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Open House: A Pink and Blue Diaperfur Identity Adventure! (Level Two)

kitncub

[[email protected]](%5C)

August 2010 ** **

A little late posting (sorry), but in an effort to stick to my promised weekly schedule:

This continues directly on from [Open House, Level One](%5C)

If you haven't read it, go there first.

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. Individual characters express their own views, not mine. It is part of the Pink and Blue series, which includes a lot of characters, so if you have not read any prior stories in the series, this is probably not the place to start!

Special content advisory: Fair warning. This part is more focused than others on relationship drama and the outside life of one of the characters, and ends with maybe the most serious cliffhanger in the series, so if you're squeamish or upset by such things, may not want to read it until more goes up next weekend.

We are now in Season Two!

If you are new, check out earlier entries in the series, split in two folders:

[Season One (Rian and Serafina)](%5C)

[Season Two (Baby Blue Boys)](%5C)

If you have been reading... welcome aboard!

Recruit characters in this story include many cameos. Thanks, everyfur, for your support and letting me use yours. Hope you enjoy the results.

Next installment coming: next week, same place!

Comments and feedback always welcome, here or by e-mail. (Ratings disabled because at this point, if you're reading, should be because you already like the series!)

And now. . . .

Welcome to:

Open House

A Pink and Blue Diaperfur Identity Adventure!

Play through four levels as one of four Baby Blue heroes! Discover each character's hidden abilities. You will need them all to succeed in the final battle against your sissy opponents! Beware of NPC wild cards! Some will help and some will hinder you. Beware! Not everyone is what he or she first appears.

Level One: Playing!

--> Level Two: Scheming!

Level Three: Standing!

Level Four: The Message!

Character/Story Recap:

The Baby Blue boys:

Playable characters:

Roger: This good-hearted Labrador retriever is daddy to the Baby Blue boys and leader and founder of the group, in close consultation with his lupine sidekick, Rian. Roger specializes in water-based weapons and is a comics buff and owns a local comics and hobby store. His sister and neighbor, Calliope, is leader of the rival Pink Faction of sissy diaperfurs and headmistress of the feminizing Academy for Special Boys! Concerned by rumors of extreme discipline and aggressive recruiting by his sister and her chief aide, the protective sissy Newfoundland Cassandra, at their academy, Roger has swiped his sister's recruit list and launched a no-holds-barred recruiting effort in order to assemble enough paws for-something big! Roger's favorite fictional character: Bruce Wayne (Batman).

Rian: Roger's charming, extroverted, and goofy lupine sidekick, once shy and retiring, has come into his own as second-in-command of the boys' team and Baby Blue's social organizer. He also dates, and is deeply in love with a high-ranking sissy team member, the princess fox Serafina, who recently landed a starring role in a city Shakespeare festival production. Rian loves his diapers and has gleefully gone 24/7! He's just learned that his girlfriend, who's often slipped information across enemy lines in the past, isn't going to be helping out his boys' team this time, and he isn't happy about their disagreement. Rian's favorite fictional character: Ben Tennyson (Ben Ten).

Twitchy : The nervous, goggle-wearing genius bunny, together with his companion, the pocket-sized mouse and gadget engineer, Squeak , makes up the Baby Blue tech team at Hideout #4. A little brother playmate to Rian, he is also a big brother playmate and boyfriend to the regression-prone Dex, who he has been dating since the raccoon rescued him from captivity by unscrupulous circus workers. Last night his attempt to give Dex a romantic night out proved to be a non-starter. Twitchy's favorite fictional character: Nate River, boy detective genius (Death Note). Secrets: The bunny knows that Dex, who is dating him, nurses a secret crush on Rian. He insists that he and Dex keep their relationship secret outside Baby Blue and avoid engaging in hanky panky until both are "ready," for reasons that have been unclear . . . until now.

Dex: This sensitive raccoon martial artist, Baby Blue's third-in-command and combat specialist, isn't in diapers by choice. Dex, a regional martial arts champion in high school, was left incontinent by a crippling tournament injury, and trained himself to regress to manage his anger. Dex feels more than gratitude toward his accepting best friend Rian, and regrets not speaking up about it before Rian began dating. He's been dating Twitchy, one of his caretaker playmates, since he rescued the bunny when Twitch ran afoul of criminal circus workers. His date last night with Twitchy didn't go well; for the start of the night he couldn't keep his mind off the news that his best friend Rian is going steady with Serafina, then Twitchy put him off. Dex's favorite fictional character: Kenshin Himura (Rurouni Kenshin).

NPC Allies:

Ex-Boy Scouts Jax , a sensitive tracking hound, and Ace , a tough trailblazing lynx,are high-ranking members of Dex's strike team and leaders of Baby Blue's wilderness patrol. They are also a couple. Pay attention to the Scouts! They can be relied on to keep you moving in the right direction as you progress through levels. Last night they talked about launching a tag team two-fur attack on . . . someone. Jax's favorite literary figure: Henry David Thoreau.

Other reliable allies include Kyle the Dalmatian, who assists Twitchy and can provide rations to restore your stamina, and Byron the malamute, your team's aquatic agent, who provides access to marine environments and can transport you across the river into enemy territory.

It is time to select your PC for Level Two . . . .

You may choose from:

Rian

--> Twitchy

Dex

Roger

You have selected: Twitchy.

Good luck, bunny! Happy hopping!

And now . . . let's play!

Level Two: Scheming!

(3 episodes)

Episode 5: Retaliation!

Episode 6: Ambush!

Episode 7: The Warren!

Episode 5: Retaliation!

The raccoon nicknamed Kit raced headlong through the treetops as fast as his cloud-kicking hero, fumbling in his pockets with one paw for something, anything, that might help, while his other clutched the blue sealed envelopes he had taken from the sleeping boys protectively.

He looked down and let out a long, slow breath. It looked like he was in the clear. It was a good thing he hadn't drunk the bottles like the others. He shuddered and kicked a silk ribbon off his footpaw.

In the first glow of the rising sun, the frightened raccoon saw the most welcome thing he had seen all night; the dog and cat who had led him through the woods yesterday, resting against a tree, lightly dozing, the dog's head on the cat's shoulder.

"Jax!" he yipped. "Ace! Wake up! Help! Help!"

The lynx leapt to his feet, instantly alert, as the dog staggered up more slowly. "What?" Ace shouted, his paw reaching into his backpack as his tracking hound partner took a moment to steady himself against the tree and sniffed carefully at the air.

"Up there," Jax said, sleepily whapping his boyfriend on the shoulder and pointing up into the trees. "It's a friend."

The raccoon trainee dropped to the mulchy ground with a soft thud, staggering toward them as he did. "Did you come back into the woods alone, Kit?" Jax asked him, gently chiding. "Where's your buddy? I know I assigned everyfur buddies. Where's, uh, Jason?"

The coon hung his head sadly and looked down at the envelopes in his paw. "He's gone," he whispered. "They're all gone. I'm the only fur left from the camp outside the forest. I didn't drink the milk he gave every fur, and I pretended I was still asleep. Then I crawled out and got as many of the envelopes from their backpacks as I could, and I ran into the trees! I've been running," he staggered into the dog's arms, "all night."

The two scouts looked at each other in concern. "I don't understand," Ace said as Jax took the envelopes from the raccoon's paw, then sat down, pulling the cub down to rest on his lap. "No group could cross the river at any of the fords from academy territory. We had the beavers build a dam downstream to flood them all. And the other borders are near manned hideouts. This sector should be impenetrable to an assault team."

"Don't you see?" the raccoon whined. "They're inside our group! They let you take people! Furs who attack when we sleep! Sleepers! Like him!"

The dog patted the raccoon's head and looked at the envelopes with lost recruits' names on them sadly. "Well at least," the dog said, "these are most of the envelopes. No one of these contains the entire message. I think we should be okay. The odds of them being able to decode anything seem low."

"Cut to the chase, kid," Ace snapped. "Who are we talking about and which way did he go?"

Several miles away, a cross fox whistled a lullabye to himself as he pushed a raft out of its hiding place amidst a large, swampy patch of reeds into the rushing waters of the main river. The out-of-season plastic snow saucers he'd stashed in the woods and used to drag so many boys most of the way to the river remained abandoned on the bank. As he pushed off with his sleeping passengers, the jackal-skunk hybrid in one of the bags squirmed and opened his bleary eyes.

"Swifty?" he asked drowsily. "Where are we? Last thing I remember you were tucking us in."

"I was, little guy," the fox said, bending over and unzipping the sleeping bag Azzie had been tucked into. "Nice and snug." The first down layer came right off when he tugged on it, detaching the clear, tight bunting bag liner it contained. The canid, his mind foggy, whimpered and flopped around on the raft next to his sleeping comrades as helplessly in a fish on a sandbar, unable to part his legs more than a few inches or to move his paws up from his side. "Now just relax. We'll be there before long."

"What are you doing? Where are we going?" Azzie whined, yawning squeakily. His diaper was quite soggy, and there was nothing he could do except hope he didn't leak. Otherwise in the bunting bag he would get it all over himself, and leave smelling like he'd been peed on. "What's going to happen to all of us?"

"I'm doing some freelance work. And nothing is going to happen," the cross fox said, waving to another vulpine dimly visible on the opposite shore, "that you don't really want, little lady. Consider yourself rescued. Things only get prettier from here. You've been spared weeks of dirt and yuckiness and beagle ticks. A treehouse is no place for your delicate little paws. I'd hoped to recover more of you and dig up a bit more intel over the next few days, but I think my cover's been blown."

Miles behind him, as Ace fished out his radio and began transmitting the news, Jax hushed the raccoon gently as he fell on to his knees sobbing. "Hush hush," the dog was saying, "you were very brave. Don't worry. We'll make sure this doesn't happen again. You did good, cub scout. Real good. It's naptime for you now. You've earned it."

"It was horrible," Kit was crying, "horrible. He did best in our camp in the trials yesterday, so he said he'd tuck us all in for the night and keep watch. But he had trick sleeping bags. He tucked them in all warm and snug, but they were snugger than they looked! There were bunting bags inside them! And he did something to the milk that made them all fall asleep faster-it was warm milk! I dumped it in the bushes cuz I only drink juice boxes and I broughted my own! I pretended to be asleep already on top of the bag, cuz I curl up like a puppy sometimes and it gets hot in a sleeping bag in diapers when you do that! Especially if you're wearing more than one! He tied bows in some of their ears while they were sucking their paws and murmuring to themselves and helpless. I watched the whole thing. He almost got me! He was right on my heels when he saw me take off! If I hadn't used all fours to run like Bolt-"

Ace frowned down at the raccoon. "Poor guy. It must have been a close call," the lynx observed. "He got your pants." The coon looked down at himself, wearing only a diaper labeled "BABY" and a tee shirt that hung down to his stomach, almost white with powder, and blushed.

"Umm, yes," he said, fidgeting in Jax's lap, and yawning again, squeakily, as he added, "that is totally what happened to those."

Swifty hit the opposite shore with his sounding pole and, digging in both paws, pulled the raft up to the riverbank. A girly fox in a loose floral sundress emerged from a grove of trees, crouched by the shore and extended a paw, touching one of the bunting bags gently.

"There there," Serry said soothingly to the fur who had begun to stir, then looked up at the raft's pilot, smiling. "You're early."

The cross fox shrugged. "Mama calls me Swifty for a reason," he said proudly.

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

"Stupid pajamas!" Twitchy exclaimed as he bounced over to the desk in Hideout #4 for his morning communications shift, raising a can of his energy drink over his head and hopping up to stand on his chair. "Stupid date night!" He leaned back and took a long swig of it. "Stupid team newsletter thingies! Stupid cakes, and stupid surprise parties, and stupid wolves! Stupid stupid stupid."

"Squeak?" said the mouse on his desk, who had spent the night covering the hideout's com station after Kyle left, with provisions to make an emergency patch-through to Rian or Roger if he received any signals.

He rubbed his eyes with both paws sleepily and groaned as he looked up at the bunny, who already seemed wired first thing in the morning. "Squeak squeak?" he asked, sounding concerned.

"No, I was busy thinking. Sleep is overrated," Twitchy snapped. "And you know what else is overrated around here? Rian! I've had it with him! And I've had it with you and your squeaking Squeak! Squeak this and don't squeak that and squeak the truth to Dex and don't squeak anything if your heart isn't in it and squeak out your own feelings first! Last night was the sort of soft-pedaling take it slow let's get to know each other better date you've been pushing and it was a disaster! All night long the whole entire time I'd be like, 'Beautiful weather, outside huh, Dex?' and he'd be like, 'I guess. Here. I sure hope it's not raining where Rian is. Do you think he has an umbrella?' Things were supposed to happen a certain way after I started dating Dex and this is not the way they are supposed to be happening!"

He pointed accusingly at the sleepy mouse, who shook his head in his paws and squeaked sadly.

"I know my little kit cares about me! I know it! I saw what he did when I was in trouble! You did, too! And you read this thing, Squeak," Twitchy said, snatching a tattered postcard from his pocket and brandishing it in the mouse's face as he became increasingly agitated. "You were with me when I got it! Dear Twitchy, bla bla bla," he recited, paraphrasing liberally and periodically glancing at the mouse and adding his own asides, "Well with your name (ha ha ha) your address was a lot easier to find than your coon friend's. (Creep) . . . You might remember me-you know, the magician who held you prisoner. (You bet. I keep my eyes open for you on America's Most Wanted. I'll be the first to call.) . . . I left the circus and am headed for someplace new, I don't know exactly where. (How about jail? I think you'd fit in.) . . . you boys are so lucky, things were different in my day (Back then we were all psychotic. Now it's just me) . . . After seeing how you boys stuck up for each other, I feel differently about this whole thing . . . I don't expect you to forgive me . . . (Good, because I don't) . . . bla bla bla . . . Maybe I can do one thing for you, and tell you practically the only thing Dex would say when I had him under, was your name. Hypnotized or not-he would have done anything to rescue you . . . bla bla bla, you crazy kits hold on to each other, A."

The rabbit threw it onto his chair, and stamped his foot on it. "Once again," he snorted, "fat lot of help that guy turned out to be."

"Squeak squeak squeak," the mouse said, tugging on Twitchy's big toe.

"It's not a stupid plan and I'm not giving up on it!" Twitchy replied, swinging his paws around as he narrated. "Dex didn't give up on me did he? And this is bigger than you, Squeak! It's bigger than me! These boys are like family. Do you know what could happen if Dex and Rian fall out? If they actually had an 'I won't talk to you any more' fight! What if that happened? The group could split up! The scouts and half of combat would go with Dex. I mean Ace and Rian will make nice as long as Dex is in between them but it's an open secret they don't get along. But more important, Squeak, I saw how Dex can be! Rian was gone for spring break and he was like a whole different fur! He stood up for himself, and for me, and he made the whole team fall in line with him, like, by sheer force of willpower. I was so proud of him. My little kit! If that double-crossing panda hadn't gotten in the way and screwed him up, he would have charged in there, and leveled the whole circus, pow pow, pow pow, pow! and swept me up into his arms and carried me back to safety and we would have run into Ace and Jax while they were still fighting about the fastest way to get there and everyone would have pointed at us and said, 'Look at those two! How romantic! How amazing! Aren't they cute together! It's like, twice as cool as when Rian rescued his'-"

"Squeak," groaned the mouse, clapping both paws to his forehead as though he had a headache big enough for a rat. "Squeak squeak squeak."

"How am I being selfish? I," Twitchy said importantly, continuing his monologue, "am a good fur, Squeak! I am planning something, you know! I keep saying something will happen and no one believes me! Well, you should! You should know to believe me when I say things like that! And no, you can't know the details! Not while you're being all weird and like I don't want to help you unless you tell Dex the truth and look inside your heart and squeak squeak squeak! I'm a cute little mouse, so I must be right! You want the truth, Squeak! Your diapers are too small to handle the truth! I don't know if I love him or what, I mean I'm pretty sure I'm gay, I know I definitely don't like girls," the rabbit shuddered at the thought, "but I have to do this! It's like my destiny or something! It's not like there are a lot of furs who could date Dex, I mean, he's incontinent, who wants to put up with that? Who's better prepared to help him than me? Who he's in love with? Was in love with? Apparently. Will be in love with. Will be. Stupid cake. Stupid surprise party."

Twitchy hopped down and went over to his fridge to retrieve another energy drink. "I can top that. I am going to blow the lid off of that. We're talking about science, Squeak! Every problem has a scientific solution! If you observe an anomaly, you replicate the circumstances, but make it so you're in control of all the variables," Twitchy leaned back and drank deep from the can, then wiped his whiskers with the back of his paw. "A little spark, like jump starting a car. Bang! It will touch off one perfect night for Dex that will lead into an absolutely perfect day. I'll do whatever he wants. I'll tell him it's wonderful no matter how it is. He'll feel strong. He'll know not only Rian can make him feel that way. It will feel like a whole new chapter in his life. It really will-I'll make sure of it. And Dex is free. He'll stop hanging on Rian like a lapdog. And they'll never have had a fight. We'll coast for a while. And who knows?" Twitchy shrugged. "Maybe we'll stay together. But the best night of someone's life - that's something worth giving someone, isn't it? As long as I don't need to fail out of school or anything to do it."

"Squeak!" the mouse exclaimed, stamping his tiny foot, and threw his arms wide. "Squeak squeak squeak squeak."

The rabbit crossed his arms. "No no no you don't understand," he said, thumping a foot against the floor firmly. "You know we're not in a place where that's a real problem. But if I told Dex all that first he'd run right back to Rian. I can't stand seeing him on a yoyo like that. He'd never get a life of his own. I'll tell him later. After the work's been done. We'll laugh about it eventually. He'll say, 'Oh, Twitch. You were silly to worry about that. It doesn't matter when two furs care about each other.'"

The mouse stood up, took a long breath, and let forth a long, squeaking diatribe that he had been holding in for some time. It lasted for several minutes, and left the small mouse panting for breath, looking up at his bunny friend hopefully.

Twitchy slumped down into his chair and stared at his tiny rodent friend. "You think," he repeated blankly, "that I'm saying all this for myself? Building in layers of excuses because if I said I loved Dex, and told him everything, and he didn't storm off - I'm afraid I can't really compete with Rian? That if things fell apart for no other reason than that Dex just didn't care about me enough, and he went back to hanging on Rian anyway, I couldn't take it?"

The rabbit shook his head and took another deep sip of his carrot and chemical brew, his foot tapping against the floor. Then he blew air out of the side of his mouth dismissively.

"Oh it's cute when you think you understand about big furs and our relationships, Squeak," he said.

Next episode: Dex and Twitchy are ambushed!

Episode 6: Ambush!

"I'm sorry we had to corral all you new boys," the dog said, frowning at his computer screen from across the tent as he looked up over it at a giraffe and a Doberman seated on the twotone blue and white beanbag chairs. "But it looks like we've been too trusting. The veterans are training or working on beefing up security. When Rian and I finish with each of you, you'll either be escorted back to join them and given new operation orders - or sent across the river."

The two prospects were sunk far back enough into the beanbags that it would have been hard for either to get up without help, and on their own they would have to flail about even to sit up any straighter. For Roger's purposes, they worked as well as the restraint chairs his sister might have used.

Rian, wearing a police officer's hat, knelt behind the Doberman, a toy truck held in his left paw in front of his nose, while his right paw ran over the front of Diesel's diaper. "Zoom!" the wolf said playfully as he moved the truck around. "Does a doggy wanna play with this? Does he wanna chase it? If he catches it he can take it apart! Does he wanna do that? Does he?" The wolf sniffed at the back of the Doberman's ear, and felt it start to quiver as he gripped the plastic vehicle in his paw. "He's clean," Rian pronounced, dropping the toy truck on to the big dog's lap, then turning his head to narrow his eyes and look at the giraffe suspiciously. "Truck's the first thing to have an effect. Now for you, mister," he warned, leaning across to glare up at the giraffe as he added, "Or should I say - missy?"

He retrieved the satin babydoll he had dropped on the floor after finishing his first test on the Doberman and moved on to their next candidate, holding the silky soft piece of lingerie in front of the large fur's face - well, as close as he could get, the giraffe had to look down at it, really. Then the wolf pressed the girly garment against his yellow-and-black checkered chest, while his right paw reached down into the giraffe's diaper. He wasn't stroking or petting - just monitoring. "So soft and silky isn't it," the wolf said suggestively, waiting to see what happened. "Let's see if just feeling it does anything for you. Doesn't that feel good? Doesn't it? Who's a pretty little girl? Is it you? Is it? Do you wanna wear something this frilly to your prom? Be the cutest sissy in the room? Dance with a real boy?"

The giraffe sat bolt upright as Rian touched him gently. Roger closed his laptop and picked up a manga to look at, yawning. From his higher then average vantage point, the giraffe could see over the cover and inside the pages as he flipped it open to where he had left off. "What are you reading?" he asked curiously, losing interest in what the wolf was doing. "Does that guy have a robot arm? Cooool."

Rian dropped the babydoll and looked up at his mentor as he withdrew his paw from the giraffe's cloth diaper. Roger lowered his book long enough to nod at them affirmatively. "You're both cleared," the dog said. "Bring in the next two, little buddy."

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

Whoosh! A throwing net came hurtling down at the raccoon from a bank of bushes in the boys' safe sector. Dex, rather than dodging, pivoted on his heels, and raising both paws, caught it in the air, dangling just above his head.

"Found you!" Dex barked as he spun, his arms and forepaws tangled in the net, and, keeping his balance with his tail, lashed out with his feet. The lynx in the safari outfit leapt backwards, out of the underbrush, and raised one arm in a defensive posture, the other gripping the paintball gun on his belt, as Dex used both hands to swing the net back at him, ensnaring Ace's weapon arm just as he drew the paintball gun.

Dex grinned. "Fight's over," he said, as he stopped his left foot just short of Ace's ankle. "That would have wiped you out." The lynx looked down and dropped to his knees, raising his paws in the air.

"This thing," Dex said, shaking the throwing net at Ace as he sloughed it off his paws, "takes up both your hands for too long, and you stop paying attention to your feet. Those are your weaknesses. If you'd just flipped me when I went for you, I'd probably be the one on my knees."

"I can't give it up though," said Ace with a shrug, as he stood back up and dusted himself off, tugging leaves and twigs out of his fur. "It's my calling card. I could have ended up on my rear and been okay. It's cushioned, after all. Why are you pulling your punches, Dex?"

The raccoon looked at him quizzically. "I don't want to hurt you accidentally! The last thing the team needs is for you to sprain an ankle right now! Listen, Ace," he said, assuming the tone of a coach, "You're the best strike team member I've got. You take a long time to get going, but once you're revved up, nothing can stop you. You could be better than me. You just need the right motivation. You're too focused on being tough all the time."

"Trying to distract me?" Ace shrugged. "You'll have to do a lot better than that to make me tear up, Dex," the lynx said, then added, innocently, as he untangled his throwing net and shook it out, "That was a nice story Rian told at his party."

Dex narrowed his eyes. "What story?" he asked.

"About you not needing diapers," Ace said casually. "Wearing full-time for fun. I didn't want to say anything, but I've known for - well, since I met you, practically. You can't hide the frequency of your accidents from Jax. I mean, come on, Dex. You wet at some of the weirdest and most inconvenient times, and Jax can tell. During fights. When you're demonstrating. In my car. Some furs train themselves to lose control like that, but you're not the type. Jax figured it out right away. And what Jax knows, I know. That's how the two of us roll. No secrets from each other."

Dex frowned, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. "Unlike some couples. Is that what you're saying?" he snapped.

"I didn't say that, Dex," the lynx said, replacing his net in his backpack and shifting his weight back into his heels. "You're right about the fight though. I'm still warming up." The lynx took a playful swing at him. "Best two out of three?"

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

"Thank goodness you could come," said the tracking hound in the Boy Scout uniform, looking up from the primitive booby trap he was setting at the start of the path into the woods from the riverbank, "Twitch. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to rig those new surveillance stations, even with your instructions."

"Jeez, Jax," said the rabbit as he hopped out of the canoe Jax had left for him and padded over to the dog, leaving the boat on the beach. "It's not that hard. If there weren't so much paranoia about spies right now I never would have come all the way out here for this."

"You know me, Twitch," the hound dog said good-naturedly, holding up the rope snare he was tying. "This is about my preferred level of technology. Say, will you help me spread out that fishing net? Byron's covered most of the river and we want to link it up to his chain. Make it a little harder for anyfur to slip across undetected. Leave only a couple choke points we can easily keep an eye on, trap and alarm the rest."

The rabbit rolled his eyes and hopped over to the net, shaking it out with both paws. "I hope this doesn't take too long; I have to be back on campus later today you know. I do like to show up for classes and things occasionally."

The dog nodded patiently. "I know you have a lot going on, Twitch. I sure hope it all doesn't feel like work."

Twitchy fumbled around with the net for several minutes, repeatedly shaking it out into the air and watching it spread out, always tangled, over the ground while Jax finished tying his snare.

"This has all sorts of snags in it!" the bunny complained, bending over and grabbing two edges, and yanking them apart forcefully. He shook his head. "This is what happens when you don't take care of your things, Jax! Eventually someone else has to deal with your mess."

"Hey, calm down, Twitch," the tracking hound said, laying a paw on his shoulder. "Don't force it, buddy. That will only make things worse."

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

"Lots of things," Dex said defensively, as he caught Ace's foot in his paw, and, with a shove, sent the lynx tumbling backwards. "He's surprisingly good at changes. A real professional! Sometimes Rian loses interest halfway through or gets distracted by his own accidents. But Twitch never makes technical errors. I've hardly ever leaked after he changed me! A very thorough and efficient wiper, too. I've joked if they had a ranking system for changing he'd be a black belt. We've played in the hideouts, and the woods. In his room, in my apartment. Oh, last night, we went to the mall together."

"And looked for Baby Blue stuff there?" Ace asked as he sprung back on to his feet, jabbing a fist at the raccoon. "Diapers and things?"

"No. Well - sort of. Footed sleepers and pajamas. For me." Dex caught Ace's fist in his right paw, but he saw too late that the blow was a feint; Ace's left hit him in the chest, and he staggered back half a foot before he caught himself.

"So what do you two do together," Ace asked him, as he barreled toward the raccoon, now on the defensive, and Dex leapt backwards, grabbing on to a low-hanging tree branch with both paws, "that's not fetish related? I'm just curious. And do not say he's tutoring you. That doesn't count as a form of dating."

As Ace reached for the net in his backpack, Dex swung back, then forward, from the tree branch, and caught it in his footpaws as Ace raised it, swinging back and yanking it out of his grasp. He stuck his tongue out and answered confidently, "Well I watched those Star Trek movies. You know Twitch loves that show. So I can talk to him about those now. All six of them."

Ace cocked his paintball gun and took aim at the coon, who swung up and released the net from his footpaws, sending it flying toward the lynx. Ace ducked and slid out from under it before it fell, though, ramming his feet into the base of the tree as hard as he could.

The slender tree shook. Dex lost his grip and tumbled to the ground, quickly catching his balance and landing, crouched on two feet and one forepaw. But the cat was already on top of him.

"I think that's only the first series of those movies, Dex," Ace said as he cocked his paintball gun, standing over the raccoon, and pointed it down at his forehead.

The coon looked up at the barrel slowly, and shivered. "There are more?" he asked, sounding frightened.

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

The rabbit, sitting with his legs hanging on either side of a tree branch - a position that only his puffy diaper with a stuffer could make comfortable - fidgeted with the digital video camera inside the wood casing. "How about now?" he asked.

Jax shook his head. "Still too easy to spot from the ground," he said sorrowfully. "I wish you and Roger had involved me in picking out these thingamajigs. My patrol boys are going to become responsible for checking them, I just know it."

"They don't need checking," Twitchy said. "They're wireless. The feed will go to me and to the Captain's command center. And they're all controlled remotely, Jax. They won't need maintenance."

The tracking hound rolled his eyes. "Sure they won't," he said sarcastically, turning back to his fishing net. "These newfangled state-of-the-art things never do."

Twitch looked over his shoulder down at the dog's back and stuck his tongue out, then returned his attention to his equipment. "You're not typical," he complained. "You talk like you're ninety years old sometimes. I mean, you don't even have a TV."

"Thank goodness I don't or I wouldn't have known how to unknot this," the black-and-brown mottled dog answered, as he approached the river and cast the fine mesh net out near it, letting it trail into the rushing water. "The only things worth watching are things I'd go over somefur's for anyway. It's a good thing Dex and I had each other to cry on when the Saints lost. He was even more upset than I was. It was a big deal."

"The Saints won," said Twitchy, narrowing his eyes and looking over his shoulder at the dog, who was wading out into the water, and holding a long stick he had picked up in the woods in one paw, testing to see if it would reach close to a buoy bobbing in the middle of the river.

"That's right," said the dog, sounding pleased. "They did. I'm surprised you would know that, Twitch."

Twitchy regarded the canine suspiciously and waved his footpaws in the air.

"Of course I do. Dex still gets all excited when he mentions how they beat the Colts," he said indignantly. Jax's momentary smile faded as the rabbit continued, "In the last inning. Sports are a little too important to my boyfriend for me to forget who won the World Series, you know."

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

"Listen, Dex," Ace said, clapping a paw on the coon's shoulder and kneeling down alongside him as he re-holstered his paintball gun, "I only said what I did about your diapers because I want you to know that, leaky faucet or not, you're on a very short list of furs that I look up to. I don't like seeing you desperate. It confuses me, because I think, whoever ends up with you - is a lucky guy. Does this really not bother you? No public displays of affection? No public dates? All this sneaking around because Twitchy hasn't come out yet, or whatever? While other furs on the team-you know who I'm talking about-are sending out press releases and hiring skywriters, just to make sure no one forgets they're dating? I mean, what stage are you and the bunny at, exactly?"

The raccoon got up to his feet slowly, then brushed away the lynx's paw. "I don't know," he said abruptly. "But we'll be advancing soon. I've been, uh," the coon looked down at the forest floor and said, after a long, heavy silence, "practicing."

The lynx raised an eyebrow and took off his safari hat, using it to fan himself. "I don't know what that means," he said. "Is this like that time Jax and I brought you to all those gay sex talks? Because that was painful."

The coon crossed his arms and glared at his friend. "I found those talks very informative," he said seriously.

Ace set his hat back askew on his head and snorted. "Dex, you took notes," he said. "One time you came with a written list of questions."

Dex pouted and tightened the brown sash of his karate uniform. "For your information I've been doing real things this time," he answered indignantly. "I couldn't get very far on one end, I mean, it's still pretty tight, but I, ummm, I can clean up after myself now. You know - like a little kitten should. So I think I can swallow, during - you know. That end I think I can totally do."

"Oh yuck," the lynx groaned, making a disgusted face and waving a paw in front of his nose. "Swallow? Oh, I wish I hadn't asked. If you were anyone else, Dex, I'd say you were playing for the wrong team."

"But you and Jax-" the raccoon started to say, but the lynx cut him off with a stern paw, and finished his sentence for him with, "Use protection. We've been with other furs, Dex. In my case I'm sorry to say a couple I knew almost nothing about."

The coon hung his head. "I haven't," he said, dropping back on to his knees. "I guess I'm going along with all Twitch's hang-ups about us being seen together and waiting until the moment is right because I'm scared. I always thought my first time would be something special, you know. Everyone around me - Rian and Serafina - you and Jax - you stumble back from doing - you know, things more than pawing, and you're glowing. As long as it hasn't happened, I can keep thinking it might be that way for me. I just - I don't know. I don't feel like I can do that, Ace. With the other problems I've had down there, I know that music won't play for me. I'll give new meaning to the term wet blanket, more likely. The rational part of me just says I ought to get it over with and hope with time, things get a little better."

Ace frowned at him. "Is that why you're still with Twitchy? Are you really okay with skulking around like this? Not being seen with him outside of team territory?" he asked. "And do not worry about sounding fair when you talk to me. Because Dex, I have to be honest. I don't dislike the bunny, but I'm your friend. Not his. I used to be a much rougher fur. Knowing you has really helped me understand that there's a difference between being tough and being angry. You are too far along to let someone drag you backward into his closet. Twitch shouldn't want to hide you, either. My opinion at least, he should be celebrating like he just won the lottery. Why isn't he?"

The coon looked up at him, his eyes smoldering. "Enough questions," he growled, and dropped into a crouch, raising one paw and beckoning to Ace. "Third match."

The lynx braced himself and charged forward, launching another feint combo, but Dex caught both his forepaws this time, one after the other. With both fists caught, Ace lashed out with one of his feet. Dex moved more quickly, kicking at his single free ankle and releasing his paws at the same moment, then watched the cat tumble backwards head over heels three times.

The big cat got up on his knees and one forepaw, smiling as he staggered to his feet. "Okay, Dex," Ace said, his eyes glinting as he dropped his safari hat on to the ground, "now you're talking."

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

"I just want to say I don't think it's cool that you tried to trick me, Jax," Twitchy said as he dropped from the tree branch on to the ground and met the dog wading back up to shore, soaked to his waist after using his stick to connect the fishing net to the chain Byron had set up across most of the river. "Treating me like I'm lying or something. Cuz I'm not. I wouldn't lie. I mean what would I have to lie about? Nothing. But if I did I still wouldn't lie about it. If I seem like I'm getting things mixed up at all it's totally only because I have a lot to do. Have you seen how much stuff I have to do?"

The rabbit held up a handheld device opened to the calendar. Jax lowered his nose close to it, squinting and smudging the screen, and reached for it curiously, then Twitchy snatched it away. "Hey that's private! Don't read any of it!" he snapped. "It was just to show how much is there! And how much stuff did you see there?"

"A lot," the hound dog said gently as he set down his walking stick and picked up the next video camera unit from the canoe, tucking it under his arm. "Maybe you're trying to do a little too much, Twitch. Do you need some extra paws in your hideout? Most of the new scouts are in quarantine but we have a coon kit who's pre-cleared. Seems crackerjack."

"No thank you. It took me long enough to train the last fur I got from your unit," said Twitch, tugging down the front of his pants a little and looking at the crude map of the riverbank he had drawn with a marker on the front of his diaper, nodding to himself. "That way!" he said, pointing left.

Jax frowned. "That's east Twitch," the Boy Scout said. "You got turned around. We want to go west."

"That way!" the rabbit tried again, pointing in the opposite direction, then looked at the dog out of the side of his eyes. "I was just testing you, Jax. What goes around comes around."

The dog looked up at the sky and shook his muzzle. "Hey, Twitch," he said as the two of them padded farther along down the riverbank, "All the stuff on that calendar reminded me, you have a lot of interests besides diapers. I guess I just wonder sometimes, well, I hope you don't feel like this group is limiting you, socially I mean."

Twitchy blinked. "Limiting?" he asked, his ears drooping. "What do you mean limiting, Jax? I love you guys. And you couldn't get along without me."

Jax smiled and put a paw on his shoulder. "Twitch, you could meet a lot of furs who liked some of the geeky things you do, and I bet they're smart enough to be, well, open-minded, once they got to know you. You have a lot more options than you think. For friends, or for whatever. I'm sure I've told you, Ace and I came into BB together," he said gently. "We didn't meet each other in a crinkly context. That all came out later, when we were already friends."

Twitchy brushed the dog's paw away. "I see what's going on here now," he snapped, hopping ahead. "You like being the main event, huh? The blue team couple? The ones who everyfur in the group says about, 'Oh aren't they cute together? They're so perfect!' You just can't believe anyone could be as lucky as you, right? Well don't get comfy in your little loveseat, Jax," Twitch declared, "cuz Dex and I are about to give you a run for your money."

Jax furrowed up his face in confusion. "What do you mean 'about to'?" he asked. "You've been dating for a while now, haven't you?"

Twitchy waved a paw behind him. "Forget I said anything," he said, suddenly glum. "I'm sorry. I wish we were more like you two. If Dex has mentioned anything he'd like to do with someone to you, but that nofur else will do with him, maybe, can you let me know? Like anyplace Rian wouldn't go with him? Has he ever? I've got a bit of a rash I think and it's making me crabby."

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

"Who's big now, tough guy?" the raccoon asked, smirking.

Ace whined, lying on his stomach and pounding one fist against the forest floor as Dex lowered one knee into his back and held the cat's free paw pinned behind him. "I am!" wailed the lynx, looking up over his shoulder. "Deeeeex!" he complained. "You said it wrong . . ."

"Oh, sorry," the coon apologized, clearing his throat, then saying again, resuming his previous, bossy tone, "Who's tough now, big guy?"

"I am!" the lynx cried again, flailing out with his one free paw for the safari hat that lay on the ground about six feet away from him. "Big lynx. Tough lynx. Mean lynx."

Dex smiled. "I don't know," he said, patting the lynx's cushioned bottom and feeling the thick cloth underneath his pants with approval. "A lot of trash talking, but you didn't beat me, in the end."

"I am tough, though!" Ace protested, biting his lip. "You can't make me cry! I can take anything you've got!"

"Anything I've got, huh? Like this?" Dex asked, whapping Ace's rear, hard.

"That's nothing," the lynx said confidently, even though he winced.

"You're right," Dex said as he released the distracted lynx's paw and reached around underneath him to unsnap his pants. "I'm insulting you by spanking through your diaper, aren't I? You're tougher than that."

The usually grown up lynx whined quietly as Dex, still on his knees behind the big cat, gripped the waist of his unfastened pants and the elastic rim of his plastic pants, tugging them both down to about his crotch.

"Hey, Dex," said the lynx as he became increasingly squirmy, trying hard not to wriggle his bottom too visibly at his iron-pawed friend. "I appreciate your discretion about the stakes in these matches. Really nofur besides our boyfriends needs to know about-"

The coon said nothing as he unfastened the small metal snaps running down either side of Ace's cloth diaper, and folded down the rear. Bringing his paw down with the force of a karate chop, Dex swiveled his palm just before contact, to give the lynx a whap that made his whole body shiver. Then he did it again. And again. And again. And kept right on spanking . . .

"Aren't you going to ask for me to stop?" Dex asked eventually.

"No," Ace whimpered, a tear streaming down his cheek. "You may have knocked me down but I'm still tougher if I can take-"

"Anything I've got without crying, I know," said Dex, dropping on to all fours for a few minutes to crawl over to his backpack and pull it over. He rooted through his changing supplies for a moment and produced a spiky furbrush, its bristles small stubs of stainless steel. "Well I brought you something special this time."

Ace squeezed his eyes shut and dug both paws into the dirt, not moving. "Thank you, Dex," the lynx said quietly, quivering in anticipation. "I know I'm ready."

His tail flicked as Dex got back in position and struck his rear, already turning scarlet beneath his fur, with the hairbrush, once, hard - then a second time - then Ace sobbed.

"What's the matter?" Dex asked him. "Aww, I know, you want Jax to use a paddle but he won't will he? Well this report sure isn't going to convince him. Big furs like Jax and me know best, right? Well, I think you've had about enough. What do you think?"

Ace shook his head and let out a long, inarticulate whine as Dex hit him with the hairbrush a third, then a fourth, then a fifth time. "Stop," he whimpered, though Dex noticed his pelvis was rising and falling with the blows. "Yer wight, Dex. You know best."

The coon set his hairbrush down and took a small bottle of cub lotion out of his backpack, squeezing it generously on to the lynx's burning behind.

"You know, Ace," Dex said as he rubbed the lotion into Ace's fur, and around the base of his tail with both paws, making sure to apply enough not only to soothe the lynx, but to leave him smelling like a kitten, "I enjoy sparring with you. You hold your own pretty well -"

The lynx was humping his diaper somewhat frantically, in time with Dex's rubbing. A little precum was seeping on to the cloth aleady. "For a baby," the coon said casually as he squeezed, then released Ace's bottom.

The lynx moaned as a long, slow seepage began into the soft, puffy cloth between his cock and the hard soil. "Wimp," Dex added, smiling.

Once the release had started, Ace dropped on to his side, propping himself up on his elbow, and let it continue into his diaper with his cock now seeping on its own; it only needed the help of his few, lazy, sideways thrusts against the air. He looked back over his shoulder, up at the friend who had just finished massaging his reddened and smarting, but not broken, skin. The tracks of a few tears were still visible in the fur of his face.

His cheeks turned a matching shade of red at the sight of his commanding officer and idealistic coon friend, the recruiter Ace had come both to admire and feel protective toward, wiping his oily paws off inside the front of his own diapers. The raccoon was the only fur besides his boyfriend the tough cat would act or feel little around. Of course he'd let Dex take him over his lap - or under his knee on the ground. It was awful generous of Dex to only do it in private ever, since he totally had the right to do it any time. They had a chain of command, after all. And whenever Dex started spanking him, Ace suddenly trusted the coon's judgment of what would be just enough to hurt, but not to harm, him, more than he trusted his own.

"Seriously, buddy, stop punishing yourself so much," Ace said once he had calmed himself down enough to speak through his own panting. He added, with a grin as, still on his side with the rear of his diaper pulled mostly down, he reached behind himself and rubbed his smarting bottom, "There'll be nothing left for me."

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

The ten boys in bunting bags, in various states of arousal - and also, of wakefulness - were scattered across the gymnasium floor in Empress Calliope's Academy for Special Boys.

"Every one of them a pink team prospect first, like me," the cross fox, still in his outdoorsman uniform, finished his report to Serry and the Newfoundland, pointing at Azzie. The gray canid was still squirming in his bunting bag, though he was not only - and maybe not even primarily - squirming because he wanted to get out of it. "I don't even know what they were thinking with him. He doesn't just bake, he can knit too!"

Serafina crouched next to the jackal skunk and looked up to Cassie, who was taking notes on disciplinary requirements. "Level 1," Serry said. "If not zero. I'll get him started right now." Then she patted Azzie on the head. "Trying to get out of your boy clothes, huh?" she said gently, unzipping the bag and then, helping him to his feet, tapping his arms, which he held in the air above his head uncertainly.

"Now listen, sweetheart, " the fox explained as she took his shirt off, "we're going to get each of you out of these sweaty, smelly sporting uniforms one at a time, and you can scrub away all that ickiness in a nice, warm shower. Afterwards, you'll each get one special item. It will be the only thing you can wear for a little while, besides your diaper. The only, most precious thing you own when you're on the grounds here."

She kissed the canid on the forehead and patted his head as she tossed his shirt into a discard pile by the bleachers. "Because you're a docile little sweetheart, I have a nice keepsake locket for you. It says 'little girl.' That's what we'll all call you, see, until we settle on a name. Your classmates will be making suggestions as they get to know you, and when something settles, we'll have it engraved for you. Won't that be a happy day, darling? The bigger girls will also be picking out outfits for you from our dress up bin, and showing you how to take them off and on. They might even bring you home some nights to sleep on their floors with their stuffed animals if you've been really good."

"We all know you're far too small to dress or undress yourself. That's obviously how you ended up in clothing so inappropriate. Don't worry; the girls won't leave you naked forever if they like you. You just be your sweet, submissive, simpering little self, and I have a feeling they'll be competing over who gets to be your new big sister," she tussled Azzie's headfur as his pants fell to the floor - the last ones he'd wear for some time - and unfastened the tapes on his diaper, kneeling down on the floor and kissing the head of his weewee softly. "Awww," she said, "You can't wait to carry your big sister's books and make her bed and scrub her toilet and wash her dishes and bake cookies and serve them to all her friends when they have a slumber party, can you? Well, just do your best to listen to and please all of your bigger classmates. I just know the first thing you're going to earn is a nice apron, little girl, but a sweet thing like you will have a whole new wardrobe in no time."

He just whined as she patted his weewee and stood up to take him by the paw, but Swifty, standing in the middle of all the boys he had delivered, had started bouncing up and down as he listened and held his paws out to his sides. "Speaking of, Princess . . ." he prodded. "I'm getting itchy over here."

"A deal's a deal," she said, standing up and taking the cross fox by her other paw, "l'il lady Swifty. Just don't let me hear the one syllable masculine version of that name, okay? No single syllable names here. It's one of the rules; they're just not pretty enough. You can pick out one dress and one accessory for each rescue, subject to my approval, and you have limited use of academy resources for your own projects whenever you're in town. Come on and model some things for me while this little girl scrubs the muck out of her fur. We can show her what she might get to wear someday when she's big."

Serry led them both into the locker room as Cassie continued her inventory of the other captive recruits. The vulpine pointed Swifty to the nearest rack of dresses and conducted Azzie into the communal shower.

Now, most real girls showered in private, of course, and there were separate stalls for the instructors and for advanced students-a coveted privilege. But every fur knew how ridiculous it was for sissy boys, especially ones starting at the bottom of the school pecking order, to expect even a shred of privacy. For little sissy boy students, who were in chastity punishments as often as not, closing the door to a bathroom or even a bathroom stall was an offense, and locking it - well, now you were talking serious discipline - overnight bondage, if an instructor was feeling generous!

And when the students were sissies, unlike in a boys' school, tattling of all forms was not just encouraged, but rewarded. A boy who tried to do something as sneaky as get some privacy in the bathroom could virtually be sure that he'd be spending the night in bondage and clocking in the next morning as slave for the day to the fur who'd ratted him out.

At the end of it all, the little sissy and the informant would be brought together into the headmistress' office, where, under the leopardess Calliope's watchful eye, the wayward student would have to curtsy and say thank you to the one who had tattled, for keeping an eye on him. In fact, he'd have to beg his big sister to be sure to tell - for his own good - if she ever saw him doing anything bad like that again - and here Callie would offer helpful suggestions of what behaviors, besides trying to sneak some alone time, might be most harmful to the boy in question.

"You stay in here and scrub," Serry said as she started the water and handed Azzie a bottle of strongly scented vanilla, honey, and jasmine fur shampoo, "little girl, until I come and get you; you have a lot of icky boy odor to get out. You want to do a good job, don't you, because you want the other girls to know how good you'll be at doing their chores, right? So it might take a while. Humming and singing are okay, sweetie. They'll help you concentrate." She leaned over and whispered a tip into one of his large ears, "Try 'Some day my prince will come.' It worked for me."

In a moment, she had rejoined Swifty, whose eyes twinkled in gleeful indecision as he surveyed the rack of babyish, frilly dresses. "So, I know the plan was for me to stagger back as the sole survivor of the attack, infiltrate myself deeper, and do this one more time," the fox said, assuming a more serious tone and shrugging apologetically. "But someone got in the way. One of the recruits in my camp, some raccoon, came in pre-regressed practically and had a few more cubby quirks than even I'd counted on. We have to assume my cover's been blown."

Serry patted him on the shoulder and said, "It's okay. There are more than enough for a day-of-the-week wardrobe back there, little lady-in-waiting. And the body count is only half the damage. Rog does not deal with defection well. Trust me, I know. We have a clear field for recruiting and Lin Lin and the others have been out working on it. Meanwhile Rog will have stopped everything while he chases his tail trying to figure out where he went wrong."

Swifty flicked his own bushy tail as he held up a pale blue dress with puffy shoulders, purple irises embroidered down its center and along the lower rim of the skirt, right above where the ruffles began. "Where he went wrong?" the cross fox asked. "He and his sidekick made the first mistake in the furry's book of baby blunders: should have known better than to trust a fox! We tag-teamed his lupine lieutenant real good."

Serry frowned as she thumbed through the other dresses. "What do you mean tag-teamed Rian, little lady-in-waiting? I told my boyfriend as soon as it came up that I wouldn't be helping him this time. I've been honest with him about this whole recruiting thing, I mean as honest as I can be, when we're on opposite sides."

"Oh, sure you have," Swifty said, nodding, as she withdrew a purple corseted lace dress and held it up in font of him consideringly. "Turn it off, Princess, you're talking to another vulpine here. Our genus practically invented that 'I know that you know that I know' stuff. He knew you saw him recruit me and didn't stop him. You knew he was thinking you'd help the boys as soon as this all started, but I bet you didn't tell him you wouldn't until the last minute, probably when he brought it up, right? Result, he's played, and left thinking that he's the one who ought to feel guilty about it. That's good foxing! A lupine could never catch you straight out in a lie. But he'll be tail spinning right now. All according to plan, right?" Swifty chuckled. "Wolves. I oughta write an instruction manual."

Serry frowned as she surveyed the tight, childish dresses. In the background, the canid in the shower had started humming, loudly and off-key.

Singing and the splashing of the shower echoed through the empty locker room. "How are you at serving imaginary tea, Swifty?" she asked, changing the subject. "Every lady-in-waiting, even an honorary one, has to serve at her first tea party. Your mama is welcome to watch-if you could live down the shame of her seeing you well behaved just once, that is."

Back in the gym, Cassie waved as the panda entered from the main building, the entrance on the opposite side from the locker rooms. "Now this is more like it!" Lin Lin said, surveying the delivered boys and wiping her paws against each other. "Why didn't anyone tell me what was going on with Switchy Fox?"

"Hello, Lin Lin," said the Newfoundland brightly, looking up from where she was kneeling next to one of them. "I told you not to worry. We wanted to keep you focused on coordinating the field recruiting push. And our sleeper agents had to stay in deep cover."

A squat, chubby hedgehog with a pair of headphones around his neck, slowly shaking off the effects of the drugged warm milk, scanned the boys around him, counting quickly. "Where's my buddy?" he muttered, half-awake. "I'm not supposed to go anywhere without my buddy. Kit?" Snapping his eyes open, he burst out with all his quills, ripping the bunting bag enough to stagger to his feet and make a hopping one-legged dash, with plastic still tight around his footpaws, to the door.

Or he would have, but Cassie grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and held him, dangling in the air, with a sigh, at arm's length. "Level 4 to 5," she said mournfully. "He was so promising before the boys got to him. He and his boyfriend were both so enthusiastic and I have to say, quite creative. But it looks like we'll have to work being a feisty blue team prisoner into his scenario if we want him back now. We might even have to outsource him. These bristles could be a problem."

"Outsource?" the panda asked, furrowing her brow. "What does that mean?

"Oh!" the Newfoundland said, cheering up. "You had a valid point about there being a hole in my security plan for the Open House, Lin Lin."

"Hole?" The panda raised an eyebrow. "You mean that you don't have a security plan?" she asked icily.

The big dog shrugged, seeming unconcerned either by the criticism or by the hedgehog who was struggling valiantly to get out of the clinging plastic that still restricted his movement before he could be transported to a bondage room. "My business book says the best response to criticism is rapid and decisive action. So I did what I thought a real executive would do."

The panda perked up. "You're giving the master keys back and releasing enough girls from recruiting duty to rebuild a combat team?" she said hopefully. "You're going to listen to what I've been saying all along and let me do my job?"

"Even better!" said Cassie proudly. "I hired a consultant!"

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

Ace and Jax eyed each other uneasily as they met up at their agreed rendezvous point along the river that marked the boundary between the boys' woods and the sissies' Enchanted Forest. Ace rubbed the rear of his refastened diaper a bit uncomfortably. His bottom still hurt. Dex was a mighty spanker. (Not that that bothered the lynx, of course; he wouldn't have had it any other way.)

Neither seemed eager to talk.

Eventually, "You go first," the dog and the cat said to each other at the same time.

Jax frowned. "Count of three," he suggested. "One - two - three."

"Those two are a train wreck waiting to happen," Ace said, rubbing his padded rear with one paw, at the same time that his boyfriend said, "They have some issues to work out."

The lynx kicked a rock sideways and watched it vanish into the river. "I told Dex we know, so you know," he said. "What bothers me is I don't think being with Twitch is making him feel better about himself. He's going along with whatever the bunny wants because he feels like a burden, and he thinks it's the best he can do. I had to do something to make him feel better. I threw the last fight for that reason, too."

Jax squinted at the lynx, sniffed, and shook his head. "Sure you did," the dog said skeptically. "And I'm sure that's the only reason you'd throw a fight to Dex."

Ace was rubbing his rear end, now with both paws, and shifting in a cloth diaper with a well-lotioned bottom and a sticky mess in front that was just starting to dry. The tracking hound chewed on his index finger and started pacing. "Hon," Jax said, "my report is worse than yours. One of those two is hiding something and I have a bad feeling about it. There's a serious guilt hang-up involved here. Do you think there's someone else? Did you get any sense of that on your end?"

The lynx looked indignant. "What, you mean actual seeing of said someone else on the side? By Dex? No way. I mean he's probably thought about other furs, but give me a break. He's too honest for his own good. We relate, you know, Dex and me. We're both fighters. In spite of everything that's happened to him, he doesn't bend rules for himself, it's like his code. If anything he holds himself up to higher standards than he would anyone else. It's what keeps him tethered. Dex wouldn't cheat at solitaire."

Jax nodded slowly as he continued pacing. "I don't like seeing Twitch so jumpy-I mean, so much jumpier than usual. He's tied in knots about something he doesn't want to talk about." He chewed on both his index and middle finger as well for a moment, as though chewing on more fingers would increase his thinking capacity. "I wish I knew what. He never runs out of explanations but none of them feel quite right. Do we have anything on the books called Operation VR, Ace?"

The lynx scratched one of his tufted ears and shook his head. "Not that I'm cleared to know about," he said. "Why? What's that?"

Jax continued pacing. "Something I saw on Twitchy's calendar. A deadline reminder for today."

"This is Twitch we're talking about," Ace said reassuringly as he fished a compass out of one of his vest pockets. "It's probably a school project or a chore or something perfectly mundane that he made up a code name for. I bet it stands for Virtual Reality or Vitamin Replacement or Vacuum Room. Remember Operation Overflow? We thought it was a river defense project? But he was just trying to develop a scale of absorbent capacity with one Attends as the base unit? Then he said Rian invalidated the whole experiment by not fastening his tapes consistently tight?"

Jax nodded silently and continued pacing, half-listening as Ace continued, "Anyway, I think the solution to this is simple. We sit them down together and we give them a good talking-to. We can ask Rian to back us up, too. We just say, look, Dex, look Twitch, it's obvious to the whole team your relationship isn't working out. We want to see you happy, together or separate; I noticed this; Jax noticed that; you two need to sit down and talk these things out-now go."

Jax, suddenly alert as though a blaring alarm clock had gone off next to his ear, pivoted on his heel and snatched away the compass the lynx was fiddling with. "Just follow me, you idiot," he said, wagging a finger at his boyfriend sternly. "I know this part of the woods better. That's the worst thing we could do. It would put them on the defensive. They'd never admit there's a problem then, to us or to each other, not in fifty years, or until they were both toilet-trained even."

"No," Jax continued as he made his way, Ace jogging along behind him, along a narrow path that ran up along higher ground as the river sank down into a small ravine, "what we need to do, is figure out a way to make those two actually hash things out on their own. And leave what happens next up to them. It's gotta be Dex or Twitch who actually says 'we need to have a big-t Talk,' or nothing's going to change."

Ace pouted. "I don't like sneaking around. I just think being direct with furs-"

"Doesn't work if it's about their love lives," Jax interrupted him. "Better for us to keep a closer eye on those two and wait for an opening. I just hope nothing happens in the meantime either of them will regret. Can you do me a favor? Ask around and see if you can find out who's recruiting near Twitchy's campus next. If you find him first, see if he'll trade shifts with me. Twitch is our only boy on his campus, and he has a whole other life at school none of us know much about. I just want to see if there's something going on in the rest of his life that we should-"

The dog was interrupted by a sharp bark from across the river. His head pivoted toward it, and so did Ace's. "Byron?" they exclaimed in unison, at the sight of the team's swimming malamute entangled, on the opposite side of the water, in a net suspended from a low-hanging tree branch, his waterproof walkie talkie lying on the riverbank below.

"Hang on, buddy!" Ace shouted as he threw down his backpack and his hat and made a running leap over the edge of the ravine, landing in the water with a splash and launching into a crawl stroke.

Jax looked up at the sky and shook his head at the unnecessarily athletic rescue maneuver. The hound slid down the side of the ravine carefully, rolling up his pant legs and taking off his shirt as he prepared to dog paddle across.

By the time he got across, Ace was in the overhanging tree branch sawing through the rope with his pocketknife. Jax caught the large black and white canine just as he fell, flailing in the mess of ropes. "How long have you been up there, By?" Ace asked.

"Long enough!" the soggy dog barked as Jax scrambled out from under him and examined the net. "We have problems! I saw something strange at the edge of the academy woods when I was connecting our river defenses. The panda and some fur I'd never seen before. So when I thought the coast was clear I went over to investigate. They aren't just putting in defenses over there. I saw them working on something that looked like a catapult. Either that, or it was some kind of bondage device that sure looked scary. But the academy's never done punishment outside before! I waited until the coast was clear and then tried to snoop around, but I sprung this trap. I'm just glad you guys found me before one of them came back." The dog shuddered.

The tracking hound was examining the remnants of the snare critically while Ace listened to Byron. "Every one of these knots is exactly the same," Jax remarked in consternation. "It's like they were tied out of a book." He stood up, walked around a little bit in from the riverbank, and surveyed the stately deciduous trees around him. "In fact," he said, "something is different about this whole place."

The academy's Enchanted Forest was a more manicured affair than the boys' uneven, rough-and-tumble woods. The Baby Blue woods were full of hills, ridges, and rock piles, and its trees, many with low-hanging branches, were climbed regularly. The girls' woods contained mostly oak and other stout trees marked by high, out-of-reach branches and, every so often, creeping vines. The main outdoor activities that took place here were picnics, frolics, and the occasional discreet sex education exercise behind the tree trunks. (Sissies walking down the main path would politely ignore those, unless they were invited to participate by a beckoning paw from behind the tree, or unless it seemed pretty clear that the participants wanted to be caught.)

Jax saw something different this time, though: something painted on one of the trees, and the scout dog's eyes rapidly sought out other markers as he stepped softly around on the forest floor, mostly covered by a carpet of moss and flowers.

"They've marked a trail," he observed as he returned to the riverbank, "with arrows instead of with dots or rock cairns." He shuddered as though he had just seen something too horrible for words. "With arrows! So you always walk it exactly the same way, going the same direction." The black-and-brown dog adjusted his brown shoulder sash and remarked petulantly to his two friends, "Why, nofur will ever wander off, get lost, or discover anything. You'd just walk the same path through the woods over and over again. Where's the adventure in that?"

Byron had been recounting more details of the strange machine he had glimpsed to Ace. "We have a dodgeball catapult," the lynx observed proudly. "Roger requisitioned it for the main operation site. It's designed from a Webelos catapult plan! Junior scout engineering. But on a big kid scale." Then he looked thoughtful. "And these snares . . ." He hoisted a large rock, and eying the spot where Byron's walkie talkie had fallen, hurled the rock down the river bank. Another net sprang up around it as the stone flew up, entangled, into the treetops. Ace nodded conclusively, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at another sprung trap, dangling in the air behind him. "They're placed at exactly regular intervals. Someone was marking off paces."

The two Boy Scouts frowned at each other. "It's like someone is copying our ideas-" Ace remarked, and Jax finished his sentence, "but taking all the fun out of them!"

"With no sense of humor about scouting," Ace echoed sadly.

The malamute took off the mask and snorkel from around his head and shook out his wet fur, spraying drops of water over them and making his fur stand up, bushed out. "What kind of person would do that?" he asked.

"Only one," Jax said sadly.

"Their team's picked up a Girl Scout," Ace concluded, sounding miffed. "And I have a feeling they won't be sharing the cookies."

Byron put his snorkel and mask back on as he got up onto his feet. "Let's move back to safety," he said. "I've been in that net for too long and I'm in no condition to fight. I thought I would fall asleep or go out of my mind and I just couldn't keep from wetting or even - even - well, I started counting everyone who's been helping me out the last few days, to remind myself of how many friends I had who might help. The counting got way hard. I ran out of fingers." He fidgeted. "Then I had to think back to Rian's tips about other ways I could keep track of things."

"Okay, but, as the fur you landed on, I have to say," remarked Jax, waving one paw in front of his sensitive hound dog nose and clapping the other on the aquatic patrol dog's shoulder, as he said, in a low voice, "did you really have to use your swim diaper all three ways while you were up there?"

"I, umm-" Byron looked down at his footpaws. "My lunch didn't - I mean-I think someone-" Giving up, he let out a long sigh and said, "My sneakers are on the other side of the river. I am gonna get Velcro ones when I have time and money to run to the mall, I promise. But for the moment can you two maybe, umm," he fidgeted, and, lowering his head, looked up at the tracking hound out of the top of his eyes, and poked gently with one finger at the knot-tying badge on Jax's shoulder sash, "help me tie my shoes? Please."

Jax nodded. "I suppose it's the right thing to do for a puppy who can't do it himself. Even though you fell on me in a dirty diaper."

The black-and-white dog smiled bashfully. "Thank you, Jax," Byron said, his ears pricking. "You two have been a big help with rides between the beach and the store lately. And with, umm, that shoe thing. This time maybe . . . can you remind me of how the steps go? Rian kind of confused me and no one else seems to remember how to explain it. But you must know the steps, from the Boy Scout manual or something? If you just run me through it once-"

The tracking hound narrowed his eyes and waved a paw in front of his nose again. "Don't push your luck," he said.

Next time: Twitchy concludes a private undercover operation. Next on his to-do list-changing the world.

Episode 7: The Warren!

Two and a half years ago.

Twitchy sat cross-legged on the floor scribbling out his math homework. He reached up to click off the flashlight he had set behind himself on the edge of the table as the light in his family's cramped apartment suddenly flickered back on, and hummed to himself as he continued working.

The window was open to let in a breeze from outside, along with the rumbling and honking of traffic, and the occasional siren, from the street, six stories below. The breeze swirled odors around in the apartment - the smell of baby powder, from his baby sister, strapped into her high chair at the kitchen table; the smell of urine and Vaseline, from his grandfather, leaning back into the couch and dozing in front of the television; the smell of scented moist wipes, from both of them. It was a mix of smells he liked. It made him feel at home.

Sometimes with his parents at work the rabbit felt oddly left out that he didn't wear diapers - that he was the only family member who didn't get to feel taken care of. Sometimes that wasn't true, of course - he'd tried out his grandfather's more than once, and he muffled the sound with whatever cloth was handy, so there were times the whole household was diapered. Since Twitchy went far out of his way whenever he needed to dispose of his-carrying bags to Dumpsters blocks away-and since the scent of wet rabbit was hardly unusual in their apartment right now, nofur was the wiser.

"Hi, Dad!" the rabbit called without looking up as the door slammed shut behind a chubby white rabbit, wiping a greasy paw on his overalls, with a pair of safety goggles hanging on a strap around his neck. "Mom got home a little while ago. She went right into the bedroom. How was work?"

Twitchy's father made his way carefully across the cluttered room. "Tough without my little helper," he said, tussling the smaller rabbit's head with one large foot as he passed, "but furs have to be kept hot and cold, and heating and cooling systems don't fix themselves, you know! Got to do a diner today, not just residential! That was fun."

The door to the bedroom opened and a female rabbit poked her head out, gesturing to him to head that way. "I just got off the phone," she started to say, "I need to ask you something." He shot Twitchy a nervous look, mouthed, "Uh oh," and after a moment, hopped that way. The young rabbit turned a page in his math book and continued humming to drown out the raised voices that would start to carry throughout their tight living space, but he still heard snippets, intermixed with his sister's contented gurgling and his grandfather's increasingly loud snoring.

"You told me not to worry about the electric bill," he heard his mother saying. "Silly me, I thought that meant you paid it."

"Look, your father living here is one thing, but we can't afford home care," Twitch's dad was saying. "I told you that . . . Bad enough we're all on top of each other in barely three rooms. It's been good of Twitch to sleep on the couch . . . I'm already working weekends . . ."

"You used to talk about starting a business, remember?" his mother was saying. "Never thought you'd just stay a repair fur . . . And soon there'll be college. . . It's not nearly enough. What are you going to do then, work nights too? Switch to cash only and get yourself audited again? . . . But I told you, we can't keep leaving them both alone here all day. He's in no condition to look after the baby. For now, Twitch gets out of school early enough that he can check in on them . . . Never come home to either of them in a dirty diaper."

The rabbit finished his calculus homework and closed his textbook. He got up on to his knees and crawled over to his sleeping grandfather, checking on his diaper quickly with one paw. Finding it clean, he hopped up on to his feet and repeated for his baby sister, who only gurgled at him as he offered her a pacifier to play with.

He meandered into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and found himself eying his sister's baby formula curiously. It was about the only edible-looking thing there besides a rack of convenience store pastries. He shook his head and let the door swing shut. He toggled the knobs on the aging stove and frowned at it. Oh well. He would make a peanut butter and whatever he could find sandwich.

"Mom!" he called out. "The stove is broken again!"

The door to the bedroom cracked open. "Just put out some cheese, dear," she said, poking her head out. "One of the supers will come to fix it."

So, there was cheese somewhere! It would be a peanut butter and cheese sandwich then. Twitchy went back into the fridge and, after digging around a bit, retrieved a block of Swiss cheese. He sliced off a few large cubes and left them on the edge of the stove. By the time he had finished making his own sandwich, he already heard curious squeaking behind him.

"Oh, hello again, Squeak!" he said, brightening as he recognized the small gray mouse climbing up over the back of the stove.

"Squeak squeak?" the overall-clad mouse asked, sitting on top of the back panel of the stove, above the dials, and swinging his feet in the air.

Twitchy nodded. "That's right, Squeak," the bunny explained. "Our stove is broken again."

Squeak was only one member of the many families of mice who lived inside the old, hollow walls of the buildings in Twitchy's neighborhood. Since most of the buildings here weren't up to code, no landlord would pay for repair work that might require a major overhaul. Instead, the mice were allowed to live rent-free, maintaining the buildings in exchange for crumbs, morsels, and cheese from the tenants. Once Squeak had assessed the problem, he would retrieve what he might need to fix it from a toolbox located somewhere inside the wall nearby.

Ordinarily whichever mouse was happening by and smelled the food first came, squeaked about, and scampered off when he was finished. But Squeak had taken a particular interest in Twitchy's family. The lonely young rabbit, who rarely did anything besides homework after school for fear of leaving his baby sister and grandfather alone, was the only fur who talked to the mouse and seemed interested in what he was doing. Squeak in turn had also watched curiously when Twitchy sneakily diapered himself, and had even coaxed the rabbit into following him so he could point out hiding places throughout the building, most in the crumbling walls behind the stairwell, and some inside decaying enclosures on the roof, where Twitchy would hide his own supplies.

"Tonight is going to be a big night, Squeak," Twitchy explained as he ate his peanut butter and cheese sandwich over the kitchen sink, not particularly worried about crumbs since the mouse would take care of them before he left. "I've been working on something and I'm going to make an announcement. It's going to change things around here."

"Squeak?" the mouse asked curiously as he hung with both paws from the outer edge of one of the stove's spiral burner coils, looking at it from underneath.

"No," said Twitchy, shaking his head. "Not that announcement. Don't be ridiculous. That is not the sort of thing I can ever tell anyone about, ever."

"Squeak squeak?" the mouse queried.

"Yes it is, it really is that weird, it would be like telling someone you had three eyes," Twitchy rambled. "Well not like that exactly because if you had three eyes and they were looking at you they'd already know wouldn't they? It would be like telling someone you had two belly buttons or that you didn't like peanut butter or that you had a deathly phobia of paper airplanes."

"Squeak," the mouse answered, shrugging, as he hoisted himself back on top of the stove and shook his head, surveying the beaten appliance sadly. He looked up over his shoulder at Twitchy. "Squeak?" he asked, sounding curious.

Twitchy puffed himself up with pride. "Stick around," he said, as he reached inside his pocket with one paw and extracted the envelope he'd been carrying around all day. "And you'll see!"

The bedroom door opened just as he finished eating. Twitchy hopped over to it and poked his head inside. "Mom?" he asked. "Dad?"

Twitchy's father, who had just changed out of his overalls into a tee shirt and sweatpants, asked, "Yeah, Twitch, what's up? Do you want to call out for pizza again? Remember it has to last for two or three nights if we do."

The younger rabbit tapped one foot against the floor and cleared his throat. "I ate already. I've been saying for months that no fur should worry so much," he said, fidgeting and reaching for the envelope in his pocket, "because I've been working on something that will change things for all of us." He frowned and added, "But no fur listens to me."

"Hey there, Twitch," his dad said, tussling his ears with one paw. "Of course we listen to you. I'm really sorry you had to give up your room. I know six months is a long time to sleep on the couch but any day now I'll-" He looked at Twitchy's mother, who was eying him, and concluded lamely, sounding abashed, "figure out something."

Twitchy shook his head. "It's okay, Dad," he said, producing the envelope and waving it at them, "I wouldn't need it much longer anyway."

Twitchy's father took the envelope and slid out the letter; his mother leaned over his shoulder as they examined it closely. His father's whiskers began twitching and he thumped his foot against the floor.

"It's a pilot program," Twitchy explained, "especially for young furs and for furs from this neighborhood. I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up, but Mrs. Malinsky told me about it, you know that's where she went to school. So you can see you don't really pay for anything, except books and food. Anyway, it's all done," the rabbit said, wiping his paws against each other.

"I took the bus to my interview one afternoon a few months ago and I had a friend from school here to watch Essie and Pop. I just got this today. Anyway Mrs. Malinsky who wrote me a letter said they also called her and told her they hope I do it cuz I was one of their top choices for the region and they get money from the state or something if they take enough kids from schools that are ranked with the schools here. So, I know that usually when I say I have a surprise I just bring home math ribbons and science fair prizes, but this will help more, maybe?"

Twitchy's mother sobbed. "This is a big surprise, honey," she said, cutting them off. "This could really change things. That money I have earmarked for you, I doubt we could have afforded a school like this anyway, but if it's all freed up, just like that . . . . I'd been planning to keep putting my salary into that account for the next . . . I have to call your aunt," she said, adding, under her breath, "and tell her that at least one of the men in my life is reliable."

Twitchy's father grabbed him and hoisted him in the air. "That's my boy!" he exclaimed, bouncing up and down. "He's always got something up his sleeve! And I thought I was the one good at fixing things."

Then he set the giggling rabbit down, taking the safety goggles off from around his neck and placing them around Twitchy's. "You know, Twitch," he added, seriously, "I hope that this is really what you want. I hope that you really feel ready, and aren't rushing things, because of us."

The rabbit nodded eagerly and bounced on his heels, tugging at the goggles around his neck and settling them on his forehead. "I do, Dad," he said, wiggling his tail, "Don't worry about that. School has been boring here for a while, the classes, I mean. They keep putting me in different classes but it's still boring. I know I said it was practice but really I took the SATs and everything so early just so I would have something to do."

"Squeak squeak!" Twitchy looked down to see the mouse tugging on his pant leg.

"Squeak!" Twitchy exclaimed. "What's that, Squeak? You've always wanted to see the world outside this building?" His parents looked at each other, then at the two of them curiously. The mouse scampered up Twitchy's pant leg under his shirt, and the teenage rabbit hopped around, giggling, as the mouse made his way under his clothes and popped out on his shoulder.

"Squeak!" the mouse said. "Squeak squeak squeak! Squeak!"

"Someone to look out for me?" Twitchy asked him. "But what you said about furs outside our neighborhood doesn't sound scary to me! It sounds exciting! I've never left the Warren, so I've never talked much to anyfur except the rabbits and rodents who live here! Alan in my math class said that every single fur outside the Warren is a fox, or a wolf! And the wolves are strong and fierce and the foxes are clever and tricky, just like on the soap operas Pop watches. I've never seen either in the fur. But Mrs. Malinsky said different furs are more like us than we think, she said they just have the wrong idea about this neighborhood, like everyone at her school-I mean, my school now-told her she was crazy to come back and teach here after she graduated, and a lot of furs wouldn't really believe it, that a kit from our neighborhood, would be going to her old-I mean, my new-school."

"Honey," Twitchy's mother said cautiously. "I don't think that mouse can talk."

Twitchy looked from his mother to the mouse on his shoulder and giggled. "Of course he can't now," the young rabbit said. "I'm not letting him get a word in edgewise! I usually talk enough for the two of us."

"Squeak squeak squeak," the mouse squeaked into his ear.

"Squeak wants to come with me when I start school next fall so he can have adventures," the rabbit translated to his parents eagerly. "He's never left this building, can you believe it? And because he wants to look out for me! He thinks I'm special."

"Well," Twitchy's father said, shrugging, "he sounds like a smart mouse to me."

Twitchy bounced up and down. "Squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak," the mouse said to him, in a more serious vein.

"Oh, Squeak," he said. "It's cute that you want to keep an eye out for me. But no fur is going to take advantage of me! I'm a little too smart for that. You might have a point though. Just to be extra safe, I might want to keep certain things, to myself. Can you imagine what kind of adventures we'll have together? What kind of new furs we'll meet? I bet there will be lions, and tigers, and-well, of course there will be wolves. I hope they'll want to be friends. Can you imagine that? Me, friends with a wolf? That would be something, wouldn't it?"

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

The present.

"Wait, I've got it," Twitchy's muskrat waiter said as he deposited a piece of carrot cake with a single sparking candle in it. "You're on the City College baseball team! Yes? No? I know it will come to me eventually. I never forget a face, you know."

"No," Twitchy said with a long sigh, returning to filling in the form and staring at the couple cards on the table. "For the last time - we don't know each other. I have never been to Albuquerque, I am not a cereal mascot, I don't go to City College with you, and I don't play any sports."

"I'll get it before you leave," the waiter said, nodding decisively. "Just wait. So, are you sure you don't want me to sing? I mean, I feel bad that you're here all by yourself. And I'm supposed to sing. It's like a rule or something."

Twitchy rolled his eyes. "Please don't," he said. "If it makes you feel better, it was official yesterday night. I was just kind of - too busy to celebrate then. This is a private affair. Just me and my Operation V-err, voter registration card. You can bring the check when you have a chance, though."

He returned to filling out the form, watching out of the corner of his eyes until the muskrat had shuffled out of earshot, and scanning the restaurant again to confirm there were no familiar faces.

"Dex," he rehearsed to the empty seat across from him. "When I joined this group, I kind of maybe might have exaggerated about or forgot to mention one tiny little insignificant thing. It doesn't matter really. I mean, it's something we pretend about in this group all the time, right? And I'm not a normal - I mean, I've never got along with - I mean, I've always felt like -I mean, I didn't think I'd stay even, or it would be a party once a month, what's the big deal, then Rian was so, like, 'Come on! We're doing this now! Come on! I'll take you here! Duck! Jump! Run! Crinkle! Oh no! We're under attack! Save me, Twitch!' - you know how he is - and all of a sudden, I had friends I could tell things to, and I mean, I still never thought, you know, there'd be anyone in the group - I mean there was that one dodgy time, I let Rian get carried away playing - it was my initiation, I didn't think - there were so many boys there - it wasn't like anything real happened - not like it's a problem in this state anyway - but still, how could I tell you all after that! If no one knew, no one could get in trouble besides me. I had to keep quiet for your own good! Just in case. And I wouldn't let anything else happen! I know I promised nothing else, Squeak - I know you're mad at me that I haven't told Dex- Dex -you were so cute when I was babysitting you - that was fun - but when you rescued me - I wasn't expecting that. There's just - a lot more to you than I thought. You could be a lot more; you're holding part of yourself back. I saw that, like, in a flash. I know what kind of help you need. Oh, what am I doing?" the rabbit said, dropping his pencil. "I made it. Everything is okay now. Squeak will come around when he sees how great everything works out. And you're going to be okay, Dex. We have a green light now. Stick to the plan. No point to stirring things up right now, is there? Not when you need me, kitten. I'm going to pay you back for everything. Trust me for one more day."

"I've got it!" the muskrat announced, snapping his fingers and startling Twitchy, who sat bolt upright in his seat. The waiter slid a piece of carrot cake with a single candle in front of him. "You went to high school with my sister, back in the Warren! The valedictorian kid who did calculus as a sophomore and graduated in two years. That makes you . . ." The muskrat counted on his fingers and bit his tongue, then nodded, confident in his own math. "Eighteen today? That's a big one!"

Twitchy cringed inwardly, but ignored him and pretended to inspect the check. The muskrat frowned and said, sounding concerned, "I guess you haven't made many friends in college if you're celebrating your birthday alone, huh? This is a long shot, but do you like horror movies maybe? I'm kind of a buff, some of my friends and I have a club that-"

"No faank oooo," said the bunny, his mouth stuffed with carrot cake, and handed the check up to him, waving for him to take it away. "I hafff diffen intwests."

The muskrat took a quick glance inside the leather cover that contained the check and raised an eyebrow. "Umm," he asked, "thanks a lot, kid, but - don't you need change?"

"Keep it," said Twitchy, shaking his head, as he swallowed, and flashed the waiter a quick smile. "I rounded up."

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

Rian sat with his arms crossed on one of the beanbag chairs in Roger's mobile command center, staring at the far wall as he sunk further and further into it.

"We're all done, little buddy," said the dog as he walked back in, wagging his tail and taking the squirt gun out of his belt. "Two more real spies, three question marks, but almost everyone else seemed like a keeper! I'm about to pull most of them for the main assault. I've done about as much as I can with a skeleton crew. That means I need you back leading the recruitment charge, doing what you do best. Say," he asked, handing him a printout, "what do you think about this collie I dug up? Goes to Twitch's school apparently. We could use someone else in that part of town. Excellent skills. Buuut, he's in dresses in a few too many of these old pictures. I'm gonna say ignore given what we just went through with spies-unless you think you can turn him?"

"Don't ask me! And I'm not going out again," Rian pouted. "You shouldn't be sending me to recruit at all. This was all my fault, Rog. I'm the one who let that double-crossing fox into our group. Those poor boys at the academy are probably locked in chastity tubes by now. And all the other recruits who were running make-believe missions and so ready to go yesterday, those sweet diaperboys who were reading kids' books to each other and checking each other, spent most of today whispering and looking scared of what would happen when we brought them in here. Scared! Of us! It's all my fault." The wolf teared up. "I'm starting to think I'm not a good judge of character," he whined.

"Hey, little guy," the Labrador said. "We need you out there! We've lost too much time! The girls are in the lead now. You know we need all the paws we can for this plan to work. You've always been my best recruiter. Don't forget what's at stake here - the right of every diapered boy in this town to run around in the dirt and paw freely! The right to read comic books with a flashlight past bedtime! The right to run around in the woods without knowing where you're going! The right to skin your knees and stain your clothes as well as your bed! I'll be starting the recruits on the main attack. But in the meantime, the boys doing recruiting need a leader out there. A fur the whole team can look up to."

Rian looked up at him and let out a long sigh. "That isn't me, Rog," He fidgeted nervously, sinking lower in the beanbag chair. "I don't deserve to stand up for those things. I think I've lost my edge. I don't think the team can depend on me. Something terrible happened," he confessed and took a deep breath. "I can't even keep the fur most importantest to me happy any more. It's like I'm losing touch with her. I could have sworn Serry winked at me when I went after Swift. I know she saw me do it and I took for granted that she would help us, but now I don't think she's going to, and, and, and-" the wolf whined, taking off his policeman's hat and tossing it on the floor, "Serry and I are fighting. I explained things to her even and she doesn't agree with me! I can't think about anything else. I almost wandered out without pants this morning. It's awful! It's terrible! It's-"

"It's about time!" Roger said, picking up his laptop and flopping into the beanbag chair next to Rian. "I was starting to wonder if you two would ever get that far."

Rian sniffled and wiped his eyes with the back of his paw. "What do you mean?" he whimpered, then added, blushing, "There are . . . not many bases Serry and I haven't covered. We're on like fifth and a half base. I was even working on getting her to mount me sometime, just cuz I didn't want there to be any combination we haven't done together, but she wasn't-"

Roger smiled a little painfully and cut him off. "More information than needed, little buddy," he said as he opened up his laptop and loaded his e-mail. "Not every night is going to be date night if you and Serry stay together, you know. You have to learn to deal with day-to-day things. And I don't mean diaper changes; I mean things that might seem important to one of you but not the other. Look, before you jump to any conclusions, I think Serry's under a lot of stress right now. I'm guessing she didn't want to worry you about it."

"What stress? The play? The Shakespeare festival? She's at rehearsal a lot but she always says all that's going great," Rian asked, blinking, as Roger held his laptop out to the little wolf and pointed at the local newspaper article he had pulled up on his screen.

Rian read the headline and subhead aloud, slowly, pausing over the big words, "Director defends controversial casting choice; says cross-dressing normal for performers in Shakespeare's day." Rian looked at the Labrador out of the corner of his eyes. "I didn't know you read the city arts section, Rog," he said suspiciously. "That's kind of girly."

"I don't, silly," the dog said, bopping Rian's nose, "but if your girlfriend is going to do much more of this theater stuff, you should probably look at it once in a while. I have web alerts set up on all my team members, past and present. So I can send congratulations or condolences when stuff happens, or let them know if other boys who've been through the team are doing related things. Or, sometimes-let them know about names and pictures they wouldn't want posted, so we can try to get them taken down quickly and quietly."

The wolf frowned. "I didn't know you did all that, Rog," Rian said. He slid his beanbag chair closer to Roger's and put a paw on the dog's bare knee, exposed under his tennis shorts, and squeezed it.

"I can't tell you all my secrets yet, little buddy," the Labrador answered, his brown eyes twinkling. "Especially not the big secret."

Rian tilted his head. "What's the big secret?" he asked, then just shook his head. "Never miiiiiind," the cubby wolf said, preemptively disappointed even before Roger could answer. "I can wait for it."

Then he leaned down to look at Roger's screen, his nose brushing against it and smudging the monitor as he continued to read. "Hate mail?" he said, wriggling around so much he crinkled quite audibly, and his voice became thick with concern. "She didn't tell me." He chewed on his lip. "No wonder Serry feels defensive about the other sissies right now though."

Then he slumped back down into the chair all the way, letting the warm, whirring laptop rest on his chest. "Oh Rog," he said, "This explains things about Serry but it's no excuse for me. I've been so worried about her and me I still feel like I'm losing focus. I'm forgetting things left and right. The last time I changed a boy he hopped up and his diaper fell right off cuz I hadn't fastened the tapes on one side. I still need to think of something to do for Twitchy. I'm still not sure if Project B & K is going anywhere. And now Serry's director is getting hate mail. I need to see if she's okay. What can I do, though? Maybe I should ask Dex to be her bodyguard. He'd do that for me. But we need Dex recruiting. I must be able to do something. And I still need to-"

Rog tilted his head. "Are you keeping up okay with school, little buddy?"

"Sure," Rian shrugged. "That's the last thing I'm worried about. I don't have any papers due or anything until the twentieth and that's like-"

Roger leaned over, resting his head above Rian's chest to confirm the date on his laptop. "Umm," he said, shifting in the beanbag chair a little, "that's tomorrow."

The wolf sat bolt upright and deposited Roger's laptop on his lap with both paws. "I'll be back in a while," he said vaguely and burst out through the tent flap.

The dog shook his head and staggered up out of the beanbag chair. "Great," he muttered, staring at his spreadsheet glumly. "How are we going to catch up to Callie now?"

He was just opening up his operation plans when Rian darted back into the tent, panting, and pointed at his laptop. "Can I borrow that for one minute?" the short, crinkly wolf said as soon as he had caught his breath. "I just want to remind myself where on campus the library is."

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

"On that fugitive you found in the woods, Ace," the rabbit reported into his headphones, clicking keys in rapid succession. "I set a filter so I can tab right to videos with motion in them. That's right, no need to watch the whole playback from every camera. And . . . I'm looking at the footage now. That chameleon isn't done changing colors yet. He talked to Swifty near the river. It looks like he didn't want to give back his party dress either. I swear he turned blue because he was sad after that. Send him packing. Whether you give him a clean diaper or not is up to you."

He whapped a key and changed the channel. "I'm here, Captain. I'm e-mailing you the power grid for that sector now. Your tunnel route is in the clear. Also, I'm attaching a species filter of the recruiting list so you can see moles and other diggers we haven't made contact with yet. I've matched them to boys who have other recruiting stops to make near their known hangouts and taken the liberty of e-mailing their profiles."

He whapped the key one more time. "Commander Rian, I'm wrapping up to clock out," he said. "Hold it for five minutes. I know holding things isn't your specialty, but Kyle will be right with you."

"Howdy, Kyle," said Twitch cheerily, removing his headphones and taking a long swig of his energy drink, as the Dalmatian clambered up the ladder into the hideout behind him, causing the alarm bell over the entrance to jangle. "It's about time for your pudding snack, right? I brought a spoon for you, puppy. It's J-E-L-"

"L-O!" The Dalmatian finished, wagging his tail and clapping his paws as he crawled over to their shared mini-fridge and took the spoon on top of the refrigerator, eyeing it curiously. It was a small yellow plastic feeding spoon. He picked it up and turned it over in his paw.

"Good job!" Twitchy exclaimed brightly without looking away from his computer. "Keep this up and you'll be treehouse-broken in no time."

The Dalmatian frowned. He surveyed his baking supplies and the small convection oven he had set up in the hideout yesterday, along with a mixing bowl and a small table of supplies, so he could more easily keep the boys supplied with emergency rations of cookies. "Hey Twitch, where's my baking soda? Have you been moving my stuff around?"

"Haven't even looked at your stuff sorry," the rabbit said, sounding perky.

"Twitch," Kyle prodded as he opened the fridge. "What's wrong with you now? You don't seem depressed but now you're all - I don't know what."

"Everything's great, K! I am in total control of everything around me!" Twitch exclaimed as he opened up a chemistry problem set to take a last look at it. "I don't look worried, do I?"

Kyle, sitting cross-legged on the floor in nothing but the black-and-white version of his ABC tee shirt and a puffy diaper, scanned his bunny friend from head to toe curiously. "No," he said, perplexed. "You don't. Not even a little. Your foot's not even tapping." His brow furrowed. "Which is weird. I've never seen you not nervous a little bit. You're always nervous about something."

Twitchy looked over his shoulder and smiled as he stood up from his chair. "I finished the first phase of a long-term project today, K," he said.

The mouse sitting at the edge of the computer table looked up at him apprehensively. "Squeak?" he said. "Squeak squeak squeak squeak! Squeak?"

"Noooo not that way," Twitchy said, sounding annoyed. "Because it doesn't matter any more, Squeak. You know that. Nothing bad happened, that hurdle is behind me, so it's full steam ahead with stuff that really matters."

Kyle looked confused. "So doncha haff more ta do on this pwoject?" he asked, a spoonful of pudding in his mouth.

"Well the first stage took forever," Twitchy said as he opened the trap door and hoisted his backpack on to his shoulder. "That was the hard part and sometimes I thought I'd never make it. Sooooo much waiting for things to line up right. The rest is going to happen very, very fast."

He raised his paw to his forehead, and snapped his goggles into place over his eyes. "Oh, K. Diesel passed quarantine so he's going to do his first night on comm. He'll be showing up to relieve your shift instead of me. I e-mailed him instructions, but can you show him where everything is? I'm probably going to be out all night."

"Twitch!" Kyle exclaimed, dropping his spoon on to his diapered lap. "You put your goggles on! You only put those down for dangerous things! Is everything okay? I thought you were going to school! Not on a mission!"

"I am going to school!" Twitch told him as he lowered himself halfway through the trap door. "Just got a lot to do. It's crunch time and some of my professors are hiring lab assistants for next semester. I've been prepping for this for a while."

The rabbit concluded, just before he let himself drop out of view, "Now I'm putting myself in play."

Level Cleared! Congratulations! You have successfully completed Level Two.

You have unlocked a Hidden Achievement: Someone's looking awfully grown up today. Age of consent: You now have the option to redistribute up to three intelligence points to any other attributes of your choice. You probably won't listen to the rest of this, but - take a long breath. You may not want to jump into things and decide about it right at this minute.** **

Be careful! You have activated a Wild Card: Your hound dog friend is getting nosy.

You have unlocked a new environment for the next level! You may now go to: ** Twitchy's School!**

Select your PC. . .

Rian

Twitchy

--> Dex

Roger

You have selected: Dex! Good luck, coonie! Hold on tight and keep climbing!

Level Three Preview:

Standing!: Dex has had some tough breaks. But when he's in the right place at the right time, the cursed coon's long bad luck streak comes to a sudden and startling end.