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Two days into the second week of the new school year, Chloe found herself sat in the principal's office because of an "incident" with her son. It was something she hadn't expected, given Vaahn's Soft Timer status, though had certainly suspected it might happen.

"It seems your son is back to his old tricks." The Headmistress announced humourlessly, eyes scanning the data pad on her desk with disdain. "Seems he started hurling abuse at another boy and proceeded to start a fight. After punching young Mr Reeves to the ground he then decided to vandalise the boy's locker."

Chloe was understandably shocked by the revelation. "Where is Vaahn now?"

"He's in the nurse's office; he apparently hurt himself trying to break into one of the lockers."

"I think I should go to see him right away then," Chloe replied, excusing herself from the office. As she stepped through the door she found the round, rosy face of the school counsellor, Joe Brindley, staring back at her.

"Oh! Hello! I was just about to fetch you! Has Miss Roughsedge explained what happened?"

"Unfortunately, yes." Chloe replied, her frustration showing through. "I really hoped I wouldn't have to be doing this."

As they walked, Joe cast a sidelong glance to Vaahn's mother. "If you don't mind me saying so, you sound a little cross. I don't know what Roughsedge said, but I do think it's worth hearing Vaahn's side of things."

"And why is that?" Chloe asked.

"Because no-one else will? It's just through here."

The two adults walked into the nurse's office to find Vaahn sat in a Penny issue patient's gown, face wet with tears whilst the nurse worked a hand held nano-lathe over his knuckles. He looked up to the door as they entered and, seeing his mother's face, let his ears drop and muzzle fall toward the floor.

"Mrs Johansson?" The nurse asked without pausing from her work. "Vaahn here has had a nasty hand injury; he managed to dislocate three of his fingers and a hairline fracture along the knuckle. We can treat it here, but it will take a while."

The counsellor stepped forward, giving Vaahn a friendly, non-judgemental smile. "Vaahn, I think you need to tell your mother what you told me this morning."

The Kyyreni boy looked uncertain, gaze shifting from parent to counsellor and back. Joe broke the deadlock by quietly adding, "If you don't, I have to."

With a defeated sigh, Vaahn looked to his stern faced mother. "I get frustrated," he said weakly, "I feel like everything I do, I get told it's wrong, but nobody bothers to tell me why. When something bad happens... like today... nobody listens to my side of the story."

"So what is your side?" Chloe asked, hands pressed into her hips.

Vaahn's eyes bore a tiny glimmer of anger. "Did you speak with... her... about what happened?"

"Vaahn has a long standing dislike of his headmistress." Joe explained.

"Yes, I did speak with Miss Roughsedge."

"Well don't believe a word she said. She's a liar and a hypocrite, though nobody seems to listen to me when I tell them that either. I bet she told you I started the fight." Chloe nodded in confirmation. "Well, I didn't. It was Jimmy. He's just like she is - they both hate my kind. He causes trouble every chance he gets, knowing she'll go easy on him if he picks on me."

"That is simply not true, Vaahn!" Chloe snapped back, in part frustrated that she could not correct the boy's attitude over her lap.

Vaahn seemed determined to make use of his temporarily invulnerability. "Isn't it? So you're a psychic now, are you? You know what goes on in this school all day, every day? I've had nearly three decades here, and I know she lets people get away with it!"

The boy turned toward Joe, as if expecting him to back up his claims. All Joe could do was give a weak, indecisive shrug. "I will admit, there have been quite a few cases of racism amidst the pupils of this school, but I have seen no evidence of professional misconduct."

Seeing his one hope of support abandon him, Vaahn retreated back into himself. Chloe once more turned her focus on her son. "Vaahn, tell me what happened," she ordered.

"It doesn't matter; you won't believe me anyway." The boy mumbled, utterly defeated. "Everyone always assumes I'm lying."

As the nurse packed up her tools, Chloe turned to the counsellor once more. "Has Vaahn been like this before?"

Joe nodded. "As long as I've known him; he has serious issues with authority, not just acting out, but basic things like trusting someone. Heck, for about two years he outright assumed everything I said to him was a lie."

She glanced back to her son, whose body language said clearly he disliked being talked about in third person to his face. In as kind a voice as she could manage whilst still sounding authoritarian, she asked, "Vaahn, who started the fight?"

"He did." Came a forced answer.

"Insults, or physical assault?"

"He insulted me." Vaahn confirmed, "He called my mother a bitch and a whore. Said my family were vermin. That's why I hit him... and because otherwise he'd have gotten away without punishment."

Chloe nodded, seemingly taking Vaahn at his word. "Was this boy sent back to class?"

"Yes; he just had minor bruises." The nurse confirmed. "I treated them and sent him on his way."

In a stern, authoritarian voice, Chloe commanded Joe to fetch the boy and bring him to Roughsedge's office at once. Even as he was dragged to his feet and marched away, still dressed in the gown, Vaahn found himself both shocked and pleasantly surprised at the sudden change of heart.

Soon enough the familiar doorway of the principal's office loomed ahead. Vaahn subconsciously muttered the word "Orushkyi," as he approached, a habit he'd fallen into a long time ago and had never quite shaken. He was dragged through the door by his mother and stood in front of Roughsedge's desk, whilst Chloe unleashed her demands.

"My son has made some rather worrying accusations about how he is being treated in this school." Chloe's voice was as hard as tempered steel. "He claims that the staff ignore him and refuse to listen to him when he has concerns. Tell me, have you seen or heard anything that might support this?"

"Most certainly not!" The headmistress replied, scowling at the Kyyreni boy. "Vaahn is hardly the boy to protest his innocence!"

"And yet the boy who started the fight is not the one in your office... ah, speak of the devil!" Chloe smiled as Joe ushered the worried looking Jimmy into the office. "Tell me, what proof do you have that my son started this fight?"

The woman's scowl turned now to the young mother. "I have been informed by members of the boys' class that it was Vaahn who started the fight."

"Told by his friends!" Vaahn cried out his accusation without restraint. "Of course they said I did it; they don't want to land their friend in trouble!"

Before Miss Roughsedge could object to the outburst, Chloe leaped on it. "Is this true?"

"I understand Jimmy gets on with all of his classmates." The woman muttered, but she clearly knew she was beaten on the subject. "With hindsight, however, I will admit I may not have questioned the claims as I should have."

"Then I expect both boys to be dealt with equally." Chloe stated, glancing down at Vaahn to see a look of surprise and confusion returned her way. "Since both of you claim the other started the fight, the only fair solution is to assume you both started it."

Any protest Vaahn might have had was silenced when he was summoned to the headmistress' lap. She sat on a simple wooden chair next to her desk with a series of spanking implements readily to hand. She selected a heavy paddle to act as a warm-up, gripping Vaahn's tail as the boy put himself over her lap, the gown he wore leaving his rear perfectly exposed for punishment.

"It seems you never learn." She scolded, ensuring the boy's fur was patted down so as to give the minimum of padding.

"Nor do you Orushkyi." Vaahn growled in reply. "I swore an oath in blood that day, in case you forgot."

The first swat came down without warning, striking Vaahn at the top of his backside and making him yelp. "Your insolence will earn you extra punishment!" The headmistress announced, landing several more harsh swats of the paddle into Vaahn's bottom. The heavy paddle made a distinct muffled SMACK as it struck Vaahn's fur covered rear, alternating cheeks as the spanking worked down from his tail base to the tops of his thighs. Vaahn gritted his teeth, desperately trying to hold back his cries of pain, but by the time the first set of spankings had landed he was crying openly. Without pausing, the paddle swats began again, working down over the reddening flesh and ruffled fur of Vaahn's increasingly tender rear.

"You *SMACK!* will *SMACK!* learn *WHACK!* not to *THWACK!* fight in school! *SMACK!*" Roughsedge's instructions were punctuated by heavy blows into Vaahn's backside, the punishment watched attentively by both Chloe and the young Penny boy who would soon be receiving his own spanking.

After what felt like an eternity for the sobbing Kyyreni boy, the paddling ceased. However, the punishment itself was far from over. The headmistress reached for a nursery cane, testing the weight of the implement in her hand before bringing it down hard into Vaahn's backside with clinical precision.

"AAAAAAAAAAAOOOOWWOWWOWW!" Vaahn's head and back arched at the sudden strike, his cry of shock and pain quickly joined by hard, exhausted sobs as more strokes from the cane landed home. As she had with the paddle, the headmistress began at the top of Vaahn's already sore backside and worked down to his thighs, covering every inch of flesh with burning welts.

As the last blow struck Vaahn's thighs, causing the boy to kick involuntarily, Miss Roughsedge surveyed her work thus far and announced "now to deal with your attitude problem!" The cane struck again, putting fresh strokes diagonally across the original blows. Vaahn, having bawled out all his energy during the intense paddling and caning could only hang his head and give heaving sobs, gulping air desperately between cries. Half a dozen brutal strikes left him utterly spent and subdued, limbs trembling from exhaustion as the burn of countless punitive swats seared his backside.

The Kyyreni boy was unceremoniously placed into the corner of the room and left to cry into the wall. He did not register much of his classmate's punishment, too lost in his own burning backside to care. After what felt like hours he turned as a hand took his shoulder, looking up at his mother through reddened, tear filled eyes.

"I'll be taking my son home now, Miss Roughsedge; we have a lot to talk about."

"I agree." The Headmistress replied before glaring down at Vaahn. "Don't forget, young man, that you're to report to my office every lunch break for the next week!"

Lacking the will to reply, Vaahn was mutely walked out of the school, barring a brief pause to recover his clothes and return the nurse's gown. Seeing no need to dress him first, Vaahn spent the rest of the journey home nude.

"I am very disappointed in you, Vaahn." Chloe said as the front door clicked shut behind her. "You should know by now that fighting is never right!"

Vaahn did not reply, instead standing with arms folded and head buried into his shoulders, staring at the floor as if it had insulted him.

Chloe, despite her frustrations, thought back to her meetings with Lucy. She headed upstairs, leaving Vaahn in the hall, confused as to what was going on but fearing the worst. When his mother returned, she carried a small pendant forged from silver.

"I'm starting to think we should not have got you this." She announced, holding the item for Vaahn to see. He stared at it for some time.

"You... got that for me?" He asked, his question receiving an authoritarian stare.

"Matt and I talked about your conduct at length. We came to the conclusion the problem was that, even after all this time, you still think of yourself as an outsider. Since integration failed, as today proved spectacularly, we thought we could try giving you a few familiar elements of your past life."

Hesitating, Vaahn reached for the pendant, which he was allowed to take without resistance. It consisted of three overlapping circles, the space in the centre occupied by a red glass bead. He brushed a thumb over the surface carefully, shifting it back and forth in the light to see how the light caught it.

"It's a Gelmyrc; a symbol of family." Vaahn said, speaking more to himself than to Chloe. "The circles represent the self, the father and the father's father, but they're all linked and interchangeable; all three are one and the same. It's Neig's symbol." He clasped his hand closed around the pendant, squeezing it tight. "Where did you get this?"

Chloe waved away the question. "Traders come by now and then. There's plenty more where they came from. Come on, let's sit down and talk."

More subdued now, Vaahn let Chloe take the pendant off him as they sat together, whereupon she carefully placed it around the boy's neck.

"Now, what was that word you used in your principal's office?"

"Orushkyi? It means 'stupid young man'. It's from an old song I was taught as a boy. All Kyyreni know it."

"And why do you call her that?" Vaahn's gaze flitted away at the question. Chloe brought it back to her with a touch to his shoulder. "Vaahn, I am not going to punish you for answering my questions. Please, just tell me why you use that word."

Reluctantly, Vaahn explained. "The song is about a young man who boasts how he rules the city. He insults the elders, calling them weak and stupid. The song goes on, with the boy's boasts becoming grander and his insults more offensive. Finally, an old man steps up and says that those who are truly weak and stupid are the ones who boast their strength to the world, and break's the boy's arms and legs. He's then left in the street where he starves to death. A year later, nobody remembers the boy, but everyone remembers the old man who broke him."

"So, what is the moral of this story?"

"To respect your elders," Vaahn replied, "but she is not my elder."

"What about what you said to her before your spanking? What was it you said?"

Vaahn hesitated again. "You swear you'll keep your word about not punishing me?"

"I do." Chloe answered, surprised at the seriousness of Vaahn's tone.

The boy seemed satisfied. He shifted, wincing as his tender skin brushed against the fabric of the chair and said, "She has mistreated me from the first day I met her. The spanking I got today was a lot tamer than what I'll get when you aren't around to supervise... she's drawn blood more than once."

"That is a very, very serious accusation." Chloe replied, keeping her tone calm. "Can you prove that to be true?"

"No." Vaahn replied weakly, staring at his handpaws rather than meeting his mother's gaze. "I swore I'd have revenge for how she's treated me."

"If she has broken the law, she will suffer the consequences." Chloe assured. "Now, I would like to discuss your conduct; you are going to be grounded for a week for fighting in school, and I don't want any argument about it!"

Vaahn's body language made it clear there would not be. "Now, I think you should spend some time in the corner; I'll discuss this matter with your father when he gets home, as well as what to do about your allegations."

"You... you believe me?" Vaahn asked, genuinely surprised.

"I would be negligent if I ignored your claims, Vaahn." Chloe answered. She led the boy to the corner of the room and left him there.

Left to his own thoughts, Vaahn tried to ignore the dull ache in his backside, taking solace in the gentle pressure against his chest; an unexpected piece of home, given without asking. His thoughts soon turned to his long standing grudge with Miss Roughsedge, and for the first time in years he felt a glimmer of hope that there may be some fairness in the Human world after all