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Human Bitches

Chapter Fifteen: High Times in High School

Part 1

By Gideon Kalve Jarvis

Nobody really gave much thought, Thaxton mused to himself as the warm water of the gym’s showers gave his smooth, fair skin a slick sheen, to how difficult it was being a boy in the state of the world at present. Not a man: a boy. A man, naturally, had already found his place, and would have his pick of futures and mates. But a boy…no, a boy was at the mercy of the women around him, and especially the girls.

Thaxton had read some news reports, as part of his social studies homework, that claimed that the human population in the first world had doubled since the end of the whyker plagues that had octogenated their numbers. However, of that doubling, only perhaps ten percent, total, of the entire rising generation which was just barely starting to leave high school and enter the professional world was male.

For some reason, the lingering effects of the damage done by whyker tended to cause high rates of early-stage miscarriages, when fertilized eggs were still just barely into the multicellular phase; the exact numbers were thought to be much higher than reported, because at that stage of a pregnancy many would-be mothers might notice a somewhat messier period, but otherwise not even realize what had happened. Those children that were finally born seemed to be healthier and more fit than ever before, which was certainly something, at least according to preliminary reports available to the public. They also seemed to be composed mostly of girl babies, boy babies apparently having a harder time beating whatever inherent trials the aftereffects of whyker left behind in the population. Reasons behind these aftereffects were hard to come by, of course, but the effects themselves were pretty well documented.

In practical terms, that meant that Thaxton and his same-age, same-sex peers had grown up completely outnumbered and utterly overpowered, especially since his mother (she’d had him via artificial insemination, like a great many women who had children these days) had insisted that, as much as was possible, he should be visible, out in the school system where he could be obviously seen and appreciated as the status symbol she’d intended him to be. Children naturally tended to split up along sex lines during most of the phases of their development, and that meant that at each and every one of those stages of development, Thaxton found himself set apart, isolated from the overwhelming majority of his same-age peers, because those peers happened to be girls.

At first the separation had been because his mother had been concerned for his health, so while he’d be sent out to school, he was expected to come straight home, and never allowed to mingle too much at the birthdays and other events shared by his fellow kids. Which made sense: he was one of only a double handful of boys in his age range in the general vicinity around the massive school complex that served as a central educating and caregiving ground for humanity’s rising generation. He’d read all the horror stories about many boy children who hadn’t been as lucky as he was, dying young from the various illnesses that had run rampant in the wake of whyker, so perhaps, being fair, his mother’s decision to limit his early socialization hadn’t been so unwise after all, however stifling it had been.

Later, that separation had become even more pronounced because he was expected to be “special” somehow, to shine more brightly than anyone else, for reasons that he just didn’t understand, not then, and not now. While women were the majority of the world’s adult human population right then, and potentially at their most politically powerful, the plagues and wars and other horrors of preceding decades had driven most of the human population into a state of looking back with rose-colored glasses at “the good old days.” So the few men remaining tended to be the ones in charge, maintaining the old, crumbling patriarchal systems well past their use-by date, and boys growing up in these times were expected to hold the entire impossible weight of those dried-up patriarchal systems on their still-developing shoulders. Needless to say, this forced Thaxton apart from most people as he progressed through elementary and middle school, girls because too many of them felt they were only allowed to look, not touch (a stance encouraged by their mothers), and boys because many of them were raised to think of Thaxton as a potential future rival.

Now was probably the worst sort of separation of all. That was because as Thaxton had entered the final stage of the climb through puberty to adulthood, and possibly even manhood (whatever that was), his social role had similarly changed. Once, according to the opinions of the girls in his age range as he’d grown up, he’d been “off-limits,” and then “special,” and finally he’d been regarded as “icky.” That last wasn’t so bad, actually, since it meant that nobody had bothered intervening much to keep him separate from his opposite-sex peers. It was certainly better than his present status among the opposite sex of his age range: valuable property. A “prize.” A “catch.” Just when he was supposed to start feeling like a “real, hot-blooded man,” he ended up feeling more like a cold fish!

Human girls could be such bitches, Thaxton thought with a wry smirk, even as he let his pale eyes play over the other eight boys sharing the shower with him, which also incidentally comprised the entire male population of his grade. No wonder most of his fellow boys had to find their own ways to cope, when everything now was geared toward meeting the needs of the girls who were the overwhelming majority of the rising generation. Boys like him were either a status symbol to be acquired by those girls, or an afterthought among the women who ran the world, including the education system in which he was an unwilling captive.

So how did boys cope during these stressful years, when they were being stalked by all the most aggressive girls, the ones who wanted social status above all else? Well, there were plenty of ways. Take Bruno, for instance…mmm, actually, Thaxton had to admit that, while he didn’t regard himself as “gay” (whatever that was: nobody bothered explaining stuff like this in any appropriate detail, and the internet was, as always, a source of conflicting information), he wouldn’t mind “taking” Bruno (again, whatever that meant: sex ed was annoyingly minimal, and Thaxton’s internet time was either on the sly, for his rare glimpses of porn, or heavily-monitored by the new and improved cyber-nannies his mother and his teachers usually made sure were always present on the devices he used – almost always, anyway). Bruno Custer was a big guy, looking pretty close to being a man in spite of only being about Thaxton’s age, with gorgeous, wavy black hair that he kept close-cropped due to his interest in wrestling (he was effectively the wrestling team for their school, at least for his grade). Also because of that interest, his body was toned, flawlessly sculpted from his broad shoulders right down the perfect “V” of his back, to the clearly-defined dimples above his solid, smoothly squarish buttocks, and all the way down the interesting bumps and bulges of his thighs and calves. Though Thaxton didn’t have a lot of opportunity for comparison, he judged that Bruno was also pretty “hung” (as the slang went among his peers…and Leslie, but Leslie was another subject entirely), and while, again, Thaxton didn’t think he was gay, he had to admit: those sizable hanging bits were certainly interesting.

Bruno was also completely uninterested in anyone else. Even with all the other boys (especially Leslie) checking him out every time they showered together after the boys’ PE time right before lunch, Bruno seemed to just close himself off from the rest of the world, focusing solely on the business of soaping up, lathering, rinsing, drying, and heading out, done in minutes and not a second more. The big guy treated girls the same way – his way of coping – keeping his focus centered on his goals, his drives, and not letting anyone else into the narrow field of that focus.

Speaking of “another subject,” there was Leslie Wellington IV, standing right next to Bruno in the showers, but quite unlike the big, black-haired guy, Leslie was completely aware of everyone around him, and Thaxton was sure he was taking notes!

To Leslie, life was all about keeping score, as he’d been raised among an old money family dating back to the even older American South (at least before that term was changed in meaning with the massive absorption of East Coast cities by the Northeast Megalopolis, all the way up into Canada), and that meant that he was spoiled pretty close to rotten. He put on a big show of being gay, with his bright pink hair and the two piercings that accentuated the natural pout of his full, Cupid’s bow lips, and his trimly-sculpted body, with its taut bubble buns and equally taut tummy, sleek and supple, muscular without being huge like Bruno, which all certainly played to the stereotype Leslie wanted to portray (and, Thaxton had to admit, there was a certain appeal to the other boy’s body type, and to his apparent shamelessness in nudity). Somehow, though, Thaxton suspected that this was just Leslie’s way of coping with the present situation: he’d been raised as the center of the universe, and being gay meant that he was “off the market,” letting him retain his position, even if it also meant that he had to suffer from the rather heavy prejudice toward “non-breeders” in the present population crisis. For Leslie, though, conflict like that just seemed to give him additional energy, extrovert that he appeared to be, always on display, always putting on an act.

Always alone.

Poor Leslie.

Then there was Rico. Rico was oblivious! Seriously, the kid was always racing around, always eager to compete in some new contest. Since most athletes in the competitions were girls these days, that meant that Rico ended up pitting himself against them. For Rico (Enrique Sanchez to the administration, but everybody called the brown-haired, caramel-skinned kid Rico), all that really mattered was having fun and getting sweaty out on the field with others, or out on the mats (since Thaxton understood that Rico was an accomplished martial artist, despite his tender years), and if those others happened to be girls, well, there it was. It was like he didn’t even know there was a difference between the sexes!

Neither of those extremes appealed to Thaxton, not in sexuality, nor in sociality, and of course he was too much of a naval-gazer to fit into the oblivious middle ground occupied by Rico, or the simple middle ground of submission to the status quo that everybody else seemed to accept. While he thought of himself as an introvert, all the same, he liked having his friends, and spending time with them. He also liked girls…no, that wasn’t quite right: he liked the idea of girls, and recognized that there was something about them, something different and special (and as he’d heard once in an old movie, “Vive la difference!”), and he wanted to get to know more about those differences. At the same time, though…the girls who actually went out of their way to “hunt” him were kind of scary, and Thaxton didn’t like the idea of being hunted, or of being “owned” like a pair of shoes, or a new purse. Some girls seemed nice enough, but the more aggressive ones seemed on the verge of going psychopathic if he ever paid attention to the ones that actually interested him, and he strongly suspected that those nicer girls got bullied the moment he and the school’s teachers turned their backs.

Adam, Charlie, and Danny, those three didn’t have any issues, though. No, they’d pretty much accepted the fact that they were going to end up “sniped” at some point, and become somebody’s trophy husband. Blonde-haired, mullet-sporting surfer kid Adam Baize was kind of submissive anyway, with a “go with the flow” attitude he’d kept from when he’d lived on the West Coast.

Charlie Chen, meanwhile, was frail-looking, and acted frail as well, his health having never been all that good, and only preserved at all thanks to the latest in genetic treatments. His frailty had left a china doll look about him, long black hair and pale skin, and Thaxton strongly suspected that some girl would happily take him in like a prized possession some day, her own boy doll with whom she’d play dress up for the rest of their lives. Not a bad way to live, Thaxton supposed, if you were into that sort of thing.

Danny Carter was a lot like Rico, but not nearly so much of a spaz. Actually, of them all, Danny seemed like the one who’d actually eventually have an honest-to-goodness happy ending, marrying the girl of his dreams, the girl next door, who would also happen to be his best friend. Of course, that was also a problem for Danny: he had a lot of “best friends” right then, since he really was a good guy, and he was honestly friendly and outgoing, without being annoying about it. Thaxton liked the chestnut-haired kid, the same as everybody else, but Danny ran track and generally kept himself active in sports, and Thaxton…well, he wasn’t the sort who liked to hang out in “open spaces,” like a sporting field or an arena. Activities in large groups made his heartrate race painfully, so Thaxton knew he simply couldn’t handle that kind of social pressure, and that meant he never really got to know much about Danny’s deeper side.

Better to keep to the friends he knew. If that meant that he’d eventually have to act the part of the homosexual just to get some peace, well, boys had their appeal as well, didn’t they? And Thaxton was certainly willing to be open-minded about the subject of sex: he hadn’t gotten enough education on the subject to be anything but, after all.

Speaking of friends, Thaxton saw Billy and Joey making their way toward the shower’s exit, towels draped over their naked shoulders. His fellow nerds, though like him, they weren’t the stereotypical sallow-faced, out-of-shape sorts expected from nerdishness. Oh, Thaxton and Billy both needed glasses, it was true, but they all gently pressured each other to work out, to jog and do some of the more “manly” bits of yoga and calisthenics This was especially the fault of Joey Carlin, actually, since Thaxton and Billy regarded the redheaded, freckle-faced kid as their go-between with the sporty set, though he was really a bit too naïve to fit in with the extroverts who usually made up that kind of clique. No, the nerd set suited him much better when he wasn’t actively engaged in sports or whatever: they didn’t make uncomfortable demands.

“Did you notice something weird going on?” asked Billy as Thaxton approached him and Joey, all three of them buffing themselves off with their towels, while Thaxton tried his best not to notice the pleasant curves of Joey’s taut, boyish body, or of Billy Fizer’s slightly taller, more lean frame, his deep mahogany skin making a sharp contrast with Thaxton’s own light cream complexion, though not quite so much of one against Joey’s tanned body…well, tanned except for his stark white butt, that is, with its glaringly obvious swimsuit tan that stood out like a flashlight in a dark room. Joey’s butt was actually pretty cute, Thaxton couldn’t help but think idly, though he didn’t let himself linger on the thought for long: he was confused enough, thank you, without getting the hots for one of his best friends.

“Weird in what way?” asked Thaxton, smoothing down his rounded blonde hairstyle, then combing it carefully back into place using the mirror on the inside door of his locker, before he quickly tugged on his jeans and polo shirt. “There’s a lot of weird things going on around here at any one moment.”

“Weird like…like there’s this oppressive feeling,” Billy tried to explain, his brow wrinkling under his vintage Arsenio Hall-style flattop. “Like a low pressure zone coming in, when you can feel the thunder coming, even if you haven’t heard any yet. Sort of electric, staticky enough to make your hair stand on end, and your prick tingle. Every time I’ve been around the girls on some of the sports teams, they didn’t give me a second look: no catcalls or anything like that, like they’re all preoccupied with something heavy. That got me suspicious, and I’ve been hearing weird rumors ever since. Nothing solid, when nobody’s willing to talk to a guy snooping around where he’s not wanted, but…”

Taking his turn to frown, Thaxton walked toward the door to the boy’s locker room, his two friends quietly behind him, emulating his own manner and demeanor. Right at the start of puberty, when the opposite sex had started to take an interest in him, Thaxton had learned the fine art of social invisibility, and Billy and Joey recognized his skill, and the benefits of not being stuck in the middle of girl-dominated political games. While they weren’t as good at it as he was, when they were with him, able to copy him by observation, they could be his near-equals at just fading into the background.

Hanging back just a little as the girl’s locker room similarly began to disgorge its far more substantial contents (and not just in terms of numbers, Thaxton couldn’t help but think to himself with a slight smirk, as he and his friends took a step back into one of the many little alcoves lining the halls, slipping out of the line of traffic, and also the immediate line of sight: girls did have the most interesting figures), the blonde, straightlaced kid considered Billy’s words more deeply, even as he opened his ears to listen to the snippets of conversation coming from the passing crowd of young femininity.

“…a new coach, this late in the season? I mean, yeah, we could use one, and I’m as tired as anybody of getting our tails whipped every game, but…”

“…and Martinique said that he was a real professional, that he’d done all sorts of training, including stuff in the military, and that…”

“…there’s supposed to be this website that tells all about this guy, but all my phone brings up is the website to this junkyard, along with…what is this, anyway? Morph training services? Morph breeding services? What in the world is…”

Leaning forward slightly to catch sight of the smartphone of that last girl, Thaxton whipped out his own portable device and promptly went searching. A few taps of his fingers, and there it was, Spike’s Junkyard. Naturally, since it was a legitimate business site, the censorship app his mother had installed on the phone itself, and the general internet censorship around the school-owned access zone as well, didn’t bother to block it. After all, it might have provided legitimate research potential.

Well now: ”research potential” indeed!

“Woah!” said both Billy and Joey as they looked over Thaxton’s shoulders. He didn’t bother to linger on those videos found on various pages of the site, though: he knew that they might be noticed at any moment if he didn’t hurry, especially in this public place.

Then Thaxton’s eyes snapped up, and he adjusted his glasses as he saw who was trailing the pack on their way to the cafeteria: Priss Martens, the volleyball captain; Brandy Crews, the basketball captain; and Bird Phelps, all-around athlete, present star of the soccer team (second only to Martinique Flowers, the captain), and friend to just about everybody. Oh, and Shania Green, but she was…well, she was an ideal beta in any social situation: she could always be depended on to support the ones in charge, not that this was a bad thing, necessarily; after all, if you had to be a follower, at least you could pick nice people to follow, and Shania did that, not like some of the girls in the various cliques. Right then, being a good follower meant sticking close to the other three girls, and if Shania was tagging along, and those three “top dogs” were all in one place, that meant that they were up to something. Probably on the trail of whatever it was that Billy had noticed.

Still flicking through the less explicit parts of the website for Spike’s Junkyard, Thaxton fell quietly into step behind the three girls. Sensing that their friend’s analytical mind was now hard at work, Billy and Joey joined him just as quietly, not wanting either to attract the attention of their quarry, or to distract their friend’s thought process before he’d figured something out. Whatever he was figuring, though, if it involved stuff like what they’d glimpsed on that website (the title of which they all stored away in their memories for future perusal, when greater privacy permitted), it had to be interesting!

“Hey, Bird!” came another voice from the other side of the hall almost the moment the knot of four girls stepped out of the gym and into the main student thoroughfare, and Thaxton quietly stepped to one side of the gym’s door, letting its shadow cover his presence without being too obvious about his concealment, his two friends following in careful lockstep, not wanting to interrupt their own personal Sherlock when he was on a case.

The girl who trotted up was another blonde, her hair done up in pigtails, braces still on her teeth, her height and general build immediately marking her as quite a bit younger than the taller, ponytailed girl she’d addressed. There was an obvious family resemblance, though, and from the way Bird immediately reached out to playfully rub the top of the newcomer’s head, their closeness was instantly apparent.

“What’s up, shorty?” Bird asked teasingly, her blue eyes flicking up toward another girl, this one with spiky, hot pink hair, standing a short distance off, arms folded before her chest.

“Just wanted to see if you were coming home soon enough to help me out with my homework tonight, is all,” asked the youngest Phelps sister, Steffi if Thaxton’s memory served him right (which it usually did). “Well, not really my homework,” she admitted after a scrutinizing look from the older teen. “Brittany was saying how she might need some help of her own, and that flash drive you had this morning didn’t have anything she could use for her school projects. At least, that’s what she said,” the girl finished with a shrug, her expression making it clear she didn’t know much beyond the message she’d just relayed.

“Uh-huh,” Bird chuckled, smirking over at her just-younger-than-her sister. “Is that why she dyed her hair pink? ‘Cause she didn’t want anybody to know she didn’t turn out to be so perfect after all? And why she doesn’t come over to talk to me herself?”

“I’m just avoiding you ‘cause you’re a dork, dork!” Brittany yelled across the hall, a big grin on her face as she held up the little hot pink flash drive, the same color as her hair, actually. “You forgot your flash drive this morning, and I was just wondering if you needed it, is all. I mean, with how much time you’ve been spending off with your friends and with sports and…well, whatever, you’ve been forgetting a lot of stuff.”

“Naw,” Bird answered, her tone casual. “I printed out my paper earlier, so no worries. I’ll need it back later, but you can both tell Mom I’ll be out late again: we’re doing soccer practice with a new coach, one who’s really serious about helping us win, and I don’t wanna disappoint him.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” snarked the younger Phelps girl right back, with the youngest, Steffi, looking back and forth between her older sisters with an utterly confused look on her face, sensing some sort of subtext passing between the two, but not having any clue what it could possibly be. “All right, see you tonight, then. I’ll make sure Mom knows where you are.”

“Thanks, Britt,” Bird called, already starting down the hall with her friends. “You just saved me some serious time talking to her myself.”

His eyes settling on Steffi, Thaxton watched the youngest of the Phelps sisters continue to waver there in the hall for a few moments longer, obviously torn over who to follow – she was a tagalong, after all, though not all that annoying about it, if the reactions of her sisters were any indication – before she finally turned back to Brittany and hurried over, even as her pink-haired sister (whose hair, Thaxton distinctly recalled, had been blonde yesterday, though no less spiky and upswept; obviously one of the whims of the teenage female of the species) started off toward the outside park area not far from the topmost main gates of the school complex, where the older students could hang out and eat and do whatever during their free periods; scant replacement for a playground, Thaxton had always thought, but those were supposed to be off-limits to the older kids at the school, and were too far down the hill to be easily reachable anyway.

“Bird and her friends are going to the cafeteria,” he quietly informed his friends. “At least based on their present direction. That means that they’ll be in too public a place for easy observation. So we follow them,” he concluded, motioning with his chin after Steffi, in the rear, and Brittany out front. Already the two girls were being joined by others, the younger set, many of them marked in their newness to the way things were done in highschool by still wearing their school uniforms. They hadn’t quite grown to understand the lack of discipline in the higher reaches of the school, the way the social order had started breaking down. Perhaps that was for the best.

While he was better at chess than Thaxton, Billy didn’t have the blonde kid’s memory for names. What made it worse, of course, was that Brittany, like Bird among the older teens of the highschool, was really popular. Seriously, it seemed to Billy as though she was joined by something like – what, ten, twenty girls? – pretty much the moment she stepped out into the bright sunshine of the late spring afternoon.

There were five that he did recognize, though: Ginger, Asia, Suzuka, and the twins, Ani and Ami.

Ginger Goldstein was the resident Jewish American Princess around the highschool, though she broke the expected appearance of a JAP somewhat with her dark blonde pigtails (though Billy had heard that her natural hair color was black; nanogels to the rescue once again), but only somewhat, since she had the expected near-anorexic slimness and aristocratically high cheekbones and delicately Roman nose. Also going against stereotype, she was actually kind of nice, if a bit distant. Billy strongly suspected that this was the result of her time with Brittany, the other blonde girl’s natural friendliness tending to rub off on the people around her. There were also rumors that Ginger, fabulously wealthy, but also horribly lonely, had dyed her hair to its present color to emulate the first girl that had reached out to her, and become her first and best friend.

Where Brittany went, of course, so went Asia and Suzuka, and the Martens twins as well.

What was there to say about Asia Popwell and Suzuka Ashigaru? They were girls in the shadows of others. Dreadlocked Asia was always with Brittany at any possible moment, living in the blonde girl’s shadow. Similarly, she lived in the shadow of her older sister, Africa, a rumored honor student at the local university, and that of her mother, principal at one of the other nearby school complexes that served the Northeastern Megalopolis. A mother who was too busy with other people’s children to spare time for her own daughter, or so went school scuttlebutt (which did tend to be pretty merciless toward poor Asia, what with her mom being principal of a rival school and all), while living in the present school district.

Suzuka, meanwhile, was the younger sister of Yoko (another of Bird’s many friends), as well as the star of the local nerd crowd: that was a tough act to follow! Suzuka, though, well…she was just sort of there, a Japanese-American girl who’d been born overseas, and had never completely lost her accent even after her mother had married an American and emigrated (while there still was a United States, anyway; yet another term that had changed a great deal in the wake of the present crisis). Yoko might have spent even longer in Japan than her younger sister, but she didn’t have an accent, and she certainly didn’t have her sister’s reserved, traditional Japanese demureness.

Which left the Martens twins, Ami and Ani, and boy did they get your attention! Hair dyed purple and green, respectively, the nanogel treatment making sure the coloration went down all the way to the roots, the twins were Martens, which naturally meant that they were friends with the Phelps family. Bess Martens was Janaina Martens’ best friend, and they’d both had twin girls, though Janaina’s had been born just a little bit later than Bess’, putting Amber and Pearl somewhere between Steffi and Brittany in age, and hence also between the Martens twins and their youngest sister, Aria. The Martens twins were natural athletes, energetic and competitive on the track and swim teams, and natural scholars as well, excelling in every subject, so they’d ended up in the school newspaper a lot while growing up, hence why everybody knew something about them. As they’d hit highschool, though, they’d also developed a rebellious streak. Both were known to have tried marijuana, for instance (off the record, at least: nobody had ever ratted them out), and both were known to be the masterminds behind a number of pranks that they’d worked with Brittany to pull off. Nothing too destructive, at least not yet, but everybody figured it was only a matter of time.

Right now, even if Billy didn’t have his friend Thaxton’s deductive mind, he could tell that there was some mischief brewing. And the center of that mischief was the flash drive Brittany was plugging into Ginger’s laptop right that instant.

“You’re saying that your sister left this lying around this morning?” Ginger was asking as the three boys casually stayed in the shade of one of the many trees scattered around the park, while the knot of girls clustered around a bench, all of them pressed close to see whatever it was that Brittany was about to show them on Ginger’s computer. “And she didn’t know what else was on it?”

“Yeah,” Brittany affirmed, not seeming to notice as her youngest sister climbed up onto the top of the picnic table by the bench to peer over her shoulders at the screen as the flash drive kicked into activation. “Stuck right in a folder that said it was just study material.” She scoffed. “’Study material’! Yeah, right, but not for any subject in our school! Guess she just forgot it was on there, since she didn’t mention wanting it back or anything when I just talked to her. She seem stressed or anything to you, Steffi?” she added, revealing that she did, in fact, know where her sister was after all.

“Um,” the youngest Phelps girl demurred for a moment, turning a bright pink as she became a center of attention from girls older and more important than herself. “No, actually. If anything, she seemed pretty happy. Normally she doesn’t like Brittany messing with her stuff,” she added to the gaggle. “But…lately I guess she’s started to get more…well, more grown up, I guess. Like she’s found something that’s making her really happy inside, and now she doesn’t mind sharing everything she’s got with all of us. She didn’t even yell at me when I borrowed her special shampoo this morning; actually, she didn’t seem to care, like it wasn’t even important. Like she had other stuff going on.”

“She sure does,” Brittany agreed with a grin. “Just take a look at what my big sis was doing this weekend.”

Instantly, the girls’ chatter, normally nonstop, quieted. And then, quite suddenly, it died away completely, at least for a little while.

“They’re all naked,” said one girl, looking confused. “Why are they all naked? Shouldn’t they be wearing some protective clothes or something if they’re going to practice sports, or whatever that is?”

“Looks like some sort of martial arts,” said Suzuka, her calm, quiet voice easily heard in the hush that had settled over the knot of girls. “But I don’t recognize…”

“Oh wow,” said a cluster of the audience.

“He’s…”

“They’re…”

“Wow,” agreed the group as a collective, heaving a long, happy-sounding sigh.

In that moment of exhalation, Thaxton took a few steps to the side, and Billy and Joey joined him instinctively. That slight adjustment, coupled with the repositioning of the girls as they settled down, was all the boys needed to finally see the screen. A screen, it became immediately obvious, that was filled with big, muscular, gorgeous males.

Big, muscular, gorgeous, naked males.

Big, muscular, gorgeous, naked, morph males.

Of course Billy wasn’t gay or anything. All the same, he felt his breath catch for a moment at the sight of those males on the screen. After all, they really were awe-inspiring! Living works of art, sculpted from what had to be years of hard work and rough training to get their bodies to those peaks of perfection; Bruno was a piece of work, but these guys…they were something else entirely. And there they were, completely exposed, visible from all angles as they performed martial arts forms, and sparred, and exercised before their viewers, seemingly completely unaware that they were on camera, their floppy bits bouncing around in a manner most distracting.

Glancing to either side, Billy saw the flushed cheeks of his companions. Okay, no worries there: as long as he wasn’t alone in how he felt, that wasn’t going to be a big deal later. And, well, they were his friends, weren’t they? If anybody would understand, they probably would.

Kind of weird how…intent Joey looked, though. Billy hadn’t ever thought of Joey even thinking about stuff like that. Actually, spacey as the redheaded kid usually was, Billy didn’t tend to think of Joey thinking anything much. Right now, though, he looked like he’d been completely caught off-guard. Sure, Billy knew that he was pretty captivated by the sight of those fuzzy hunks, and Thaxton had that thoughtful look he always got when he was memorizing something interesting, but Joey…yeah, there was something more going on. Something big.

When Billy’s eyes swung back to the computer screen, he was slightly gratified to discover some proof that he was, in fact, not gay, as the sudden and quite extreme tightness in his jeans attested. The feeling was only slim comfort, though, because getting turned on by a smoking hot woman who wasn’t even of his own species…well, it just made him all sorts of confused! Worrying that he might be gay would have been simple compared to getting a boner at the sight of a bare naked colliemorph kneeling, facing the camera, the pink of her large, erect nipples standing out clearly against the soft white fur of her bare breasts.

“Now that you’re all cleaned up, at least for now,” another morphgirl, a cute cocker spaniel with a face like Lady from the old Disney movie, and a body like some of the vintage porn stars Billy had managed to see when he could get a few moments to himself, was saying in the same tone Billy had heard many times from his teachers, “we’re going to review some exercises. These are important, because they ensure that you’ll stay nice and tight for your lovers, as well as vastly enhance how much pleasure you’ll get from sex. More than that, they’ll help to ensure general health to all your plumbing. Giving birth will be easier, and you’ll avoid so many nasty complications that can come on, especially later in life. Miss Benny, if you please.”

The cocker spaniel placed a dominant hand on the rust-furred collie’s shoulder, and the female who’d been called “Miss Benny” gave a soft, needy little whimper that made Billy ache in ways he’d never even considered before, before she lowered herself to all-fours…then turned around, presenting herself fully to the camera!

Just the sight of that puffy, swollen pink vagina and snug, candy pink anal ring, both framed in the softest-looking white fur, was almost enough to make Billy completely fail to notice as the camera panned back. As its view expanded, a bevy of lovely, equally naked human girls was revealed, all of them leaning in close, obviously paying attention to the lessons being given. And behind those girls…were the same morph males seen previously, just as naked as before, many of them sporting erections big enough to be clearly visible even from the far background.

“Time to move,” said Thaxton, breaking Billy and Joey out of their spell, which they hadn’t realized had fallen over them so completely until their friend’s voice cut through it. “Steffi just looked around, and I think she saw us, so now it’s time to fade out again.”

At the mention of Steffi’s sister, Billy’s eyes flicked involuntarily to Brittany…and then back to the screen. No, not Brittany: Bird. There she was, in all her glory, even more revealed than she’d ever been in Billy’s occasional wet dreams (though those weren’t his fault, he immediately justified: they just sort of happened on their own). In that brief glimpse, Billy saw the gorgeous blonde crawling up alongside Miss Benny, presenting herself in the same way as the colliemorph, both girls moaning as the cocker spaniel cutie leaned down and began to caress their lovely labias, her teacher’s voice calmly explaining some of the differences between morph and human females, even as her fingers came away glistening.

A slight adjustment in placement, Billy and Joey letting Thaxton guide them with his usual skills at not being noticed, and they bought themselves a little more time, a little more opportunity to watch that screen, and see what happened next.

“Of course,” the cocker spaniel (whose name, apparently, was Girl, from the way Benny and Bird had both said “Yes, Girl” to her instructions on their positioning), “I’m not as qualified for teaching you the next parts of this training as someone else here. So I’m going to hand you over to my mate, and the one who taught me a pretty large part of what I know about sex: Spike.”

There was a slight pause, and then he stepped onto the screen, which panned out to take him all in. He was, well, he wasn’t really handsome. Actually, with those scars standing out through his thin white fur, and those scary red eyes, and those wads of bunched-up muscle, he was ugly. But it was a charismatic kind of ugly, an appearance that was instantly arresting, that made you stop and look, whether you wanted to or not.

That, and his penis was absolutely huge. There was only a bit of it peeking out of his sheath right then, a big pink mushroom cap, but that sheath was filled out pretty firmly, and it didn’t take a deductive genius like Thaxton to figure out that whatever that fleshpocket was concealing, it was big.

“You all know who I am,” said the broad-shouldered pitbull, and the sound of that voice, deep, growly, a sort of feral energy and dominant command radiating from its subtlest tones, was enough to make the pupils of all three boys dilate; they could only imagine the effect that voice must be having on the girls right next to the laptop! “I’ve trained lots of morphs in the techniques I’m going to cover here. I had to: nobody else would. We morphs are expected to be used as breeding stock, both in the military, and also in private ownership, but there’s techniques to sex that make the whole breeding process better, more fun, and I had to do some serious study to dig them all up. Once I put together my training process, it was adopted across international boundaries, and now you’ll find the techniques I originally taught to morphs working for US and UN forces being learned by morphs pretty much everywhere. It’s been refined a lot over the years, and I’m still always learning and adding in new stuff, but I can guarantee: what you learn here will enhance how much enjoyment you can get out of sex. And a lot more, too, just like Girl said. And it’s not just for femmes,” he added, motioning to Benny and Bird, who rose back up into a kneeling position, making their back dimples stand out clearly as they rested their bottoms on their heels, watching him curiously. “A lot of this stuff helps males, too.”

Before the ever-watchful eye of the camera, Spike got into the same position the two young women, human and morph, had been in before, on all-fours, presenting himself to the camera shamelessly. Close by, the faces of both Bird and Benny could be seen, wide-eyed, tracing up and down his solid, masculine rump, which was strangely soft-looking, even squeezable in spite of its obviously brick-hard musculature. Billy guessed it had something to do with how rounded it looked, like the tough pitbull’s butt would just fit perfectly into your hands if you reached out and…

“Grip my buns and spread them, please, Bird, Miss Benny,” Spike instructed. “I want everyone to see this bit.”

Colliemorph and human shared a brief, uncertain look, Bird actually biting her lower lip, before Benny reached forward, and Bird joined her, their fingers indeed sinking a bit into that rock-solid rump, and then parting the reluctantly-yielding flesh.

“Girl, if you please.”

“You can see what Spike’s done to himself,” said Girl, straddling her mate’s waist, reverse-cowgirl, and brushing one hand down between his spread cheeks, teasing the tense white pucker of his anal ring before her fingers stroked slowly over what looked like a raised ridge between anus and heavy, swollen-looking goose egg testicles, clearly outlined through his fuzzy white sac. “This is the perineal body, or perineal muscle. You can see the little crease between anus and genitals, which everybody has: that’s the perineum. The perineal body is this visible lump here. It’s mostly a tendon, but there are muscles attached to it, and with time and effort, you can develop those muscles.”

“They enhance staying power,” Spike added, taking over once more, while Girl continued to caress his visible, raised crease. “They’re really important for equimorphs and other morphs that don’t have their sheaths as developed as most morphs, or those that lack sheaths entirely, because that’s where most of their staying power comes from. For morphs like me, with a proper sheath, though, we’ve got a lot more muscle action going on down there, and so we’ve got a lot more precise control of our orgasms.”

“When,” Girl chimed in with a soft smile, letting her hand stroke down to Spike’s heavy balls, then cup them gently, only for them to suddenly pull upward, almost right up into Spike’s pelvic cavity, while his anal ring clenched with visible force, “and how much, and even how often. Spike has almost complete control of his entire body. It’s taken him years, of course, but if you do what he tells you, and shows you, you’ll get so much more out of life.”

“Femmes have a lot greater capacity for pleasure than males,” Spike said, looking over his shoulder at the camera, then smirking at Bird, who was running her hand over his butt, rather than just holding him spread, obviously starting to enjoy herself a bit too much for a mere demonstration. “That’s enough,” he told her and Benny, letting his balls drop back into their low-hanging position at the same time the two girls, human and morph, released him. “Now look close at my pelvis, and at my butt, and at my belly. Girl’s gonna get on the camera and tilt it so you can see what I mean more clearly. I’m gonna have Benny and Bird do what I do, and then the rest of you. We’ll start with just a few exercises, mostly pelvic-strengthening ones for now, and then work up to more and more each time you’re here. Now watch.”

As he said this, the camera did indeed turn and then panned in, so that it was focusing on Spike’s rigid eight-pack. Before the eyes of all the onlookers, his belly tensed, thrusting outward, and then in.

“I’m not really flexing my stomach,” he said with a soft grunt as the movement happened again. “Bird, put your hand just under my abs, on my pubis. That should make the motion clearer.”

He was right: with Bird’s small-looking pink hand against his white-furred flesh, the real movements he was doing suddenly became obvious: he was thrusting his hips, his entire pelvis, forward, then back. Then, before their eyes, he shifted the motion, making it more exaggerated, and also gyrating his hips at the same time. Billy couldn’t repress a slight smile: he looked almost as though he were a puppy wagging his whole body, instead of just his tail! (Though, of course, Spike did have a tail, albeit a stubby one, and it certainly didn’t actually wag.)

As Bird’s hand withdrew, Spike actually extended his legs slightly, then began a slow, “scooping” kind of thrust, pausing to “wiggle” a bit in a slow, circling gyration, before he drew back, then thrust forward again with the same motion. Though it took a few moments, Billy suddenly realized what made those thrusts so familiar: he’d seen then being used by the vintage porn star dudes when they were working their cocks into their co-actors on screen! As that realization hit him, his face instantly flushed, but he didn’t look away, any more than his two friends, or any of the girls watching the screen with rapt, avid attention.

“Think you can do that, Bird, Benny?” asked Spike, coming to a stop, then rising back to his feet. “Just those three movements for now. They’re meant to strengthen your pelvic muscles, and all the stuff attached to ‘em. Which is a lot, by the way, lots of little muscle groups that almost never get any serious attention. Later on, we’ll work on some kegels as well, but right now we’re gonna keep it smooth and simple.”

“Y-yeah,” answered Bird, licking her lips as she blinked her blue eyes several times, obviously getting her mind out of a very messy gutter, and back into action. “Yeah, no problems.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Benny, before both girls returned to that all-fours position. Instantly the camera shifted, letting the viewers see Spike’s own hands as they rested on the girls’ bellies, and then slid lower, to just above the little cleft that marked the start of their vaginal folds. With his hands resting there, once more the actual movements of the two girls’ pelvises could be clearly seen.

“That reminds me,” Spike suddenly said, pulling his hands back, then resting them on the girls’ bottoms, soft-furred and supple-skinned, respectively, before he easily spread them with a gently irresistible stroking caress of his huge palms, laying bare all their pink treasures in an instant. “Take a close look. Yeah, that’s right, Girl: zoom in. See? Look at how flushed they’re both getting down there. Morph, human, doesn’t matter: these exercises usually get the juices flowing. They get me into a state of semi-hardness, and it takes a lot of my self-control just to keep my goodies tucked in. For a femme? Naw, it’s all out there, nowhere to hide.”

Sure enough: as the camera did indeed zoom in, both Bird and Benny’s inner pink places were glistening with slick moisture. No, they were dripping with it, wetting the skin of Spike’s palms, their anal rings visibly tensing with each slight movement of their hips.

“Good a time as any,” Spike said, mostly to himself, before he rose and left the screen, leaving the pair of girls to start gyrating their hips slightly, moving gradually into the next exercise he’d demonstrated. He returned a moment later, holding a pair of hand-sized boxes. Setting these on the floor next to each girl’s feet, he opened them up, letting the camera pan in a bit while he drew out two pairs of gleaming metal balls, each joined by a pink silk ribbon, while he held them up by another ribbon.

“Duotone balls,” he explained, shifting one pair of balls to his palm so that the camera could get a good look at them. “They’re also called Ben Wa balls. One’s hollow, and it goes into the vagina first, then the other, which has a moving weight inside. They’re a really old sort of vaginal weight, something used to strengthen the insides of a femme’s pussy and all the related bits. I’ve heard stories about women keeping these toys inside all day long while they sit in a rocking chair or something, but that’s not recommended for beginners: they’re weights, after all, and you can damage yourself if you’re not careful with weight equipment, however small they might look.”

He gripped the lower of the two balls, one in each hand, and rested them lightly right at the start of the gluteal crease of each femme, right below Benny’s tail in her case, so that the bright silver stood out clearly against her snowy white underfur.

“I’m putting these into you, Benny, Bird,” he said with that same softly growling tone, the words somehow conveying something that was going to happen, and there was no way to resist it, any more than a ship could resist the tide. “You’re gonna clench a bit, and keep ‘em inside while you run through the rest of these exercises. The weights in ‘em aren’t too heavy – minimal, actually – so they shouldn’t strain you too bad. I gotta warn you, though: they’re ‘smart balls,’” he continued, a light smirk on his face as he began to stroke the smooth metal down over smooth skin and soft, well-groomed fur, teasing them so close to the exposed pink parts of each girl, without quite touching them. “Got the latest tech in ‘em and everything, made up for me special by Queen’s cathouse, just down the way a bit. Seriously, she’s got some of the best sexual technicians in the world working for her. These things, they’ll cling inside of you, so you won’t have to worry about keeping a death grip. One tug on the ribbons, though, and they slide right out. And while they’re inside, they’ll be adjusting to what’s in there. Seeking out your A-spots and G-spots, and doing stuff to ‘em I can’t even begin to imagine, not having the bits myself.”

“Ah!” gasped Bird, her eyes going wide, the camera panning to them as her pupils dilated.

“Ooh!” exclaimed Benny, while the screen split, showing the two girls’ faces, and also their painfully puffy pussies, at the exact moment that Spike squeezed those smooth metal balls into their reluctantly-yielding inner folds, which parted irresistibly against his firm, gentle pressure. At first those glistening pink walls stretched slowly, right to what looked like their limits to the untrained eyes of the boys and girls watching the screen with rapt attention (though in truth it was anything but). Then the first ball popped inside, those inner folds immediately wrapping around the metallic intruder, before the second ball took its place, once more spreading the girls’ pussies wide…then popping inside, leaving only the ribbons sticking out.

“Start the next set,” said Spike, thick fingers digging into yielding flesh and fur as he squeezed and then caressed each girl’s bottom. “That’s it: roll your hips just like that. Pretend you’re a cute little virgin puppy, the four-legged kind, right in the middle of her first heavy heat. You’ve been aching all day, just itching inside your little tummy, and finally, your master’s home.” His hand could be seen to flex as he guided the pair through the rolling motions of each rolling gyration of their upturned tushies, their buns firm and flexed hard beneath his palms. “Wag…wag…wag…Mmm, but there’s something better: he’s not alone. No, he brought a big, big dog with him. A big boy dog. That’s it, a little harder, a little faster…close your eyes and picture it…he’s stalking you, and you’re so eager, but scared as well. That big beast just towers over you, and you can’t even hope to get away. Then he’s got you, pulling you back with those heavy paws, dragging you under him. Faster now, harder: he’s trying to grip you, to hold you still. Those muscular hips of his are thrusting, and that huge cock of his is swinging forward. Rrr, he’s trying to shove it in you! Faster…there…good, that’s it. Keep it up: if you stop, he’ll shove it in you. He’ll pop your cherry. He’ll breed you. You’re a good little doggy, so you’ve gotta resist, ‘cause that’s what good little doggies do…even if you really, really need what he’s trying to make you take. So you gotta keep moving. Can’t let him…harder…a little faster…”

“Hah,” gasped Bird, her eyes suddenly going wide as she came to a complete standstill, her belly and bottom tensing, before her whole body went into a series of powerful contractions. “Ah…ah…ngh…AAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEAAAAAHHHH!”

Down she went, wailing and jerking, obviously no longer in control of her body as her bottom was thrust upward, grinding against Spike’s outstretched palm, leaving it coated in glistening juices. An instant later her whole body went rigid save for her hips, which kept moving a bit longer, before a visible squirt of clear liquid jetted upward in an arc, splashing to the floor behind her.

“Somebody just got properly humped,” chuckled another of the males in the background, his accent obviously Australian, before he walked forward, his own big hand coming down on Bird’s other cheek, patting her gently, making her supple flesh bounce a little at his touch. “Poor kid: it’s really rough the first couple times. Kinda blows your mind, doesn’t it?”

In the slight cooldown pause as one phase of the video came to an end with Bird’s orgasm and post-orgasm, even Billy, in his distracted state, realized that he and his friends had just run out of time. The girls gathered around Ginger’s laptop were looking around furtively, suddenly worried that somebody might see what was obviously supposed to be something private, shared only among Brittany’s friends, and finally able to think about such concerns in the period between “acts” in the video. Definitely time to fade out!

Not time to stop the investigation, though. No, not by far.

As soon as they were clear of the suspicion zone, Thaxton paused, looking thoughtful once again as he scanned the rest of the park. Most of the rest of the girls were still inside, of course, having their lunches in the cafeteria. Over by the front gates, though, was another familiar group: Yoko’s crowd of nerdy friends (sans Bird and Shania, of course, since they were in the cafeteria, hatching their own plans). Thaxton, Billy, and Joey tended to get along with those girls the easiest, since they weren’t generally the aggressive kind, and they had a lot in common on an intellectual level. That, and in chatrooms, where he was fairly certain he’d met most of them, nobody could really tell what sex you were. Or what species, Thaxton mused to himself idly, his mind now awash in realized possibilities.

Once again, though, the group of girls weren’t paying attention to the three boys. Instead, just like the gaggle over by the central tree-and-bench, they were gathered around a laptop, Yoko’s, while watching the front gates expectantly.

Glancing over Yoko’s shoulder as he and his friends approached, not nearly as covertly as they’d done with the other set of girls (these girls, after all, knew them, and some even liked them), Thaxton was only mildly disappointed to see that, rather than anything especially obscene, as seemed to befit the sudden obsession with morphish males, all that was present in the computer’s main window was a school schedule sheet. A sheet mentioning a rather innocuous-looking delivery slated for…hmm…a few minutes from…

CREEEAAAAK!

…now.

“They really need to oil those hinges,” grumbled October Sumner, the most obvious of the goth chicks in the school (though certainly not the only one, as cherry-haired Cerise White, sitting right next to the ink-haired girl, made obvious). “You were saying that the school’s bringing in subliminal trainers, Yoko?”

“It’s all right here,” answered the other girl, flipping to another window (and in the process, giving the three boys a tantalizing glimpse of something she and her friends had apparently been looking at before their arrival; apparently this wasn’t a “dry track” after all), pulling up a list of announcements from the school’s webpage. “I had to go digging around with the delivery company’s site to find out their time of arrival, and then the page for the company that makes and installs the things to find out who was going to be here to put them in, but if I’m right, it’s all going to be worth it.”

As Yoko was speaking, Thaxton stepped a bit closer to the topmost gates of the school. The school itself was built like some of the pictures of Minas Tirith as done by the Brothers Hildebrandt, arranged in ascending layers all up the hill. Unlike Tolkien’s fictional white-walled city, though, there’d been as much digging into the big hill as building on top of it, creating an extensive infrastructure. This was necessary, naturally: the school complex was about the same size as a mid-population township, and there were plenty of kids of all age ranges who lived there fulltime, either because they didn’t have parents, or because their parents didn’t have time for them, and didn’t have morphservants to raise their kids in their place, making the whole complex even more like a town, or maybe a city, and the principal over it all, Samira Washington, more like a mayor than the typical school administrator of times past and gone (the major difference, of course, being that her constituents couldn’t vote her out of office).

Quite like Minas Tirith, however, the school had numerous gates, some on the inside, checking the progress of older kids who might have caused trouble for the younger grades had they been allowed free access. Others were on the outside, reachable by several interconnecting sets of roads that crisscrossed up and down the hill’s layercake arrangement, and the surrounding regions as well, where many of the school’s outbuildings and dorms were located. The gate now opening was the topmost of those gates, the one that allowed access to the highschool, and also to the administrative offices, right at the top of the hill. And once it had opened, a truck slid silently inside, in its cab three figures that Thaxton could just barely make out as…

“Morphs,” said Joey, looking confused. “Two of them are wearing lab coats, too. Are they…?”

As the group of onlooking teenagers watched, the truck followed the short trail leading to one of the delivery bays for the school, and backed in, before the morphs in the truck’s cab opened the doors and…

…and Billy blinked. So did Thaxton. So did Joey. So did…well, everybody there, actually.

The big morph who’d just gotten out of the truck was so darn fluffy!

“A Great Pyrenees morphtype,” Thaxton said softly, the first one to recover, apparently not noticing as one of the girls, a statuesque brunette who was taller even than Billy, had to cover her face as it suddenly turned bright red, and she crouched over, apparently having some sort of cuteness-induced seizure. “This one is…bigger than I thought they’d be.”

Bigger and cuter, Billy thought to himself, especially when the big guy partially opened his mouth, his broad pink tongue lolling out while he grinned at the teens gathered nearby, giving them a friendly wave before he walked over to the loading bay door and lifted it up, the fluff sticking out around the white lab coat he was wearing seeming ready to burst out at the seams at any moment.

With the fluffy cloud-pretending-to-be-a-dog taking up everybody’s attention, everybody almost missed the other two morphs who were with him. At least until Yoko made a satisfied sound, and motioned pointedly to her laptop.

“See?” Yoko said smugly as she motioned to the window she’d just opened on her laptop’s screen. “I told you so.”

Looking down, Billy’s eyes widened as he saw a very familiar still. The still shot was from a video he and his friends had seen a few minutes ago, just across the park. It showed a large, muscular morph, an alligator of all things, with a very humanlike, free-hanging penis flopped up against the inner side of his thigh as he delivered a spinning roundhouse kick-tailslap combo.

A very big penis, Billy couldn’t help but notice, all…textured, like it was covered in the same scales as the rest of the big guy, except they were much more fine.

Then he looked up, just as his other friends did. Sure enough: right before them was the same morph, looking a lot like the old comic book character Dr. Curt Connors in his labcoat, which also strained at the seams, but with very obvious muscle rather than fluff.

As Billy and the others watched, the big ‘gator, together with a much shorter, stocky figure with brown fur and a pair of utilitarian coveralls, went to work opening up the back of the truck and hauling down the loading ramp. A few moments later, and the two morphs were coming back down that ramp, carrying a long wooden crate, taller even than the alligator or the Great Pyrenees, and a bit broader across. From the way the two morphs were straining, and considering how superhumanly muscled they both looked, whatever was in that crate had to be really heavy.

Setting the crate down onto a plus-sized dolly cart with a soft exhalation of relief, the ‘gator straightened…only to blink his bright turquoise eyes as Yoko, who’d moved while everybody was distracted, approached him, leaving everybody else gaping in surprise.

“Hey, Cutty,” she said, cocking her head slightly to the side. “Or is that Doctor Cutty?”

“Just Cutty is fine,” said the green-scaled morphmale, blinking down at the little Japanese-American girl in more than a little bemusement. “Have we met?”

“Not in person, no,” Yoko admitted. “I’m Yoko. Maybe Spike’s told you about me?”

Another blink, this one accompanied by an expression of recognition (which, Billy had to admit, looked really weird on that reptilian face: crocoforms weren’t meant to have such a range of human expressions!), and then Cutty nodded, his face actually spreading into a smile that was halfway pleasant, rather than strictly toothy; he even had dimples in his cheeks, which seemed so incongruous that it gave everyone, even Yoko, some pause.

“Of course, Yoko Ashigaru, friend of…ah, there you are,” he said, breaking off as another familiar figure approached him, this one with red hair tied up in two side buns. “Rachael McMichaels I presume? I didn’t have much chance to meet you properly either, but Spike and Dallas have both told me all about you.”

There was that name again: Spike. Who was this morphguy? Thaxton and Billy traded a look, both remembering the albino pitbull – and how could they ever forget? The male was very memorable, especially with that powerful musculature, those blood red eyes, and that bright red…pair of shorts – and making the connection instantly: they’d found the source of the disturbance in the school’s social network, all right. The final connecting link between each of the disparate threads running through…

“Hey, Cutty,” said Rachael, blushing cutely as she lowered her head in that demure way that was so typical of her. “Um, we were just about to have lunch, and they let us have a whole two hours for midday recess, so we can do homework and projects and stuff. So we were wondering…”

“We were just wondering if you’d like to join us,” Yoko picked up in the moment when Rachael paused uncertainly, her eyes behind her dark-rimmed glasses fixing on Cutty’s with a boldness the carrot-topped teen simply didn’t have within her. “We can get some more food from the cafeteria, and Mom packed me an extra-big lunch today anyway, so your friends can join us too, if they want.”

“Lunch?” came a slightly nasal voice, and for some reason Billy found himself reminded of Gopher from the old Winnie the Pooh cartoons as he turned, and saw the speaker: the third morph, the short one. It was a beavermorph, his fur a very dark brown, almost black, his short, stocky body built like a fantasy dwarf, with thick forearms, huge hands, broad shoulders, bulging biceps, and a tight-muscled, barrel-shaped body only barely contained within his coveralls. “Lunch, you silly femmes? We’re working! You don’t stop partway through a project just ‘cause some cute piece of tail comes up and…”

“We’d be happy to join you,” Cutty cut off the beavermorph, his expression making it very plain that he was agreeing as quickly as possible to forestall whatever else might come out of his surly little friend’s buck-toothed muzzle. “Just as soon as we finish unloading the other subliminal training machines. Then we’ll have a break for lunch,” he continued with a pointed look at the surly beaver, daring him to interrupt; all the beaver did, though, was fold his arms, his expression turning to a pout, “and finish setting up the machines after that. Does that sound fair to you?”

“More than fair,” Yoko agreed with a slightly smug smile. When Cutty turned to get back to the work, the fluffy Great Pyrenees hurrying to join him and the beaver, though, she reached out, and gripped the alligator’s solid butt right to one side of his broad tail, giving it a nice, slow squeeze. “See you when you’re done.”

“I…y-yes,” stammered the ‘gatormorph, hurrying away with a bit of stiffness in his stride that hadn’t been there before. Had he been…blushing?

Could alligators blush?

Starting slightly from his thoughts at a light touch to his arm, Billy glanced at Joey, who’d been the one to get his attention. The redheaded kid pointed toward Thaxton, who once again was starting to walk away from the group, once again following a new lead.

Where would they end up this time?

“Take a look,” Thaxton said as his two friends caught up with him; not a hard task, since he was taking his time, using that “stalker’s walk” he always did when he was trying to be socially invisible.

His hands motioned back toward the loading bay, and Billy and Joey followed his pointing fingers. From the depths of the inner reaches of the school, where cement pathways led through labyrinthine passages that would allow Cutty and his crew to take the subliminal training machines to just about anywhere in the entire school complex, an absolutely massive figure emerged. It was an elephantmorph! Though he was tugging on a shirt as he approached the open air, Billy caught sight of numerous ghost white and stark black tribal tattoos swirled across the immense male’s grey-skinned chest and arms, just before they vanished behind the respectable-looking button-up shirt with its brass-fronted tag, on which could be seen the newcomer’s name: Ganga.

“I’d heard that the school was starting to hire more morphs to fill in staff positions,” Thaxton murmured softly, ever in the know. “That’s the new assistant school counselor. Based on what I’ve read on the school website, he’s supposed to be very good; apparently he got a lot of his training working human war orphans in Central Africa through PTSD, right before whyker wiped out most of the local populations outside of South Africa and the Northeast. He made it over here when a detachment from the UN picked up some local morphs, and joined them into a US company. I’ve heard some of the teachers gossiping, when they thought nobody was listening, that the principal is taking on more morphs because they work hard for minimal pay. But that’s not why we’re on the move again,” he finished, turning his head toward their new destination, even as Ganga stepped out into the sunlight, his purpose in joining the moving crew immediately obvious when he easily hefted one of the big crates all by himself. “We’re moving again because of October over there.”

Billy and Joey once again turned their attentions to follow Thaxton’s indication. This time they saw the raven-haired goth chick slipping into the darkness of the loading area so recently vacated by the larger-than-life Ganga, her sack lunch clutched in one hand.

“Hey,” Billy suddenly spoke up (albeit quietly), making his friends pause to look at him just as they’d entered the shade of the inner halls, where students weren’t meant to tread, the girls and the morphs outside too distracted to notice. “Should we even be in here? I mean…we’re not like Jo Curtis and her crew, are we? We’re not gonna cause trouble for anybody, right?”

Invoking the name of the de facto leader of the self-styled “good girls” of the school’s campus gave all three of them more than a few moments of pause. While not exactly a clique, there was a strong minority of girls who’d decided that, in the absence of boys to mess around with, they’d instead devote themselves to high-minded ideals of morality, mostly Christian morality…with mixed results, of course. Of that group, a somewhat smaller minority had taken it upon themselves to act as “morality police,” sticking their noses in other people’s business. Joanna Curtis was the charismatic leader of this group, a tall and commanding redhead, despite her teenage years. Most people said that she had a promising career in politics ahead of her. Most of those people would probably be right, especially considering how good she was at getting “dirt” on others, and making them do what she wanted with blackmail, social pressure, and barely-veiled threats. All in the name of “common decency,” of course.

To people like Jo Curtis, people like October Sumner just weren’t acceptable at all: goths were, as far as Jo and her do-gooders were concerned, a subversive element, almost certainly involved in drugs or other unsavory activities, and very likely a (gasp and horrors!) Pagan! That October happened to do fairly well in school, not get into trouble, and actually be fairly popular with most of her peers were all facts that galled Jo Curtis and her cronies to no end, and so she was all too frequently the subject of intensive, invasive spying, and even the occasional scheme to make her appear guilty of something, whether that was actually the case or not.

Nobody decent wanted to treat anybody like Jo treated October, either in person or through her various proxies.

“You’re the one who wanted to know what’s going on around here,” Thaxton finally replied, obviously having given the matter quite a bit of serious thought. “It’s all tied up with morphs. And in case you hadn’t noticed, October’s got a friend she’s been eating lunch with for the past month or so, or so I’ve heard. A friend nobody’s seen. A friend down in the underground of the school’s maintenance facilities.”

“Where nobody but morphs go,” Billy finished the thought. “Since they’re the custodial and maintenance staff that make this school keep running.” He heaved a long sigh, glancing at Joey, but the lightly freckled redhead was still looking over his shoulder at that fluffy Great Pyrenees morph while the big guy leant a paw to the work of moving those huge crates over onto a set of big hand trolleys. “And we’re on this track because it involves sex,” he concluded, his mouth quirking into a thin, wry smirk.

“You saw the same videos I did,” Thaxton answered with a shrug. “And you’re probably going to jerk off tonight watching that hunky albino pitbull,” he visibly searched his mind for an appropriate word, “mating with some of his fellow morphs, since your home computer’s cyber-nanny isn’t likely to block that site; unless I’m very mistaken, I remember reading somewhere that morphs count as animals for legal purposes when they’re in audiovisual material, and animals mate all the time on nature shows with nobody calling foul. Or maybe you’ll be thinking about a gorgeous humanoid collie side-by-side with an equally gorgeous blonde bombshell…”

“Just like you?” Billy countered, eyebrows raised.

Thaxton grinned, pushing his glasses up his nose.

“Heck yeah!” he answered with a shrug. “Now quit asking dumb questions, and c’mon.”