his paw.

"What's going on here?" the raccoon asked suspiciously, standing rooted at the foot of the stairs. "Are you taking me to Level 5?"

"Of course I am," she said, agitated. "That's what I said, isn't it? What, do you have amnesia now too? Come on, let's move! Lockdown is starting. Don't stand there like a drooling idiot. You're only supposed to be this immobile in a high chair."

The raccoon shook his head. "You're trying to trick me, Double L," he said quietly but decisively. "I came in this way. I didn't pass anything restricted-looking."

The panda fidgeted. "There's a secret passage," she said. "Of course you didn't see it on the way in."

Dex shook his head and crossed one arm, since his other paw was still gripped in one of hers, and she was tugging it forcefully. "There's no secret passage," he said. "You're taking me to the skylights in the rear attic because they aren't watched. Been there, done that. That's how I got in. No one should be able to break them open from the outside. I told you, I was upset. What will you say when we get there? Level 5 is on the roof? It's in the trees, over that way, oh, hey, it's outdoors toward your campsite! What a coincidence! Or are you planning to drag me out of this building and across the roof somehow? You're trying to trick me into leaving through a hole in your security plan that I already found."

The panda's eyes flashed. "So what if I am?" she snapped. "You have one bad night and you waltz in here like you want to be a girls' team member and the spotlight attraction of our party weekend all of a sudden? That's insulting to all the furs who've worked to be here and earned their dresses. You don't belong here, Dex." Her tone wavered. "Leave," she pleaded. "You don't want to go to Level 5."

The coon stared up at her, and his eyes glinted in return, and he reached one paw out toward a fire alarm. "I don't _want_to leave this place yet," he said placidly, staring up into her brown eyes. "I don't have what I came for. Don't you see? I was a wreck out there. But I've been calming down the whole time I'm here. It's because I know I'm going to get the stuff and put this long nightmare of having my mind warped into ugly feelings and never being good enough for anyone I love to an end once and for all. It must be because of that. Something weird is going on with you. I'm cool with the idea of you bringing me in if it will get you that promotion you wanted. Maybe some good can come out of tonight for someone. But I'm starting to think you're up to something totally different. Would you rather send me out there to fall apart? To do . . ."

He quivered a little, "whatever terrible things those feelings make me do? When I might hurt somebody? Like I hurt Rian when I just wanted to please him? Like I almost hurt Twitchy when I got angry at him? Like the next time I end up dating a teenager and get all my friends arrested? Do you think it's worse for the boys' team if I fall apart than if I leave with the secret serum that might let me be happy there again? Do you want to prove that I'm the same as those other boys you mentioned? Is that what this is about? Well maybe I am -- but I don't want to be. I'll shut off those feelings, before they make me hurt someone in a way I can't take back. I've done it before. Now, I don't want to get you in trouble here, but you give me no choice. You're taking me to Level 5," he reached toward the fire alarm handle on the wall, "or I'm pulling this alarm and I bet someone will come who will."

"Dex," the panda shook her head, stared down at the determined raccoon wearing nothing but a cartoon tee-shirt and a bulky, safety-pinned cloth diaper stiff as a used towel since it had just dried out from his swim across the river, and said, after a long, mournful sigh, "I _really_hate you."

***********************************

Serafina had just returned her cell phone to a small pink silk drawstring purse and stood up from securing the basement door when she felt a huge paw on her shoulder and started, dropping her bag.

"Cassie," she said, looking up. "I thought you went to check on something?"

The dog nodded, looking melancholy. "I didn't think it would start raining," Cassie said. "That isn't good. I went to open the front door to let in . . . anyone still outside. But I was too late. She must have gone to seek shelter. And it's also not good what you just did."

Serry fidgeted. "I didn't do anything. I don't know what you're talking about," she said cautiously.

"I think you do, Serry," the dog said, sounding depressed, her huge brown eyes looking mournful. "Why did you have your phone out? Were you texting someone?"

The sissy fox steeled herself. Preparing to go onstage posing as a girl with most of the town knowing she was, by their standards, a boy, had made lying about too many other things seem silly. "Rian," she admitted. "But I know they aren't attacking, Cassie, come on. He's worried about someone going missing in their post-party haze and I told him not to worry about it, one of his friends might have just slipped through the tunnels, and, umm, I can't say details exactly, but I can see why there might have been a little bit of secrecy about it. I just said I might have caught a glimpse of him, and from what I saw, he'll definitely be back there in one piece."

"I wish you hadn't done that, Serry," the big dog said, sliding the fox's purse away with one of her feet. "Level 5 hasn't been breached yet. Something very important needs to happen there, and it looks like," said the dog with a resigned sigh, "it might take a while." The sissy fox fidgeted on the floor and reached out for her bag while the Newfoundland was talking, but Cassie kicked it further away. "Serry," she said, shaking her head sadly, "I thought we were past this. I thought you trusted us."

"I trust Callie," the princess fox said, looking up at the Newfoundland second-in-command, and asking pointedly, "Where is she? Don't tell me she's still napping."

Cassie looked sad. "I locked the mistress out," she admitted. "I didn't know it would start raining." She looked down at Serafina. "Now I'm afraid I might have to lock you up again, too. I don't enjoy doing that."

Serafina squinted up at her and got up, unsteadily to her feet, doing her best to remain calm. "What's going on, Cassie? You locked Callie out? Are you out of your mind?"

"I'm trying to protect the academy," the huge dog said. "And the mistress. If she were here I wouldn't be able to keep her from going in there and doing this by herself. I can't allow that. I'm sorry things had to happen this way. We probably should have brought you in earlier, Serry, but we were concerned about how you were coping with the play and we didn't want to put you in a more awkward position with your boyfriend. Besides," the Newfoundland reached behind her, and picked up the pink silk pouch on the ground, lifting it up in one large paw. "I asked all our core team members for a mission statement essay. You wrote a lovely paragraph about trust before your paper degenerated into love doodles." Serry blushed involuntarily and looked down at her feet.

"You can go back to your room and have your things back on two conditions," the Newfoundland said. "Don't send another text or call or try to take your message back. It will look weird and will only speed up what was probably going to happen anyway. I think things will be okay. We're starting lockdown so no fur is getting in through that basement. The defenses Shelley and Lin Lin set up will keep them trapped down there. Now, if your boyfriend comes in and is stuck downstairs," the dog said sadly, "do _not_let him into the building. We lost to Roger earlier tonight, Serry. Our tussles usually come out even. But we really lost. We may not be able to stay open if Baby Blue keeps this pace up. The mistress won't be able to admit that. But the academy and our team can still come out of things okay, if no one disturbs our Open House guests tonight. All around this building, special furs are waking up to who they are. Nothing bad will happen here." She extended the bag and held it in front of the confused-looking sissy fox's nose, saying, softly, "We've known each other a long time. Trust me."

Next time: The Hop-along Kid!Roger and Twitchy are interrupted by a surprising visitor who warns them of trouble at the academy -- and that, with its defenses operational, the building could be almost impossible to enter.

Episode 2: The Hop-along Kid!

Roger shook his head and slumped back into his command chair as the rabbit, his foot tapping in a staccato rhythm that only got faster the further along his story went, took a long breath, having just finished relating his tale up through the end of Dex's protest. He had decided to do this once, get it over with, and just tell the dog everything that had happened, before tonight.

"You little sneak," the Labrador said at last, his tone still level, but clenched and tight-sounding. He shook his head and adjusted the pale blue hoodie he'd shifted into as the evening got cooler. "I really don't want to believe any of what you just told me. To be honest I don't know what to do with you. I'm tempted to tell everyone everything, but Dex is too good for his own good. He might quit that job if he thinks he got it under false pretenses, and I can't watch him do that and end up dead-ending again. And to think, I was so relieved when our coonkit angel finally seemed ready to date somebody. I love that kid, but for a while it was almost like he was afraid to do things with any boy besides Rian. I was starting to worry he had some sexual development problem that Rian and I just weren't getting. Dex is -- very serious. It's hard to predict what will happen if you shove him. The first time I sent him out to get a date," the Labrador confessed, "he came back with some frightened kid he rescued from being date-raped and two friends who were obviously already a couple. Then he started going to things with them all the time."

The rabbit tugged at the goggles on his head nervously. "Dex is like that," he said "because Dex and Rian--" Roger cut him off, waving a paw, and pushed himself off the picnic table, spinning in his wheeled chair, trying to clear his head.

"I know," the dog said as he spun, and Twitchy was taken aback for a moment. He stared at the spinning dog curiously as he continued speaking. Roger seemed to be reciprocating the rabbit's openness, answering Twitchy's confessional apology with one of his own. "He has a crush on Rian. I was hoping things would work themselves out now that they were both dating. Maybe I was being optimistic or maybe it looks worse to you than to me. I've seen more of these things over the years, and this one never looked so bad from where I was sitting. I could be wrong, but, as differently weird as they both are, Dex and Rian are two of the best kits I know. I still can't believe they won't end up being happy for each other if they're both in good relationships. It seemed safer to let things take their course than to do anything too direct about it." The spinning chair came to a stop and he found himself staring at Twitchy again. He just shook his head and waved one paw in a circle. "What I'm trying to work out is the gap between how right you were in understanding everything that was going on and how wrong what you actually did about it is."

Twitchy looked up at the dog uncertainly. He hadn't been booted yet. He'd half-expected to be booted from the team by now. But whatever he would eventually decide to do, Roger seemed to want to hear everything he had to say first.

The rabbit fidgeted as Roger bent forward to examine the driver's license he'd asked Twitch to produce at the start of their talk, and he burst out, "Listen, Captain -- you shouldn't blame yourself for that -- if anyone was going to do anything about this -- it _had_to be me! Dex did amazing things to rescue me. He fought for me, and he said he trusted me to take care of him -- and he -- he literally walked through fire for me," the rabbit whined. "Of course I had to be the one to get him off Rian. I'm the fur he cared about enough to do those things. That's once-in-a-lifetime stuff! When you've found someone you'd do things like that for -- and you can share things like this with--" he shifted in his pants, which crinkled, since Roger had been kind enough to re-diaper the nervous bunny to relax him before his long confession, "a soulmate, maybe -- well, how could you feel _that_more than once? I know I--" he stared down at the ground, his voice, and his ears, wilting, "couldn't ever feel about another fur, the way I feel about Dex now."

Roger sighed and dropped the rabbit's driver's license back on the changing table before he had even looked at it. "Oh no," he said sadly as he looked back at Twitchy. "I was still hoping there was some weird mistake at least about that part. I mean, Rian isn't very good at math. But you really did just turn eighteen, didn't you?"

Outside most of the boys still at the playsite, except for those few who had been woken up by Ace and Jax's phone calls, were slumbering in whatever shelter they could find, kept warm in the cool, rainy summer night by furpiles. Kyle the Dalmatian returned from helping check the security cameras and huddled behind the soda counter, shivering, only to a feel a warm paw on his shoulder. The dog, his tail between his legs, looked up and smiled uneasily. A malamute who had recently changed out of his diaper and cleaned himself up was standing over him, his shoes slipped on, untied, so that he could wander around the campsite looking for him.

"What's wrong?" the bigger dog asked, slipping out of his shoes. "You're shaking."

"Oh hi," the Dalmatian said, smiling, and eying the unlaced footwear his playmate of the last few hours had stepped out of. His own diaper would need changing before long, he realized, but for now the squishy warm mess he had made earlier still felt good under his tail, especially in the cool, wet night air. "By, look, I won't be very much fun right now, puppy, or much of a caretaker. You can find someone else to be little with." The spotted dog looked up out of the top of his eyes at the canvass awning covering the soda fountain, his ears flicking nervously. "I'm afraid of the rain," he admitted, with a gulp. "Nothing can really distract me from it."

The lifeguard crouched down next to him, slipping out of his shoes so he could run a bare footpaw along Kyle's leg, and put an arm around him gently, resting his large muzzle on one of the slighter dog's shoulders. "Sit on my lap," he suggested as he lowered himself. Nosing one of the other dog's floppy black ears gently, he whispered into it, "Nothing, huh?"

Near the gate of the playground, a bustle was heard, and Ben, the leonine combat trainee who had sprung a prisoner from deep inside the academy, dropped his ice cream cone and reached for the bola strapped to his waist. "Ryo?" he exclaimed as he saw his combat partner at the head of the small party approaching. "Wake up! Snap out of it! What are you doing? How could you bring _her_here?"

"Excuse me," said the leopardess behind him as she stepped over one furpile after another of stray, half-asleep boys, many sucking their thumbs, some stirring and muttering cubby talk, daintily avoiding the mud, "Pardon me; excuse me; terribly sorry." Calliope was holding a parasol in one paw that one of her students had forgotten in the throes of passion outside, and a borrowed pale blue windbreaker was wrapped around her shoulders. Except perhaps on the tail edge of the skirt of her long dressing gown, which was a little worse for the wear, she appeared to have come through the woods without getting a drop of water on her.

In front of her, a white dog, who had donated his jacket, was quite wet but was being kept warm by the sissy fox trainee hanging on him and nuzzling his ear. "You're such a gentleman, Ryo," the sissy student was saying. "Looking after an older woman. I tooooold you I knew where Swifty's raft was and I could get you somewhere you would know the rest of the way from. We make a good team, don't we? What an adventure coming here in the dark! But yoooou weren't scared."

The boy dog, his foam katana gripped in one paw, blushed and squirmed, looking up at his Baby Blue combat partner apologetically.

Calliope turned to the lion, whose knuckles were white as he gripped his weapon. "Hello, Benjamin," she said to the yellow cat in a sweetly disarming tone. "I hope your new employment suits you better. The cubs here are lucky to have you. Where is my brother, dear?" She smiled gently and reached up to close the shade of her parasol. "Tell him I'm here to parley."

Inside the changing tent, Roger's ears pricked, and so did Twitchy's more sensitive ones. The dog hopped up out of his chair as he heard the bustle of approaching furs and familiar voices.

"Get in the closet," he said, sticking the bunny's driver's license in his pocket and shoving him toward one of the standing plastic wardrobes nearby, that Rian had filled with cub outfits of various shapes and sizes.

"But--" the rabbit stammered. "I'm-- this could be about Dex, couldn't it? I'm not going--"

"I know you're in a big hurry," Roger said firmly as he lifted Twitchy off the ground and deposited him inside one of the wardrobes, then zipped its plastic casing shut, "but fifteen more minutes in the closet won't kill you."

The dog assumed a serious expression and leaned on one forepaw against the frame near the entrance of the changing tent, lifting the flap as the small party approached. "Little sister," he said, accenting the first word. "You're coming to see me? That's a change of pace."

Callie looked at the furs around her uncomfortably as she lowered her parasol.

"It's okay," Roger said, motioning to Ben, and to the somewhat-encumbered Ryo. "Leave us alone. You can stand guard outside."

As the others dispersed, Roger broke into the start of a grin. "Well?" he said.

Calliope took a long breath. "I have a potentially messy situation on my team that's arisen at a very inconvenient time," the leopardess said.

"You and me both," the dog commiserated.

"I need to use one of your tunnels into the academy basement," she continued. "Now. So, Roger--"

The dog, his eyes twinkling, waved a paw. "Not Roger," he said. "Whooooo's in the lead right now?"

Calliope exhaled forcefully, obviously annoyed. "Big brother," she said, looking up at him out of the top of her eyes and softening her tone, "will you--" she swallowed as though forcing herself to say something profoundly unpleasant, "share your toys with me?" When there was no response, she added, after a minute, shifting her weight from one foot to the other a little nervously, "Pretty please."

"Okay!" said Rog cheerfully, his tail wagging, as he motioned for her to come inside, and shaking his head as she entered the tent, remarked, "The things I have to do to get you to act your age. Of course," he added as Calliope surveyed the changing tent and unable to resist her curiosity, ran her paw over some of the more exotic stacks of diapers, "there might be one or two conditions."

Outside, under a canvass awning, behind a soda bar, Kyle the Dalmatian's eyes were squeezed shut and he whimpered as his elbows gave way and he fell onto his forearms and his torso, both pressed flat against the ground. He let out a long, low moan as he felt something slide into his freshly powdered, lubricated rear. "Ohhhhhhhhh," he whined, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, "easy, big dog."

Byron paused in humping and nosed one of the Dalmatian's floppy black ears. "Are you okay?" he asked gently. The Dalmatian, whose whole body was quivering and was in fact eager for him to continue, nodded, quickly, many times. The malamute smiled. "When he gave me your paper," the big dog suggested, "Rian said I could pop quiz you any time."

Kyle whined in disbelief. "Not nooooooooow!" he moaned, the malamute's stiffening cock still half-inside of him.

"Easy question," the big dog said. "Spell your name."

"Everyone calls me K," the Dalmatian whined, "it starts with K."

"Yeah," said Byron, licking the back of Kyle's ear, "it's sure nice of them to remind you of that so you can at least get that far. Isn't that why Twitchy started us doing it? How's diaper spelled? Cuz the next sound is 'i'. Like in your name. And I know you see that word on packaging in your room all the time."

"Nooooooooooo it isn't," said Kyle, who was starting to thrust his rear end up, anxiously, and back down, hoping to stimulate the malamute into finishing what he had started. "That would be K-i-a- and my name goes K-y-a- I mean--no, I mean, K-i-l- You're confusing me!" He whimpered. "Later," he whined. "Finiissssh."

The burly black and white dog mounting him clicked his tongue. "You can't do it. I knew it."

"Nooooooo," whined the Dalmatian, still backwards-humping the malamute, increasingly desperately, feeling a twinge of satisfaction as he felt the big dog's cock extend and press deeper inside of him. "I log into websites wiff it all the time. I need it for that. If I couldn't spell my name I wouldn't be able to look at--"

"I don't know," said Byron, sliding his cold, wet nose, down from Kyle's ear to rub it against the quivering, pantless dog's spotted neck. "I think the websites _you_spend so much time looking at all require parental permission." He thrusted strongly, twice. Kyle whimpered. Wow. The feeling was totally different when the malamute thrusted himself than when he rubbed backwards against him. His thrusts were powerful. His cock was so big. It was the biggest Kyle had ever seen erect. The spotted dog whimpered wordlessly; he knew full well his was one of the smaller ones on the team. And he had a feeling he was being humped by one of the biggest. It was sure hard to think about anything besides that at the moment. But what good would it be if he couldn't say he'd taken it? It would be like it never happened if Byron didn't finish.

"I neeeeeeed to ask help whenever I need to spell my own name," he wailed. "Okay? I'll call you and ask you when I haffa go on a website or summin. Okay? Just finish inside me. Please? By? Come ooooooooon."

"Is the rain still bothering you," Byron asked, thrusting lazily, twice, and listening to Kyle whimper with delight, "K?"

"What rain?" he asked as the malamute began to discharge into him and the two flopped, flat on to the ground, one dog pressed into the other. "I'd know if it was raining, By," said Kyle, who felt warm and wonderful in his slightly stretched out tailhole as the malamute's mess dribbled into him, the warmth spreading outward and throughout his entire body. "I'm scared of the rain," he explained, panting, in between heavy breaths, as he wrapped his arms around the malamute. "Nothing can distract me from it."

"Uh huh," said Byron, kissing his ear gently.

Outside the changing tent, a sissy fox kneeling in front of a white dog was nosing the front of his diaper and teasing at his tapes. The dog had just released into the plastic under her ministrations, and was still smiling a little wistfully. "Well," said Brianna coquettishly, "how would you grade me so far?"

"I don't know," said Ryo with a shrug, disguising his pleasure and looking down at the sissy student and wriggling one forepaw to indicate an average experience. "B maybe?"

"What?!" she exclaimed indignantly, releasing the tapes on his diaper and throwing a paw up. "B! I've improved way more than that. I didn't complain that your diaper was wet or anything!" The sissy fox turned around and marched on her knees, over to the lion standing guard next to him, who tumbled to the ground as she grabbed him by the waist and began nosing through his padding at his crotch with considerable aggressive energy. "Ingrate. We'll see what your friend thinks before I do anything else for you!" the sissy fox trainee said angrily. The fallen lion flailed all four paws around as she nosed and licked frantically at the front of his visibly soggy training pants, starting to feel mounting excitement in the front of her own diaper.

"Give the sissy boy a C," Ryo mouthed to his combat partner soundlessly, a mischievous glint in his eye, as soon as Ben was able to look up at him, a little helplessly, and the dog caught his combat partner's gaze. Ryo tugged at the front of his own diaper and mouthed, "I'll be ready again by the time you're finished."

Two boys were cuddling not far from them, looking at their matching sailor suits, sheltered by the slope of the water slide. "We should switch places at our assignments tomorrow," a beaver whispered to a mink, giggling mischievously. "No fur will ever know!"

"Juss cuz Rian got us matching wardrobes and said we're twins and as long as we were twins we would allays be changed and pawed together," the mink whispered, "doesn't mean we look the same, Roddy."

"You're Roddy!" said the beaver, sticking his tongue out and pointing at the mink's nose. "I'm Sammy!" After a moment when the mink said nothing, the beaver, still pointing at his nose, asked, with a tiny note of uncertainty, "Right?"

The mink giggled. "Seeee it will totally work," he said, pointing at the name stencilled on his playmate's diaper. "I mixed up our only different-ed wardrobe items and now even we can't tell."

The beaver crossed his arms. "It's still a stupid idea, Sammy," he said, then frowned when the mink giggled. Wait, Sammy was his own name. Wasn't it? It had been Sammy's idea for them to pose as each other. But wasn't he Sammy? Was he criticizing his own idea? Well . . . he'd just wet a diaper that said Roddy on it. He knew _that_for sure. And since he and his playmate could only be changed together--if they ever wanted to be pawed anyway, and let's be honest, who didn't?--he had to hope the mink would hurry up and wet too out of consideration for his friend's bottom. If he was feeling spiteful for any reason he might hold out until his less continent friend ended up with a rash. So it was safer to play along with him. This would all get straightened out when they got changed. He would ask their caretaker which diapers belonged on who. Then they'd know. "What are we wearing tomorrow anyway?" the beaver whined. "Can we be cowboys?"

Inside the changing tent, Roger and Callie's negotiations were underway.

"Fine," said Callie, flicking the silk fan she had reproduced from inside the bosom of her dress open. "No more chastity device orders for the next school year. I don't see a problem with that. We have enough of them anyway."

Roger grinned and wagged his tail. "And the river is ours," he suggested. "We're the ones who swim in it."

She glowered at him. "You're pushing it," she warned him. "I could still walk out of here and find another way in."

Roger tilted his head and chewed on his lip. "No," he said thoughtfully. "You're more worried than you're letting on, or you wouldn't be here. What's going on over there? What are you dancing around telling me?"

Calliope flicked her fan shut. "I have an insubordination problem," she said curtly. "Someone besides me is trying to run Level 5. That might create difficulties."

Roger shook his head. "There's that Level 5 stuff again. Let me guess," he suggested, "Shelley?"

Callie blew air out of the corner of her mouth. "Oh, be serious, she doesn't care enough to stage a coup while she's here," she said dismissively. "No, it's someone with the master codes to building security. That's why getting back in is . . . problematic. I'm hoping to get there before the building is put into lockdown."

"Cassie!" Roger exclaimed. "_Cassie_locked you out! Your most loyal team member ever? Okay, sis, time to level. What's going on that has your lapdog so worked up she would turn on you? I didn't think for a minute Shelley's formula was anything but a bluff to keep us from attacking. Was I wrong about that?"

"I need to get over there to manage things," she said simply. "Level 5 is a screening protocol."

Roger's eyes narrowed. "Who needs to be screened in the dead of night?"

But before the leopardess could answer, she started as Twitchy tumbled out of the wardrobe next to her, catching the lower rack on his large foot and sending the whole thing toppling over on top of him. His paws latched on to her dress and he stared up at her with a determined glint in his eyes as he managed to get one paw under it around her slender ankle. "_She's_not using our tunnels!" the bunny snapped, seeming undisturbed by the lightweight furniture on .top of him, or by the fact that a pale blue shortall had been caught on one of his long ears and fallen across the top of his head. "She's not getting over there to put Dex under some kind of induction! I won't let _her_near him!"

Roger's eyes flickered from the collapsed wardrobe to the bunny to his annoyed-looking sister, and, after a moment of consideration, the dog shrugged and decided trying to explain what had just happened was probably more trouble than it was worth.

"Is he right?" he asked calmly. "You have Dex? That's where he went?"

"Yes," said Calliope curtly, flicking her fan shut, without offering further explanation, or any note of apology in her voice. "If you don't know where the raccoon is then he may be in transit or even over there already. Which is bad. It means lockdown might have started."

The Labrador shook his head. "Low, sis," he said, sounding unhappy. "Low. I thought you were a more gracious loser. And I thought we agreed that you don't screen my boys. Period. But this is twice now."

"You don't understand," Twitchy said forcefully, as he burst out, "The regression stuff Dex does isn't a game. He was hurt really bad once. More bad than he'll talk about. That's why he's in diapers still. He's coming off some kind of posttraumatic stress thing. You can't go mucking around in _his_head for some fetish game. Especially not tonight. He's not himself. There's no telling what will happen."

Calliope fidgeted, looking mildly concerned for the first time as she looked down at the bunny. "Is that true?" she asked.

Roger looked sideways up at the ceiling. "I might or might not be sworn to secrecy," he said absently, "about telling anyfur whether anything like that is true. If it were. Which my silence does not imply."

The leopardess fanned herself and sighed. "Now who's not communicating?" she asked her brother pointedly. "Also," she nudged the bunny, who wouldn't loosen his grip around her leg, with her foot, "are you going to tell me what this rabbit is doing here? Or did you make a pinky swear about that, too?"

Roger took a long breath. "Well, you'll find out sooner or later. Maybe you'll have some advice about it," he said, reaching into his pocket to produce Twitchy's driver's license. "This is _my_team headache."

As soon as Callie saw what he had in his paw, she rolled her eyes without attempting to read the dates on it. "It's hard to believe someone cracked your ironclad system of asking furs how old they are," she snapped.

Roger frowned poutily. "Shut up," he said in a petulant tone, "This is serious."

"Both of you shut up!" said Twitchy, sprawled across the floor with a shortall hanging over his head, tightening his grip on Callie's ankle. "I'm tired of hearing about your game. Whatever you're doing to Dex, it's cancelled. Call your people and tell them to let him go." The rabbit was getting increasingly agitated. "I'll go over there myself and if I find him doing anything besides sitting under your very warmest blanket drinking tea or hot chocolate I'll mess up your network so bad you won't ever be able to send e-mail again."

"I don't have major issues with that," Roger said, offering Callie his cell phone with one paw, but the leopardess shook her head.

"She won't answer," Callie said. "And we're wasting time. If your boy has gone missing, they'll start lockdown and block communications as soon as he's secure there. Then it will be almost impossible even for me to get in. I need to start moving through one of those tunnels. If you'll show me the entrance . . ."

"So you can what?" asked Roger, raising an eyebrow. "Be there to put Dex under yourself?" Twitchy, who was still holding on to the leopardess' ankle, nodded emphatically, causing the shortall stuck to his ears to flop up and down.

"So I can turn it off," said Callie, removing an oriental fan from the sleeve of her gown and flicking it open to fan herself with. "Cassandra is quite upset about what a success your little playground party seems to have been. She won't back down from trying to do this and if anything she may push it too hard and ignore any trouble signs. I, too, am concerned about what might happen if traumatic memories bubble up during this test. The potential to tap into furs' dark sides is real." Seeing the dog look impassive, and seeing Twitchy, still at her feet, shaking his head and mouthing 'She's lying,' to Roger, she decided she had to give up something more if she expected their help.

What could she safely tell them the truth about at this point? With a long sigh, the leopardess admitted, "That's why I wanted Shelley's formula at paw. Level 5 is an enhanced screening environment that lets me test furs together. We had a mishap in a trial run with one of our students' pushy caretakers who kept butting into the induction. The poor cub became massively confused. Cassandra got the boyfriend under control, and he calmed down eventually, but -- just in case anything worse happened in the run-up to the Open House . . ."

Roger's eyes widened, and he whistled. "You would have used the repressant, not on the cubs," he said, unsure what to think, "but to calm down any caretakers in couples screening or after the dance who wouldn't take no for an answer."

"Right," Callie confessed. "I didn't plan to, but it was insurance. I know this sounds quaint, but Level 5 is . . . a test of virtue. The wicked may leave it temporarily emasculated. The pure of heart have nothing to fear. Provided, that is, the test is being run correctly. By me. I have faith that, boy bash crashers or no, most of my sissies will still find their way back to where they belong. But I'm worried Cassandra doesn't believe that yet. She may push things a little too hard."

Roger's phone, still in his paw, buzzed, and he looked down at it, flipping it open to view a message from Rian, which he quickly deleted.

"Who's that?" Callie asked.

"More bad news," covered the Labrador with a laugh. "My wireless bill's ready." He cleared his throat and changed the subject quickly as Callie raised an eyebrow. "You're certainly not going over there alone," he declared. "I'll go with you. We might both be needed to set things straight if matters get really out of paw there. And I need to make sure you're telling me the truth and not just getting there to make sure Dex _is_put under." His eyes narrowed. "This is heavy stuff you're getting into, sis," he said, an edge in his voice, "and I don't see what good can come out of it. I better see this so-called test for myself. If I don't, or if I don't like what I see, I just might push my advantage and put your pink team out of business for good before things get any worse over there. Baby Blue could do it now. We'll have numbers after this weekend you won't be able to match again soon. We don't need your borderline evil sissy side just to keep up a community any more."

Calliope pursed her lips and flicked her fan shut, her eyes flashing, then acquiesced. "Fine," she said curtly. "You can come and see what happens in Level 5 for yourself." Twitchy, relieved, released the leopardess' ankle and flopped on to his side. "But we have to move," the leopardess continued, "and hope we slip through before lockdown. Shelley and Lin Lin prepared the basement to block a full-on attack. I don't even know everything they did. It will be almost impossible even for me to get through if the defenses are active."

Roger eyed her skeptically. "The Scouts said that Shelley's nets in the woods were spaced at regular intervals," he said. "Surely if you know the pattern you can just . . ."

The leopardess shook her head, "It's a trick. If you'd attacked you would have found out. Only the first layers of traps are set in a pattern. They begin varying randomly at points where you might have figured the pattern out. Just getting from one end of the basement to the other would have been hard without losing half your group, even if you had a tactical person communicating with them."

Roger nodded and steadied himself. He started to speak. But the rabbit, who had gotten to his feet and was disentangling the shortall from his ears, burst out, "But if the variations are all here and there from a non-random base what you're describing is pseudo-randomness. If you have the initial sequence, something like a Monte Carlo method may be able to predict three or four routes--one of which would work." He added, with a snort, "I mean obviously you couldn't use a deterministic algorithm or rely on regular probability that weights everything the same but anyfur who wants to do control engineering needs to know a little bit about nonlinear math." The rabbit held the shortall he had yanked off of his ears out at paw's length in front of his muzzle and frowned at it. "Do you think this would fit me?" he asked. "I've been looking for summer pajamas."

After a long pause, Calliope looked at her brother. "Do you understand anything that bunny just said?" she asked.

Roger nodded. "He needs a shortall," the dog explained. "He's been a little pajama-obsessed lately, but it must get too hot for footies in his dorm room. He's not the only baby boy here with that problem. I'm thinking of having a shortalls-and-onesies-only whole-group sleepover where we'd all put each other in them, and have a little fashion show. Everyone who doesn't already have a set would leave with the ones he's voted cutest in. That way each boy'd get new pajamas but it wouldn't be up to the baby what he wears."

"Before the shortalls part!" snapped Callie, flicking her fan at him.

Roger fidgeted. "Not really," he admitted. "Watch, I'll request a translation." He cleared his throat. "Could you get us through the defenses in their basement, Twitch?"

The rabbit chewed on his lip thoughtfully. "Probably," he said cautiously, then looked down to see the black backpack he had unslung from his back and left by the entrance before Roger changed him, and changed his tack. "I mean . . . " he looked up at the leopardess, and his eyes narrowed, "Dex could be in trouble over there, so," one paw adjusted the goggles on his forehead, "yes." He looked at the dog uncertainly. "Would you take me on a mission though? I thought I was . . ."

"You made this mess," Roger said decisively, "so you're going to help clean it up. After that, we'll figure out what's next for you."

"Then bring your laptop, Captain," Twitchy said as he retrieved the backpack and slipped it onto his shoulders, "I'll need it and there isn't space in here for mine."

*********************************

Rian, Ace, and Jax each wore ponchos and hoods to keep their outerwear from being as soaked as their underwear often was. The trio staggered out of Jax's canoe as soon as they bottomed out. The rain sprayed into the water around them as the tracking hound, who had been sitting in the rear, hopped out last and pulled the boat up to the riverbank.

"Well this is as far as the stream goes," Ace shouted as the rain sprayed around them. "I hoped it might get a bit further. The visibility's not too good. I can't say I know this bit. As soon as we strike on something that can help us get situated, we should be able to figure out a route that--"

"Something's familiar about this place," the little wolf called out as the rain and water sprayed around them. He rested his paw on a moss-covered boulder, and sniffed it curiously, then smiled as he caught sight of a rock outcropping, blurred by the rain, with a small crawl space opening at the foot of it.

"Familiar?" Ace said, shaking his head. "You've never come on raids out here."

"No, buuuuuuut," Rian said mischievously, a twinkle in his eye as a flood of sensations came rushing back to him, "I think . . . I've been here blindfolded." It was the last time he had seen Serafina -- so of course he had replayed the evening in his mind hundreds of times in the few days the couple had gone without seeing each other in the fur. The wolf raised a finger uncertainly, and let it wander for a moment. "Let's try . . . that way!" he exclaimed.

The lynx looked at Jax, who had caught up to them, but the tracking hound only shrugged and looked bemused.

"We're looking for a birch tree, with a heart carved on it!" Rian called as he started walking.

Ace looked down at the little wolf out of the corner of his eye. "Blindfolded huh?" he asked skeptically.

Rian blushed. "I might have peeked," he said. He already felt warmer. "Serry," he whispered, "you might not know it, but you've been on the right side all along. Hold on, Dex. I can't even imagine what terrible things might happen to you in that dungeon feeling the way you do. But I'll have you out of there soon, buddy. Big brother's on his way."

***********************************************

The leopardess had hiked up her skirts and was crawling a few feet ahead of Roger and Twitchy in the tunnel, whose narrowness forced them to proceed one at a time. Each of the three had a flashlight on his or her belt, and Calliope was holding a lantern from the boys' camping equipment in one paw as she led the way.

"Thank you," said Twitchy quietly, looking up, he was unsure to who, "world, for letting me do one last thing with them before it's all over."

One of his sensitive bunny ears flicked. There was rumbling. "Move!" he yelped as he heard a clod of dirt thud to the ground behind him. "This section's caving in!" He started to unsling the backpack from his back. "Move! Hurry! Just take this to--"

Roger reached behind him and yanked the much smaller rabbit forward, laying a paw on his collar and lifting him off the ground, into the narrow space alongside him. As he did, the tunnel behind them filled with dirt as a wooden plank that had been supporting the opening gave way. "It's the rain," the dog said calmly as they kept crawling, "we're under the river now and it must be swollen. You," he chided Twitch in a whisper as they kept crawling, "stop acting like it's your last night on earth. That won't change anything. Grandstanding in front of Rian, me, my sister? Trying to throw yourself into a cave-in? It's okay, we won't need to go back through this tunnel. Dex isn't going to hear about any of these displays, and it wouldn't make a difference if he did."

Twitchy kept crawling. But it was almost his last night on earth, he kept himself from saying aloud. He might not be in town much longer, after tomorrow. "I know," he said simply.

Roger eyed at the subdued rabbit in the flickering light of the lantern. "Things could happen in a whirlwind once we get to the academy, and to be honest, I will be focusing on Dex. This might be our last chance to talk for a while," he said. "If there's anything left you haven't told me," the dog suggested, "you'd better tell me now. If I find out you left anything out later, I'll be very unhappy. And so will you."

The bunny's sadness was visible even in the edge of the lantern's radius. "You can't tell Dex," he said, lowering his voice. "I won't let him jump in and take a bullet for me."

"Don't worry," the dog said, a little sharply, "I won't let _that_happen."

Twitchy nodded and, in hushed tones as they crawled, casting one nervous eye toward the leopardess who was crawling about a yard ahead of them, quickly related what he had been doing during the latter hours of the boys' party, before he had gone home to find Dex waiting in his dorm room.

You have fallen down a rabbit hole!

You have entered: Solo Combat Mode! Random opponent selection!

Now you have to fight a hidden boss!

Solo Match #1: Twitchy versus . . . Blaze Collie!

Ready . . . set . . . Make sure your diaper tapes are good and secure . . . then . . .

Fight!

"Sure," said the collie reporter as Twitchy set down his blue backpack and flopped down into a chair in the campus newspaper building. Blaze shut the building door behind him, took off his baseball cap, and flicked the light switches on. "You can see the story I'm working on, Twitchy. After all, you did come all the way up here the minute I called."

The rabbit, who hadn't unzipped his blue windbreaker, reached out cautiously with one paw for the styrofoam coffee cup container Blaze had set down on the computer table next to him.

The collie flicked on one computer monitor and settled into a chair next to Twitchy's. The building was empty except for them, and its first-floor newsroom consisted of little besides a bin of mail waiting to be sorted, a coffee machine, a water cooler, five or six phones, and several computers arranged against the walls on long white tables. "All my stuff is saved on the network," the brown-and-white dog remarked, watching the rabbit's paw touch the edge of the styrofoam tray, "and on an external backup drive, which isn't in this room, so doing anything to the computer won't make anything happen."

The rabbit's eyes glinted and he raised his paw from the tray to remove the cup with the carrot latte drink, which he blew on cautiously as Blaze spoke.

"Right here," the collie said as he opened a file, and the accompanying pictures, looking very self-satisfied. "I don't know if _you_deserve to see it, but it's going to change things for a lot of furs. It's read-only unless you unlock it with my password. Don't bother mucking around with the keyboard."

A tiny stowaway's head poked out of the unzipped front packet of Twitchy's backpack while the two were talking and Twitchy was absorbed in staring at the screen.

The pocket-sized mouse, who had tailed Twitchy when he walked through the robot arenas in the midst of an obviously upsetting phone call and jumped onto his backpack, dropped softly to the floor and scanned the room for a hiding place. He tiptoed stealthily to the bank of printers against the opposite wall, and climbed up a power cable to rest behind one of them.

"What the heck, Blaze. I'm barely even mentioned in this story after the third sentence," said Twitchy critically, sounding confused. "I thought you wanted a quote or something." The rabbit's ears pricked. Although they had had a couple classes together, he had never been alone with the collie. For the first time, with no other sound in the room but the hum of the sleeping computers, Twitch could hear crinkling as the excited dog shifted in his seat. He was muffled, probably with a pair of rubber pants, but few furs were as good at muffling as Twitch; he doubted the collie would be able to hear his crinkler, which he had covered over with a cloth diaper from the boy's changing tent, especially since his windbreaker would cover most routine noises. Then his eyes widened as he reached the last section of the collie's piece. "You can't write this!" he exclaimed. "You haven't even talked to him about it. Ending like that makes it sound like--" the rabbit fidgeted, beginning to shift from feeling nervous to feeling angry, "like that's the most important thing furs should remember about him!"

"I wouldn't expect _you_to understand, Twitchy," Blaze said importantly. "But some furs have to go through life feeling ashamed of who we are. Always secretive. Always afraid. Always worried that furs who don't understand will jump to the wrong conclusions. Can't just date like most furs without huge looming worries about what our boyfriends or girlfriends will do when the time comes for them to find out."

The rabbit frowned. "I understand that better than you think, Blaze," he said cautiously, pointing at the screen, "but this is not the answer. Just think if his name was in there and this went up on your paper's website. Everyfur who googles my friend, for the rest of his life, will see--"

Blaze interrupted him, "That he's a hero. A good Samaritan. An activist. A principled fur," the collie crossed his arms. "Who pulled two furs out of a fire at great risk to himself. Whose boss wouldn't give out his name either but said he stood up to the system here even with his own application up in the air, and that he came up with a protest strategy that wouldn't hurt anybody or damage anything. It's a puff piece that says nothing but good things about him."

"And it says that he wears diapers and carries a changing kit with him everywhere, for goodness' sake!" exclaimed Twitchy, jabbing his finger emphatically at those paragraphs on the screen. "Then you quote all these websites and psych studies about infantilism to explain what it is. You're basically saying he's a fetishist."

"Squeak?" said the mouse behind the printers curiously, listening to their conversation.

Blaze shrugged. "That too," he said. "Figures someone like you would _only_notice that. Mr. Straight-A student. Kid who has all the answers. I suppose things have always been easy for you. I want furs to see all those things together. Then they'll start to understand that we're normal furs like they are. Furs who can do good things. Then they won't have shadowy and sinister ideas about us."

"Blaze," Twitchy said, his foot tapping, "I feel for you . . . more than you realize . . . but you don't know this guy. He had a chance to talk to you and he said no. You can't do this to him! He's not open about things like this! What if he comes to school here and everyfur reads that he wears diapers? What if he applies for a job and furs look him up online? This would turn him into a joke! Or a pathetic figure all over town. He'd never recover from that."

The collie reporter shook his head. "You're wrong, Twitch. Most furs -- furs who haven't grown up being patted on the back all the time and told they're geniuses -- will be more understanding than you." Twitchy bristled and clenched one paw into a fist. Because the rabbit didn't work and claimed to take a lot of trips out of town to explain his more prolonged disappearances to Baby Blue territory, most of his classmates thought he was better off than he was; outside of his friends, the bunny had never wanted to advertise that he was essentially going to college for free. "And the ones who don't understand, who cares about them anyway? You can be a part of something positive, though," the dog continued. "All I need from you is," he hit a key combination, and every instance of "raccoon" and "hero" in his story suddenly highlighted, "what will make this real. Your buddy's name. Age. Neighborhood. Where he goes to school. Anywhere else he works. That sort of quick thing. If he ducks me or declines to comment, fine, I can say he refused to comment, but the story's the story. This is about more than him. This is about a community. A community that really needs furs to look up to. That you only ever hear bad stories and whispers and rumors about. About dirty diapers and worse things. That's judged by its worst furs instead of its best ones."

Twitchy stood up. "You mean it's about you," he said, setting down the coffee cup. "Shoving someone else into the line of fire on your own behalf. I was thinking about inviting you to come somewhere with me a few minutes ago, Blaze, but I changed my mind. You're not ready yet."

"I really want to write this story, Twitch," the collie said as he started to leave. "I want to give that fellow the credit he deserves. His life will be better if the world becomes one he doesn't have to keep secrets in, won't it? It's my chance to do something real for hi--for everyone like the two of us." The rabbit kept walking. "Besides," the collie warned, shifting his tone. "It's a whole lot better than the other story. The one about you."

The rabbit stopped in mid-step, one of his large feet still in the air and turned around slowly. Rats. Maybe those lines on the phone hadn't been a bluff after all. "What story about me?" he asked slowly, one of his ears twitching. The collie leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs and arms triumphantly.

"Rabbit started lab fire," said Blaze coolly, opening another file with a keystroke. "Come read it. I know how to make a smoke bomb, see. I researched it. When I found the coon's changing supplies I also found stuff that spilled out of your toys. At first I thought maybe you two staged something, but -- I was there with your friend. He was too worried. And he clearly didn't know what was going on. It was all real for him. So--"

"You're right," Twitchy said, letting out a breath and reaching for the coffee he'd set down as he walked back across the room. "I started the lab fire. You can write that story."

"Squeak!" the mouse behind the printers, who was becoming increasingly alarmed, said quietly, clapping a paw to his snout.

"I'm sorry, what?" said the collie, shaking his head and sounding a little pouty. "That's not what's supposed to happen here. This is leverage. I just said, tell me about your friend, and I _don't_write this story. See, now you're supposed to be like, 'Oh no! I don't understand this diaper stuff, but I'll help you Blaze!' And I say, 'Phew, I don't have to write this story.' I want to write the happy story."

Twitchy surveyed the collie up and down for a moment. It was pretty clear to the rabbit what Blaze thought of him. He could sell this easily. "I was trying to sabotage everyone else's lab projects," the bunny continued, steadying his voice. "So that I'd be the only fur who finished." His foot started tapping.

Blaze raised an eyebrow. The wheels in the rabbit's head were turning. Somewhat to his own surprise, he grabbed at the first thought that came into his head -- how could he spin this so that Dex was still a hero? Everything he'd done had been to help his boyfriend. He couldn't stop with the truth -- that he had been setting off smoke bombs and been pounced on at an inopportune time -- he couldn't let furs think Dex might have been involved, or take anything away from what he had done. It had to sound like the raccoon had prevented a real disaster.

"Actually, the smoke bombs alone weren't doing enough damage. I'd miscalculated about that. So I started breaking them," the bunny said. "To start a real fire. There were too many furs in that class doing as good as me. And it was graded on a curve. Everyfur knows," he gulped as he looked down at the back of his paws, which were trembling, "I have to keep my grades up for a scholarship. There's nothing more important to me."

Blaze's eyes narrowed. "I knew it," the collie said smugly. "You're just like every other straight-A student I ever met. You would shove someone in front of a bus before you'd get a B on something. But -- why are you telling me this? This is a no-brainer, Twitch. Only good things will happen to your friend if I write about him. Only bad things will happen to you if I write about you. Or are Mom and Dad so rich that it doesn't even matter if you get in trouble?"

The rabbit looked up slowly. "No," he said, mostly to himself, letting sadness creep into his voice for the first time. "If I lose this scholarship, that's it for me. But you're wrong, Blaze. The only bad thing that could happen to me is if you outed my friend because of what I did. It's not up to you or me to decide what he tells the world and doesn't. You like hero stories; those need villains. Well, you have one. You caught me. I'm the bad guy. I would have gotten away with everything if not for a couple meddling kids and a nosy dog. Your story can end here. 'Bunny brought to justice; heroic raccoon prevented his evil scheme from hurting the innocent.'"

"Squeak!" exclaimed the mouse in a panic, clapping his head to his hands. He'd heard enough. He knew Twitchy well enough to have a pretty good idea what was happening here. Squeak began climbing down one of the printer cables and dropped softly to the floor, making his way as fast as his small footpaws could carry him along the wall, under the computer tables, toward the exit.

"Look, Twitch," Blaze said, "okay, you're a jerk. I don't care if you get an F or get thrown out of school or what. But I want the last thing I do here to be positive. I want to go out with my hero story. I'm finally graduating in a few days and getting out of this place and back to the Northwest."

"Congratulations," the rabbit said acidly.

A light went on in Blaze's eyes as though he suddenly understood what was going on. "Do you think I'm bluffing?" he asked, newly confident. "Yes, that's why you're telling me this. You think I'm bluffing. I am _not_bluffing, Twitchy. I will write this story and add everything you just said. Your life at this place is over. And I'll still find out about your friend. So you might as well make it easier for everyfur and just tell me--"

"No," the rabbit said, shaking his head, "you won't. Not before you graduate and leave town. I'll make sure of it. If you write that story about me, trust me, however upset they are with me, no fur who knows him is going to talk to you afterwards. Just add one thing to it," Twitchy said, his voice starting to quiver a little, "Say that I said, if not for him, I -- I don't know how messed up I might have been in that accident. He really saved my life."

The collie raised an eyebrow. "It wasn't that big a fire, Twitch," Blaze said. "I puffed it up a bit for the story but I'm pretty doubtful anyone was going to be killed in it."

"I know," the rabbit said softly, "but he really did."

"Uh huh," said the collie skeptically. "My deadline," he gestured at a wall clock, "is at 3 a.m. Think real carefully about what's going to happen to you if I write that you committed arson and put an innocent bystander in danger so that you'd be the only fur who got an A in your chemistry lab. And, Twitchy, think about what you're taking away from your friend. A chance to be a role model for furs he doesn't even know. Furs who need to know it's okay to be who they are. I really don't want to be up until 3 a.m."

"Okay," said Twitchy. "Then turn in the story about me now."

"You think hard about this, Twitchy!" the collie called after him as the rabbit made his way out the door, leaving his coffee unfinished. "I just need your friend's name. I won't say who gave it to me. Think about it! I'll be waiting to hear from you--" He punched the on button on the electric coffee brewer next to him and shouted, at the door swinging behind the rabbit, "when you break down at 2:59!"

KO One!: End Solo Match #1.

You have lost one party member!

Defeat -- by forfeit!

Twitchy is down!

"I got back to my room," Twitchy concluded, "and someone had been there and rummaged through my papers. At first I thought it was the collie, but, if it was, then that conversation made no sense. He was with me the whole time he could have done that. So it must have been Dex. He must have looked through more things than he said, because he was getting suspicious. I guess I don't blame him."

Roger let out a sigh as the light continued to bob in front of them as they made their way through the tunnel and the bunny finished his story. "Do you," the dog asked slowly, "ever ask anyone for help with anything? Did it occur to you that you shouldn't walk into something like this reporter situation on your own?"

"What?" asked Twitchy, taken aback. It was hardly the reaction he had expected, and in fact he didn't know what to make of the question. "But. . . if anyone told Dex he might have given up his name for me. He still might if you told him now. I couldn't let him do that and be embarrassed on the Internet for the rest of his life. He's too proud for something like that. It would crush him. Everything I've done has been to prove to him that his whole life _doesn't_have to be about being a diaperfur just because he is one. That everything else about him still matters. I love Rian, but that's not a message he's always good at communicating. You have to swear not to tell my kit about this."

Roger bit his lip and nodded silently as he continued crawling. "Was this a romantic relationship? Did you even want to have sex with Dex?" the dog asked. "You haven't mentioned it once in your long list of regrets."

The bunny fidgeted. "Before he was my boyfriend, and," the rabbit gulped, and added, reluctantly, "and now that he isn't, Dex was and is still my little kit brother. I helped him with his homework and changed his diapers and I made sure he wasn't left all alone and I got my paws dirty for him so he wouldn't ever have to. You can think what you want of me, but you shouldn't underestimate what I'd be willing to do," Twitch sniffled, "for family. That's always been the most important thing to me. But I needed Dex to remind me. I don't know what will happen to me after tomorrow," he said, "but I'll figure out something. I lost my bearings, Captain," the rabbit admitted. "I wanted to help Dex, but I went too far. Even Squeak doesn't want to be around me anymore." Twitchy teared up a little, involuntarily, obviously giving voice to something that had been bothering him for some time. "Rian said he left the party site before Dex did. I'm worried he ran away from me. I don't know if I'll ever see him again."

The dog continued crawling without saying anything for a long time. Eventually, as the hole began to widen around them and the two ended up crawling side-by-side again, he said, after having thought about it for a while, matter-of-factly, "If you get thrown out of school, we'll come up with something. It probably wouldn't be enough by itself, but you can have Byron's job at the store if it comes to that. I think he'd be happier picking up more hours as a lifeguard anyway."

The rabbit's ears fell flat. He had been waiting since he started talking for an all-out verbal attack, but Roger didn't seem interested in delivering one. "Am I still in Baby Blue?" Twitchy asked, uncertainly.

"I haven't decided," the dog answered. "But you're a member of the family." He looked over his shoulder into the bunny's eyes to add, sternly, "A _very_grounded member of the family. Who'll be sitting in the corner for a long time. And who better pray that when we find Dex, he's okay."

"I hate to interrupt this long whisper conference that I'm supposed to be ignoring," said Calliope over her shoulder, "but we're about here." The leopardess lifted herself out of the hole, raising the lantern, and Roger and Twitchy followed, all three standing around it, and staring off into the academy basement. It was a very long room, and the trio couldn't see in the flickering lantern light all the way to the stairs at the other end of it. Calliope felt the ground with one footpaw--and staggered back, both of the boys catching her arms, as it fell away from under her, the floor tiles swinging open under the tap and revealing a pit twelve feet deep, easily enough to strand the average fur. "That's number one," she declared, brushing herself off and staring down into it. "Some will be triggered by weight. Some by motion."

Roger reached into his backpack and produced a collapsible walking stick, which he unfolded. Twitchy had sat down with the laptop on the edge of the tunnel entrance, his feet dangling into it, and begun entering data. The sketch of the academy basement he had long ago obtained from building layouts was visible in one window. The Labrador poked ahead with it. Nothing seemed to happen. He produced a basketball from his backpack and tossed it into the same spot. The floor tile shot up on a spring, sending it up into the air. At some point along the way, a net dropped from the ceiling, entangling the basketball and swinging back and forth, holding it suspended in the air.

"They pull both ways," the Labrador observed, "so half of a group charging through here would end up thrown up into the air, and half would end up falling into the ground."

Twitchy reached into his pocket and pulled out a pawful of marbles, which he offered up to Roger. The dog hurled them forcefully into the darkness. At first nothing seemed to happen. Then, a series of dull-edged, interlocking wooden poles shot out of the wall, spaced at the right intervals to catch average-sized furs' legs and torsos between them. "Those would have caught some furs in between, and knocked the rest sideways about ten feet," Roger observed, whistling softly. "This place would have decimated us if we came in bulk. The traps are all built to split groups apart into small cells that will be easier for captors to come down and deal with."

"There must be a pit next to the poles then," the bunny concluded, keying in information rapidly. "The trap makes more sense if the furs it knocks sideways are sent straight into something else. In that case, we know the locations of four traps."

Calliope lowered the lantern and looked over his shoulder. "The regularly spaced traps may run along a diagonal line," the leopardess suggested, observing the dots on his sketch, "instead of a horizontal one."

Twitchy snapped his fingers. "Then we've seen the start of a pattern," he said, starting to sound excited. "With five or six more inputs I can write a program that will give us three or four safe routes through this room." He looked up at its high ceiling. "One of those routes _will_work. I'll do my best to test them and disarm what I can. I can have you through in thirty minutes."

"It's not just Shelley's work," warned the leopardess. "When we get near the door there could be a totally different sequence; Lin Lin was handling that."

The rabbit chortled. "I can have you through in twenty-five minutes," he corrected himself.

Roger looked at his watch. "I'm not inclined to do you too many favors, Twitchy," he said, his ear catching the quivering in the top pocket of the rabbit's backpack, which he couldn't make out too well in the dark, "but it's going on 3 a.m. and now that we're out from the tunnels your phone's buzzing. If you wanted to make a last appeal or change what you said about--"

The bunny reached up with one paw, pulled the goggles settled on his forehead out, and snapped them down over his eyes. "I'm busy," he said as he stood up slowly and, holding the laptop, padded cautiously ahead a few paces.

"Twenty-five minutes?" asked Callie, looking at her brother out of the corner of her eyes in the lantern light and lowering her voice. "Is he serious?"

The Labrador shrugged. "Twitchy does everything very, very fast," he said casually.

"This is a large room and there will be lots of traps," Calliope said, raising an eyebrow. "How fast could he possibly be?"

"Well," Roger fidgeted as he stared after the bunny, who was poking the ground in front of him with his toes, "I'm not sure and you can't tell him I said this, but," he leaned over to her ear and lowered his voice, "I think he just went through adolescence in two or three weeks."

******************************************

"You ignore me, Twitchy," said the collie, flipping his cell phone shut, and turning determinedly to his computer, "you see what you get for ignoring me. I am _not_bluffing. You tell me you started a fire and you think I won't do anything about it?"

The collie frowned and stopped monologuing as he saw a small visitor standing in front of his computer, a pocket-sized gray mouse, wearing overalls, who let go of a notebook several times his own size that he had been holding in front of him with both paws, and watched it tip and fall on the long white computer table.

"Squeak!" said the mouse, waving at him in greeting.

The brown-and-white canine reporter half-smiled and reached out with one paw. "Hey, little guy," he said. "Have I seen you somewhere before? Oh--" his tone fell as he looked down at the notebook and saw the name on front of it. "You're Twitchy's pet."

"Squeak!" protested the mouse, waving his paws back and forth, and holding up two fingers to indicate furs walking together.

"No. You're Twitchy's friend?" the collie interpreted. The herding dog's inbred instincts made it easier for him than most furs to pick up on non-verbal cues from other animals.

"Squeak!" affirmed the mouse, nodding.

The collie flipped open the notebook. "Did you bring me what I need? That way he can say he didn't tell me himself?" The newshound shrugged. "That's fine, I -- " His eyes narrowed as he turned through pages. "What is this thing?" He asked, sounding annoyed. "I'm not going to read a journal that some nerd's been keeping since middle school." He thumbed through pages toward the end, muttering. "It doesn't even make sense. This is gibberish. Is it imaginary? Science officer's log?" he asked, snorting. "Stardate nine-eleventy-billion? Point three? We're halfway back from the fairground. The panda escaped and stole like a third of our stash sometime last night. Big surprise. I woke up at six this morning. I watched him sleeping for two hours. My little kit. My hero. I've never seen him so peaceful. He usually tosses and turns so much. Today my life is about something different than it was about before. He should sleep like this every night. I'm going to give . . . ," the collie stopped reading and looked up at the mouse. "I suppose this name is blacked out every time it's mentioned?" he asked sharply.

"Squeak!" asserted the mouse, extending both paws. They were covered with ink. He held out one arm and rested one tiny paw against the side of Blaze's computer monitor, leaning on it. It had taken him a long time, but eventually, after picking the lock to Twitchy's room, he had found enough of what he was looking for, dragged it into a study room and blacked out whatever references to Dex he could find in permanent marker, then scrambled back here, as fast as he could go carrying an object several times his size in front of him. The pocket-sized engineer had used a paperclip hook and a string to pull the door shut behind him earlier that night, but he had left it unlocked -- he had no way of knowing that someone besides Twitchy might be walking in. Someone Blaze could only refer to as--

"Him," the collie continued, "an absolutely perfect day. More than perfect. One day that will change his life. It shouldn't be too hard. A week, two weeks, I'll have something together. Rian is barely paying attention to us lately. I'll have as much time with him as I want. Just need to make sure I don't fail out of school or anything to do it. (J/k)." The dog shook his head and flipped the journal shut. "I'm not reading this garbage," he said dismissively. "There's no reason for me to--"

"Squeak!" insisted the mouse, scrambling over to the notebook and flipping around in it, pointing down at one page.

Blaze rolled his eyes and decided to humor the mouse. If he flipped through the whole thing, he just might find a passage the rodent had forgot to censor. "I changed Gramps and Essy this morning. But I didn't change myself, it was too hard. I am a naughty bunny who likes--" Blaze blew air out of his muzzle and shook his head. "Twitchy is a diaperfur, too?" the surprised dog said, voicing the obvious conclusion.

"Squeak squeak!" said the mouse, pointing at the highlighted words on Blaze's screen, then down at the notebook, anxiously. "Squeak!"

"He's a diaperfur and . . ." the herding dog picked up quickly, "a hero?"

"Squeak!" said the mouse, pointing at himself.

"_Your_hero? _This_book is your hero story?" Blaze asked, and the rodent nodded affirmatively, pointing down at another word. "Because he changes furs?" The mouse shook his head. "Because he changes?" The collie wrinkled his nose. "Well you have lousy taste," he said, batting the notebook sideways and watching it fall into a wastepaper basket. "I'll stick with mine. Scat! I've heard enough from you. I still have thirty minutes to file and I need to end your hero's story once and for all."

"Squeak," pleaded the mouse, resting both paws on the back of one of Blaze's and looking up at him with his tiny beady eyes. He pointed down to the wastepaper basket. "Squeak!"

Blaze shook his head. "I can't believe I'm doing this," he sighed as he bent over and reached for the notebook with his free paw. "I'm only paging through this thing because odds are you forgot to black out something."

*****************************************

The rabbit, shell-shocked, looked around in a panic; he was caught on a small, crumbling island of dirt in between four pits that had opened on every side of it. "Thi-- this route's no good," he reported to Roger, who was standing back in a safe spot near the wall looking at the map the bunny had plotted on his laptop. "That's two down. You two should keep on--"

He heard a thud and looked over his shoulder, to see the leopardess on her knees laying a wooden support board from inside the tunnel over the smaller pit, and gesturing to him. He held his arms out and, stepping with one large foot in front of the other, balanced along it carefully, wavering as he did. "Oh," he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment then looked up to stop himself from teetering, "I wish I had a real tail like everybody else," he whined, recalling how Dex used his to adjust his center of balance, his own cottonball tail, useless for such purposes, wriggling futilely.

As soon as he got close enough, he hopped for the edge and landed next to Callie, securely. "Okay," he said, pointing at Roger and recovering his composure, "this is good. The more paths we eliminate, the more odds are in our favor. Read the next possibility, Captain!"

Roger looked over the edge of his laptop. "Are you sure about this, Twitch?" he asked for about the fourth time.

"Yes!" snapped the rabbit. "I told you, the results will be better than intuition or straightforward probability! Trust the math. Not what you think should be logically true. We haven't been wrong about one of the traps on the main axis! It's just a question of how frequently she started randomizing ones along the other lines, and there's a limit to how much randomization is actually possible if you want the illusion of a pattern to be visible. Trying the routes from this program is your best shot."

Roger shrugged, not really understanding much besides the last sentence. "Three paces to your right," he called out, and the rabbit followed his directions. Twitchy cringed at one point when he took a step too far and recoiled quickly from the floor tile that shot into the air next to him. As he made each step, the rabbit was marking the floor behind him with colored chalk. The previous routes, marked in orange and purple, had dead-ended, and he was on green chalk now. Roger didn't even notice until he heard Callie let out a breath she had been holding next to him that Twitchy was standing next to a staircase leading up to the basement door, hopping and pointing at it.

"We did it!" he exclaimed. "We did it!" The two team leaders looked at each other, nodded, and then, as soon as Roger had replaced his laptop in his backpack, started moving, slowly, along the route the rabbit had marked.

After several minutes, they made it to him. Calliope stepped on to the stairs first, cautiously, and reached for the basement door. There was a blinking panel next to it, into which she began keying numbers.

Callie frowned as the light turned green and she tried the door handle. It didn't budge. "There's something besides the security system holding it," she said. "A latch or -- "

No sooner had she spoken than Roger spun at the sound of a yelp next to him to see the rabbit being hurled up into the air at the same time the floor around both of them gave way. Calliope grabbed her brother's shoulder and shoved him down on to the stairs before he tumbled into the pit himself; the rabbit swung, helplessly, on a rope he was gripping with both paws. "Heeeeelp!" he shouted reflexively, squeezing his eyes shut.

The final trap had opened in both directions -- pushing him up, and then collapsing the floor. If he freed himself from the rope he was gripping with both paws, he would be tumbling more than fifteen feet -- he wasn't even sure how much more -- it was too dark to see. "Hold on!" said Roger, starting to stand, but Calliope, feeling the handle on the door with one paw, motioned to him to stay put for a moment. "As he swings," she said, "the door latch shifts. I think the final trap is . . ." she looked up at the rabbit, "a sacrifice. It's impossible to open the door -- unless there _is_someone caught up there pulling on that cord. If he lands down here with us -- we'll all be stuck. This is probably Lin Lin's. She knows how your squads operate, and about your buddy system. She'd know any of your team leaders who broke through and made it this far would stall here instead of going through without their last buddy. Then, you'd all be trapped down here," said Callie a little smugly, sounding pleased with her subordinates. "Game over."

Twitchy's large ears were flicking. His senses heightened by adrenaline, he could hear the conversation echo throughout the emptiness around him. "It's okay!" he shouted, releasing his grip with one paw long enough to remove something from his belt and hurl it toward them when he next swung closest. "Captain!" he shouted, "Heads up!"

The dog raised his paw and caught it with a jangle--and found himself staring at one of Calliope's keyrings, one that held mostly metal keys appearing to belong to building doors. The leopardess bristled and stuck one paw into her dress, only to find it missing. "You little pickpocket!" she growled. "When did you--"

"I reverse-engineered magic tricks when I was a cub!" Twitchy shouted. "It finally paid off for something! Hold onto those, Captain! Don't let her go in the dungeon by herself and hurt Dex!"

"Right," said Roger, tightening his grip on the keyring as he stood up. "Good thinking."

"One more!" Twitchy shouted. "Tell Dex, I brought him this!" Still swinging, the rabbit let the backpack on his back slip off one shoulder and drop into his loose paw. He held it as tight as he could. Kicking his large feet against the air, he swung himself in their direction and calculated quickly. It would make it. He flung the pack toward the door and watched it thud on the stairs next to Roger, who caught it and held it against them with his footpaw, as Twitchy swung back, further away into the dark.

Calliope was opening the door, and light poured in from the crack. For the first time, the dog could see the backpack the bunny had been wearing since they set out clearly. "Dex's stuff," he observed curiously, poking it with his foot, and looking up after the bunny. "His changing kit."

"We have to move while he's over there keeping the door open," said Callie, gesturing to him. "When he swings back it will be sealed shut again. Besides, if the place is already locked down your boy is probably in captivity right now. If this trap can be disabled and the door opened for him, it will be from the other side. Lin Lin or Shelley will know how to do it--we'll just need to find one of them."

"Right," said Roger, hurrying up after her. "Twitchy!" he called out into the basement. "Hold on! This will only take a few minutes! We'll come back as soon as we can! I won't leave you here!" He paused and fidgeted for a moment when he heard nothing, then he added, loudly, "Baby Blue doesn't leave any of its boys behind! Hold on!"

The rabbit grinned from ear to ear in spite of himself as he heard the door clang shut behind them. He was still gripping the rope as tight as he could with both paws and smiling when his swinging slowed to a stop. He heard noises from the other side of the door. After a while, he lost track of time hanging there in the darkness, except that the rope began to bite into his pawpads. Had it been ten minutes? Fifteen? Twenty? What was happening in there? Where was Roger? Why couldn't the two of them just start giving orders and come back with Dex? The bunny adjusted his grip and tried to keep himself from looking down. Eventually he did, but it didn't matter -- he couldn't see anything.

He felt something warm and wet on one of his paws. His paw was bleeding--the rope had cut into his pawpads. Its coil felt slick as the blood from the small cuts spread. That wasn't good. He started lowering himself, bit by bit, toward the lower end of the rope as it became harder to hold on. Had it been more than half an hour, now? Had he heard an explosion? What was going on in there? He should be worried, but somehow, he still felt the most peaceful he had felt in a long time. He kept smiling. He had a feeling his coon kit was going to be okay. He had got Roger here. If anyfur could calm Dex down, he would be able to do it. Dex would be safe and sound with his friends soon. And if that reporter was calling right before his deadline it meant the collie hadn't been the one in his room and hadn't been able to dig up anything else on his little boy. That was all that seemed to matter at the moment. Tomorrow, Twitch knew, if he read the story about Twitch starting the fire, there were even odds Dex would have broken up with him anyway. But tonight, he had done his job as a caretaker.

"Dex," Twitchy said to himself softly near the bottom of the rope, "I know that if you were here, in spite of everything," he stared down into the void beneath him, "you would always catch me."

Then the rabbit's grip gave way, and he let go.

To be continued . . .

_Next episode: The Pure of Heart!_Dex and Lin Lin are tested! Meanwhile, Rian and the Boy Scouts infiltrate the academy!