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

kitncub

[[email protected]](%5C)

August 2010

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This continues directly on from

[Open House, Level One](%5C)

and [Open House, Level Two](%5C)

If you haven't read them, check them out first.

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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 treats some more mature relationship themes and does involve the outside-the-fetish lives of several characters; there are some heavier moments.

Ratings disabled only because at this point, it's really for people who've been reading and liking the series. Comments and other forms of feedback very welcome though, whether here, via e-mail or PM, or on the user page.

And now . . . for a "very special episode."

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. Your goal is to help each one learn who he is. You will need all your heroes activated to survive the final battle against your sissy opponents! Be wary 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!

Rapid Recap! Two warring factions have torn the city's ageplay scene asunder - the pink team of sissy diaperfurs, headquartered at Empress Calliope's Academy for Special Boys, is preparing for a big Open House event! Roger's Baby Blue boys are recruiting all the boys they can find for a major counteroffensive! The time for their clash is almost here! The true blue boy wolf Rian and his girlfriend, the sissy princess fox Serafina, high-ranking agents on both side of the war, are dating - and, both loyal to their teams, the lovers find themselves working against each other!

But meanwhile . . .

Twitchy, the boy team's genius bunny engineer, has been biding his time in a holding pattern with his incontinent boyfriend, the team's sensitive raccoon combat leader Dex, for months, keeping their relationship free of sex and of public displays of affection. Twitchy knows Dex harbors a secret crush on their mutual friend Rian, but the bunny thinks by putting himself in the middle he can fix things for the raccoon who once put everything on the line to rescue him. Their friends are starting to ask questions about the pair's dysfunctional relationship. But the game's about to change. Unbeknownst to his Baby Blue brothers - the rabbit, who skipped grades and went to college early, has been biding his time until he turned eighteen.

Now . . . let's play!

Level Three: Standing! (Dex)

(3 episodes in this part)

Episode 8: Accident!

Episode 9: Morning After!

Episode 10: New Day!

Episode 8: Accident!

Lin Lin sat uncomfortably at a conference room table in the teacher's lounge across from a female gray squirrel in a white tennis blouse and skirt who was staring into a glass of Diet Coke with a lemon slice floating atop it, radiating a look of studied boredom.

The squirrel consultant had spent most of the day revamping the girls' perimeter defenses with Cassie and Lin Lin, and now, the panda was debriefing her prior to her activation-something neither of the two girls seemed happy about.

"This collie is a no," she said, looking at the squirrel's recruit list. "I don't care if he's been in dresses. Look at the interests. Sport shooting? Automotive maintenance? Just mark him ignore. We're in the lead so let's not take on anyone else who might go over to the boys' side right now. That lion nursery attendant who keeps asking questions is enough of a headache. I've given orders for everyone he changes to call him 'Mommy.' Hopefully it will induce dysphoria." She bit her lip and scanned the rest of the squirrel's printouts rapidly. "Everyone else looks fine. Now," she said, setting them aside and holding up her handheld device to flip through pictures, "let's run through who's likely to get in your way one last time. You've seen Roger, and Rian, the Boy Scouts, and Byron, they'll certainly be with the attack team through the woods -"

"Is this rogues' gallery some kind of a joke?" the squirrel consultant interrupted, stifling a yawn and flicking her bushy tail, as Lin Lin pulled up another photo of boys' team members on her handheld device and showed it to her. "What's the difference who's who? They're all boys and boys are all the same. Speshly these subby fetishy types. Nature makes 'em so girls can break 'em. These models come half-broken; saves time. So why are ya wasting mine with this little scrapbook, peaches?"

The squirrel, who spoke with a Southern accent, seemed to lose interest after her tirade and regarded the length of her claws critically, setting her soda down on the building security layout Lin Lin had been showing her, using it as a coaster.

Lin Lin glared at the squirrel. "Listen, Shelley," she snapped, "I still don't know why you're here. We do not need help, and I think it's crazy to add an extra fur right now, but I was told to share my files with you, so you can at least pretend to be interested. If you do, we'll both be out of here faster."

"Fine," said the squirrel, sighing. "The dog's the leader, he's Callie's brother. The wolf is the other one; he's dating someone here. And then there are, I don't know, some other furs. See, I'm paying attention. Who's the raccoon?"

Lin Lin fidgeted. "Which raccoon?" she asked.

Shelley rolled her eyes. "The one who's in half those pictures but who ya haven't said boo about yet, sugar plum," she said, not really sounding interested.

"Oh," snapped the panda. "That raccoon. I'll handle him. We have a score to settle. Don't worry about it."

The squirrel raised an eyebrow. "If you were handling things, peaches, I wouldn't be here. Y'all have gotten soft in this place. This game of yours is about who the stronger sex is; it's about helping men realize what sorry creatures they are, and how little self-control they've got. I went to school with Callie, ya know. Tried to persuade her to go out to the West Coast with some of us after. Start a business. Partnership dungeon. When she called me for advice about securing this place and your, I forget what it's called, Floor 5 or whatever, I thought, good, sounds like the girl's waking up. Being around her brother is bad for her. He's got no ambition; it's catching. She's wasting her potential, I say. Don't let them do that to you, oreo. These boys, or fetishists, or whatever you want to call them," she gestured at the handheld device lazily, "they're potential clients for your place. They don't matter, like, as people. Not to you. Not to me. Don't fall into that trap."

"Don't lecture me!" the panda took a deep breath, clenched a fist behind her back, and counted to ten. "And stop making up stupid nicknames. You're not even good at it! You need to know things about furs to insult them effectively. I hate all those girl-hating losers as much as they hate me! Which is a lot, just to clarify. All this data is to find their weak points and know how to needle them better. Like Dex is-" she furrowed her brow.

"Their combat leader. I don't know how to describe him in a sentence. Half karate kit and half Anne Frank. Outfighting him could be a problem. Outthinking him isn't. Trusting is a bit of an understatement. He's not dumb but-well-it's like he can't process dishonesty, even though being honest has never gotten him anything but punched in the muzzle."

The squirrel tilted her head and tapped her claws against her soda as she lifted it from the counter, leaving a moist, liquid ring on the panda's building layout. "Okay, Lin Lin," she said, using the bear's name for the first time, in a slightly maternal, but scolding tone, "I'm just saying, this kid, Tex or whatever you said his name was, is, only, one, a boy, and two, let's not forget, a boy who paws off in used diapers. What more do you need to know about someone like that? But if I didn't know any better, and I heard you talking about him," the squirrel eyed her with a glimmer of mild interest, "I'd say he was your friend."

"Then it's a good thing you know better," the panda snapped. "So here's how his team usually works-"

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

Dex, wearing his plain black street clothes, unfolded the campus map he had hung on to from his tour - the ecologically-minded raccoon made a habit of not picking up extra copies of papers he already had somewhere -and scratched behind one of his ears with one paw as he turned the map in one direction then another, shaking his head. "Wow, Twitch's campus is bigger than I remembered," he muttered, and sat down for a moment to fish out his cell phone. "Where are the scouts when I need them?"

Twitch still hadn't answered his text - of course not, the coon reminded himself. He probably didn't have reception in a basement lab. After a moment, though, Dex had his bearings well enough to wander through what seemed like the tenth identical quad and caught sight of a red brick building, the walls of its ground floor covered with ivy. He squinted up at the fading, chiseled lettering over the building's marquee.

"Diamond Rose Memorial Laboratory," he read. "A cutting-edge tradition." That was it.

The coon breathed a long sigh of relief as he folded up the map and replaced it in the front of his backpack, and took out the blue star-and-planet patterned notebook Twitchy needed, with the physics problem set the bunny had forgotten inside.

Dex made his way up the stairs and into the building slowly. How unlike Twitch to mix things up like this and leave his physics problems with Dex's statistics homework by accident.

Well, he had been acting stranger than usual lately. Worrying about his finals and the team's operation a bit too much, probably. Would Twitch hug him when he showed up, he wondered? How would he act on campus this time? Last time Dex had come here with him he'd dragged the coon off to a dining hall halfway across campus from any of his class buildings. Maybe Ace was right. If he got a tepid greeting after riding the bus all the way uptown and taking time off from recruiting at a crucial moment to get here, he might have to rethink this whole thing, Dex told himself as he made his way up the building's broad stairs and pushed open a heavy oak door with one paw.

He was looking for room 017, and the first one he saw on this floor was 118. Yup, basement for sure.

His ears pricked as he made his way down the stairs. He was the only fur here. Why was Twitchy working so late? Was he behind? Was Baby Blue taking up all his daylight hours? No, he must be getting ahead. Dex had seen some of his grades, after all, on papers lying around his room. Still, why did Dex have an uneasy feeling about this place? It was just a college science building.

Maybe it was just too weird walking around on campus, not wanting to introduce himself to anyone yet - he'd probably be coming to this school himself next fall, but with the financial aid office dragging its feet, he still wasn't sure enough to make an announcement. And he couldn't say he was Twitch's boyfriend - not when the rabbit said their relationship should stay a secret outside of Baby Blue.

Just as Dex touched the cold linoleum of the basement floor with one foot-the coon winced and clapped a paw to one ear, dropping Twitchy's notebook.

The fire alarm had gone off, and there was one right next to him! His eyes darted around quickly as he bent to pick up the notebook again. Should he head out of the building?

Room 017? Where would that be on this floor? Then Dex heard a bark from around the corner; he ran toward it. "Hey!" he shouted over the ear-piercing alarm. "What are you doing? Get out of the building!"

A border collie in a light blue tee-shirt and bulky canvass shorts who was pulling on the handle of a door with all his strength looked up, relieved to see someone else, and shook his head. "There are furs in there!" he barked, and began yanking at the immobile door handle again with both paws. "I heard them shouting! I think they're stuck! It's no good! These doors lock after hours! You need a lab key card!"

The coon's eyes widened as he saw the number label on the door over the collie's shoulder: 017: Supplies and Demonstrations.

Then they narrowed and he let the right strap of his backpack slip off his shoulder, depositing it on the floor. "Stand back!" he said to the collie, who released the door handle.

The brown and white dog looked up, with the flashing red and white light of the alarm flickering over both of them, at the raccoon curiously. "Do you have a cell phone!" Dex shouted over the deafening noise. The collie nodded. "Go call for help! 911 or whatever! Stand outside where they can see you so you can tell them where the furs are inside!"

The collie shook his head. "I can't just leave!" he shouted. "The door is warm!"

Dex, his backpack hanging by one strap, held his right paw up to the metal door and felt it. As he did, gray smoke began seeping out from underneath.

The coon dropped his backpack on the floor.

His eyes glinted as he stood back and spun, kicking with all his strength at the lock.

The door shook.

"Hurry!" Dex shouted. "You go here! I don't! You can give directions to this place! I can't! It has to be you who calls! We're counting on you! I'll be right up! But if not, come back with help!" He gritted his teeth, and kicked the door again.

"Yes," the collie said uncertainly, backing up toward the stairs slowly, adding, as though by reflex, "sir!" Then he turned and scrambled up the stairs.

Dex kicked again. And again, growling, as the smoke started to rise. And again! Finally, he heard a loud click and the door swung open!

The coon jumped back and lowered his face, taking a deep breath and shielding his eyes and muzzle with his right arm against the first wave of smoke that came pouring out.

"Who's there?" he shouted as loud as he could. "Twitch? Shout if you hear me!"

The smoke stung his eyes. Why was there so much smoke? He squinted and scanned the room as it thinned out. The first lab table on the right had been overturned. Something was bundled up - no, somefur was lying down behind it. A muffled yelping was dimly audible from under him. Dex couldn't see very well. It didn't look like the fur on top was moving.

The table nearest the door had been overturned, and flames crackled and snapped around it a few feet from Dex, blocking the way to the exit. A beaker or vial of something had fallen on the floor and cracked. It was still a small fire in proportion to the vast amount of smoke, but it cut off the way out, and it was spreading fast. Had the smoke started before the fire? Had there been another fire? Where was the fire extinguisher? Not one he could spot near the door, and he didn't have time to search. Who knew what would happen if the fire reached some other chemicals, or another beaker fell over? He couldn't wait ten or fifteen minutes. If he moved fast, he might be able to do something.

"Hang on!" Dex shouted, not sure if anyone could hear him.

What could he do? Without an extinguisher. . . . Think fast, he jogged himself. The incontinent raccoon grabbed his backpack, zipped it open, and flipped it upside down, dumping the changing supply kit that he carried almost everywhere out on to the floor and looking at what he had. He spread out all the cloth diapers - there were six, he never only carried one or two. Moving rapidly, the conscientious raccoon picked up and screwed open the thermos of water he diligently refilled five or six times a day, and poured all its contents out over the diapers. Then he wrapped the layers of damp cloth around his forepaws, lowered his head, squinted, and, prepared for his eyes to sting, charged into the heat and smoke.

Thwap! Thwap! Thwap! The raccoon crouched and beat at the base of the flame with his dampened cloth diapers, trying to smother it before it spread toward where he had seen the other furs through the haze. Smoke billowed up into his muzzle as the flames fell. His sense of smell shorted out; his nose twitched; his eyes teared up; he felt the heat on his paws, and an occasional flicker touched his arm; but, it was working! He was beating back the flame faster than it was spreading. He kept thrashing, and thrashing, while he tried to restrain himself from inhaling.

After what felt like half an hour, but couldn't have been more than a few minutes, it was out, he thought. His vision was blurry from the smoke. He felt numb all over. He dropped to his knees and crawled, his forepaws wrapped in the blackened, still soggy cloth, squishing as he sloshed across the floor on all fours through the smoke, to behind the other lab table. He could exhale and let himself breathe there, and his eyes started to clear. It looked like the other table had been turned over to block the heavy smoke. He smelled familiar smells, faintly. He smelled Twitchy. He put one of his paws on the rabbit. He was warm, and breathing. Thank goodness.

Dex heard a muffled "Mister!" from under him. He put one paw under his bunny boyfriend, and felt other, smaller paws, grabbing at his leg. He lifted Twitch up and a slight, trembling young ferret, maybe a middle schooler, got up on his knees, rubbing his eyes with the back of each paw. "Stay down!" Dex shouted at him over the wailing alarm. "Grab my pant leg! Crawl!"

The coon gathered Twitchy up into his arms and felt the ferret latch onto his leg like a lifeline. Taking a deep breath, he stood up, and stumbled through the still thick, but slowly thinning, smoke toward the door, holding his head down. He had, of course, wet right through the cloth diaper he was wearing in the mayhem, but with all the other dirt, soot, and smells on him, no one would even notice.

When he got there, the collie, looking anxious, had just reached the foot of the stairs. The screech of the fire alarm was still echoing through the empty corridor. "They're coming but I couldn't wait-" the dog started to say, but his eyes widened as they flickered over the scene rapidly. The crawling ferret got to his feet and looked up at the raccoon. "Mister-" the kid started to say, but Dex shouted, "Get the notebook, and my backpack!" and the rodent did, snatching one up in each paw.

"Is there a medical center here?" Dex shouted to the collie, who nodded and pointed up the stairs, saying "Near here, follow me!"

It was starting to get dark when the four of them emerged into the crisp night air - a welcome relief for all of them. The white rabbit had started to stir in Dex's arms.

"Come on!" the collie barked, jogging ahead. At some point, Dex hadn't noticed when, a digital camera had appeared in the collie's paw and he snapped a picture of them from a good ways in front. What was happening? Dex was confused. He would figure it out later, as soon as he got Twitchy and the kid clinging to his pant leg somewhere safe.

"Around that corner!" the collie shouted loudly from his vantage point ahead, pointing.

Then, realizing the alarm was no longer blaring in their ears, the collie blushed and lowered his voice to a more normal level, "I mean, it's right over there, on your left. Who are you, man? I'm roommates with Twitchy's lab partner. I was just down there to get a lab report my roomie needed for tomorrow. He works nights and some of his papers got switched with Twitch's by accident. Are you okay? What's on your paws? How did you get them out of there? I could have sworn I saw-"

Dex's head felt like it was wrapped in wool as he staggered ahead of them. He barely knew what was going on. "Why are you asking?" he managed to get out.

"Blaze Collie, I write for the school paper," the collie confessed.

"I didn't see everything that happened!" the little ferret said eagerly, sounding excited by a turn of events that would allow him to express gratitude in a meaningful way. "But I was-I wasn't supposed to be in there-I had a fight with my dad who works here and I snuck in behind Twitch who had this door open and I was hiding down there in the supply closet. I was going to lock myself in there all night! I told my dad I wouldn't stay at home anymore cuz he's a big phony! But I was in the cabinet for like forever then I smelled smoke and I yelled and ran out of it, but when Twitch saw me he flipped out and tried to grab me and pull me out of the smoke, and I tried to run away from him, but I . . . but I pulled and knocked us both down and knocked a table of stuff over, between us and the door."

"Then Twitchy grabbed me and pulled me behind another table. He was covering me from the smoke, and I don't know what he did, but he was trying to use his cell phone first, then he was trying to throw something at the fire alarm, and I don't know if he hit it, or if it went off anyway, that's when he started to pass out from the smoke, I think maybe he was sick or something or it was like chemical smoke maybe and he inhaled it when I surprised him, but he covered me and kept on saying we'd be okay, I don't know how long this all was really, but then all of a sudden this raccoon was there, lifting him off of me, and he saved us," the ferret said, his voice raising as he pointed up at Dex, "the door should have been locked, but he crashed it open, and he put out the fire, and he got both of us out! We could have been burned if he hadn't moved so fast. I mean like the speed of light fast! Zoom!"

"What's your name, man?" The collie asked Dex, scribbling frantically, as they reached the entrance to the medical center. "I don't think we've met. You don't go here, you said? Do you work here? Are you a new employee? What were you doing on campus? Are you a friend of Twitch's?"

Dex opened and closed his muzzle, still confused. But the rabbit, starting to stir, mumbled thickly as his eyes came up open, "Hardly know him really."

Blaze's eyes flickered to his bunny classmate. "Twitchy!" he barked. "Are you okay? Who's your friend?"

Dex was waving his paw in the air to catch the attention of the night nurse on duty in the medical center lobby as he opened the door. She was hurrying over to them, and the ferret, who was just getting worked up, dashed over to her and began repeating the same story he had just told the collie, though it was already becoming more elaborate and melodramatic, and he was pointing at Dex and Twitchy excitedly.

Twitchy coughed. "Some kid from City College," the rabbit said weakly, gesturing up at Dex. "Maybe - transferring here - been tutoring like an hour or two a week - to catch him up - just bringing me - some notes," the rabbit got out.

Blaze was shaking his head in amazement. The night nurse was getting another attendant and a stretcher to take Twitchy. "What's your name?" the collie asked Dex again. "You don't go here, you told me? What made you go in there after a fur you hardly know? You dumped out your backpack-those supplies you were carrying - you used them to put out the fire, didn't you? What were they?"

Dex cut him off and raised a paw, palm open, in front of the collie's muzzle. "No comment," the befuddled raccoon said. "Off the record, don't print my name, please just leave us alone. Twitch needs to rest." Then, still dazed, he took the ferret's paw as the two medics rolled Twitchy out of his arms and onto a stretcher. Dex and the rodent followed them into an elevator and the dog watched blankly as its doors slid shut.

He stared after them for about thirty seconds. Then his hearing finally returned to its pre-alarm level. He knew because he could finally catch the slightest reassuring crinkle from himself as his tail began wagging. He flipped his notebook closed and reached for his cell phone, checking the time on it as he flipped it open. He could still get a story in for tomorrow if he called it in and started writing now.

"I might not know who you are yet," Blaze said, feeling the warm front of his own discreetly muffled diaper, which he must have wet at some point during all the excitement, "but furs are gonna know what you did, brother."

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

In a conference room at the academy, Lin Lin was wrapping up her breakdown of enemy leaders for the squirrel, and Serry had just come in to join them, offering a juicebox and one of the oatmeal cookies Azzie had been baking to each. The squirrel frowned at the juicebox and declined it with the back of her paw; Lin Lin took one and sipped at it gingerly before resuming her debriefing.

"What I'm really worried about," said the panda pulling up another picture on her handheld device, "is this: security threat number one right now. See or sniff him, I want to know. He's been off our radar too long. Sighted at one or two recruit meets, that's it."

Serry tilted her head and looked at the picture curiously. "Twitchy?" the sissy fox said curiously. "I haven't really seen or heard much of him lately. I don't really know what he's been up to these days."

The panda rolled her eyes. "What do you do all those times you go into Baby Blue territory, fox?" she snapped.

Serry opened and closed her muzzle wordlessly, and the panda just shook her head. "You know what, don't even answer," Lin Lin dismissed her. "It was a stupid question."

The sissy fox said gently, "I don't know if Rian's seen much of Twitch lately either. I think he's just less into the scene than he used to be."

"Not him," Lin Lin insisted. "If he hasn't been in the field, it means he's up to something. And if he's up to something, that could mean big trouble."

The squirrel raised an eyebrow as she examined the picture of the white rabbit in overalls, busily and happily playing with a LEGO robotics kit, a pair of safety goggles resting on his forehead. Two packs of diapers were stacked behind him; a small gray mouse stood on top of them. Twitch was grinning, and a gray wolf's paw, extending from somewhere outside the picture frame, rested on the rabbit's head, between his ears. The rabbit's whole heart was in his smile.

"Now I know you're both pulling my tail," Shelley said. "A threat? This kid looks like the biggest baby you've shown me out of that entire group."

The panda took a long breath as she remembered the emotionally obtuse bunny thwarting her first trap at the academy; leaping at her from the bleachers across the gym; clapping a pair of handcuffs on her at the fairground; and launching into a tirade about protecting Dex from her imagined treachery.

"He probably is," she admitted. "Emotional intelligence is a 'needs work' area. But when it comes to tactics, trust me," she said, with a sigh, "he's scary."

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

At the end of the corridor, the small ferret was being swept up into the arms of a taller one, and was babbling to him excitedly. Dex was hardly paying attention to them, staring at his knees as he sat on a waiting chair outside the small five-bed emergency room in the campus medical center.

His brain felt dim. His shirt was covered with soot, and his muzzle ached a little. His whiskers had been singed; ordinarily he didn't feel them at all, but it made his muzzle irritated. He looked down blankly at his paws, unwound the sodden, ash-covered cloths he had unthinkingly left wrapped around them, and dumped them into the nearest wastebasket. Nofur would recognize them as diapers now anyway, and even if somefur noticed that he'd wet his pants, no one would consider it the symptom of a chronic condition.

He barely understood what had just happened. But he had a vague feeling that it had been big; that a cosmic gear had shifted somewhere; that he might date future events in his life from this moment.

"Dex, right?" said the nurse, opening the door to the small care room, and Dex, who was sitting outside, was still in such a state of shock that he hardly felt his feet touch the ground as he stood up. "Your friend's tired, but he's awake, and mostly coherent. He's in shock, and he inhaled a lot of smoke. If I had to guess I'd say he also hasn't been sleeping very much for the last few days, possibly not eating, at least not well. You can see him. Actually, I think you'd better. He keeps asking if you're okay and telling us to treat you instead of him. Just try not to excite him too much. Now, we put in oxygen tubes and an IV," she was explaining, "but it's really just a precaution to get him cleared out faster. The shock was really the worst of it. Please don't get too worried or alarm him."

The raccoon sprang to his feet and rushed by the nurse while she was still talking. He dropped to his knees next to the hospital bed and grabbed the white rabbit's paw. "Twitch?" he said anxiously. "How do you feel? They said you're going to be all right. Do you feel all right?"

"Oh no," the rabbit said, frowning, as he reached up to touch Dex's singed whiskers with one paw. Two plastic oxygen tubes were tucked into his nostrils, and his breathing was returning to normal. His clothes, sooty and acrid with the stench of smoke, had been dumped into a bin nearby, and he was wearing a hospital gown. "Your whiskers are singed. That wasn't supposed to happen, Dex. Are you burned anywhere else? If anything happened to you, Dex, I'd never forgive myself. The kid with me- He wasn't supposed to be there, you know. You do know that?"

"Of course not. Nothing was supposed to happen. It was an accident," the coon said, squeezing his paw. "He's fine. I'm fine. Don't think about it right now. You can explain later. They just said I should keep you calm." Dex smiled uneasily and tried to lighten the mood. "They obviously don't know who they're dealing with," he joked. Then he fidgeted, a bit uncomfortably. "Do you . . . remember things clearly, Twitch? Do you . . . remember how we know each other? You said to that collie-"

"Of course I know you," Twitchy started saying, "don't be an idiot. Dex, listen, there's a reason for everything, I can't keep-not if you're going to get hurt-"

But before he finished, there was a bustle at the door, as the adult ferret, concluding a brief negotiation with the nurse, made his way inside while she took a look at his son.

When the ferret entered the room, the rabbit's eyes lit up like those of a skeptical cub who had suddenly been greeted by Santa Fox in the fur at the very moment he had been about to swear off Christmas once and for all.

"Thank goodness," the ferret said, "you're both all right too. You boys are amazing. Jeremy told me what happened, you don't need to go through it again." Then he grabbed both Dex's paws in his smaller brown ones, impulsively, and squeezed them. "Thank you," he said, shaking Dex's paws up and down. "I don't know what else to say." The coon squinted up at him. Something about the particular white ring of fur around his face, the shade of brown around it, and his small, flickering brown eyes looked familiar. If only he weren't still in a haze.

"Dex," Twitchy started saying rapidly, his energy seeming to return in a gush. "This is Professor Keener, he's the dean of our forestry school, and his office is in the building we just came from. I've been tutoring his son."

The coon blinked. "Professor . . . Keener? William Keener?" he said dimly. He had no idea what to say that wouldn't make him sound like an idiot. What was happening? Was he awake? No, he was surely dreaming. He was free associating things from different parts of his life. That's what was going on. Bits and pieces. Rescuing Twitchy-doing a book report-talking to a school paper reporter before he went to the martial arts tournament-being in a hospital-waiting for news from a doctor. That's where all this was coming from. Had to be.

He was going to wake up in bed any minute, he was sure, next to someone in a Baby Blue hideout, or in the woods. Next to Rian, and - no, he hoped he didn't wake up just yet, actually. Not until he saw what else would happen. "I read your book on the meat industry in middle school," the vegetarian coon said. "It had a . . . well, it was important to me. I cast my first vote for you when you ran for President. The Forest Furries party! I campaigned for you in my high school, even. I think we got twenty votes."

"Oh," joked the adult ferret, with a hesitant laugh. "So that's where they came from."

Dex shook his head. "I . . . lost track of things for a couple years after that. I had no idea you were teaching now. Or here," he said.

The ferret also seemed at a loss as to what exactly he should be saying or doing. It wasn't every day that you rescued someone, and it wasn't every day that someone close to you was rescued, either, so he defaulted to making small talk. "Umm, dean. Administration. I don't teach any more," he said awkwardly. "I used to hire a student assistant every now and then, but I've given it up. The kids here, they're on board when it's all saving the rainforest, but you know, they lose interest when it comes to the hard, boring stuff, the details. No one wants to shake up his own life, really-convenience wins out every time."

He waved his paw dismissively and returned to matters at hand. "Listen, son, I don't know how you and Twitch know each other, but you did a good thing today. I was on the committee that just gave Twitchy here an award, you know. We take character into account. He's not our typical straight A student who only cares about his grades."

"He doesn't have to do any service for his scholarship, and he's taking an accelerated course load, but he's still been tutoring Jeremy since spring break. My boy is . . . well, he processes information a little differently than most of us, and it's been a rough year. But this fellow always has more going on than you think," he jerked his head at Twitchy. "He's tutoring some kid at City College, too. Why, for weeks he begged me to have a meeting with that fur because he's interested in environmental policy or something. Twitch has a soft spot for furs at lesser schools. I mean, with all due respect, if you know anyfur who goes there, a City College student? It's not exactly a school known for its rigor. But Twitch would hardly take no for an answer. It was a flurry of, 'But he's different. What if he did this? What if he did that? What if he took a summer course here? What if he were applying here?' before I finally told him I just don't hire kids any more."

Dex looked at the rabbit out of the corners of his eyes, but Twitchy was staring down at his own feet. "Professor Keener," the rabbit said, pausing long enough for a body-shaking cough, "this is Dex from City College, actually. We were just exchanging some notes for his final and he was, ummm, in the right place at the right time."

The ferret looked embarrassed and started to say something, but Dex raised both paws to interrupt him.

"No special treatment!" the raccoon blurted out. "You shouldn't have said that, Twitch! I am in the middle of transferring here and if I get the money to come, and if there's a job or a course with you then just tell me where to get an application and I'll apply for it next year like everyone else. Please, Professor Keener, it was only a small fire. Your son would have been fine! Any fur in my place would have done the same thing. I don't want to step on anyone's toes. You ought to know too it's not like I was alone, when I went down there was already someone at the door trying to get in, or else I probably would have left. His name starts with B, I think, and he already goes here, so you might write to him. Twitch, can you give Professor Keener that kid's-"

"For goodness' sake, Dex," the ferret said, breaking down and wrapping his arms around the coon to hug him. "Call me Bill."

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

"Hey, watch where you're going!" barked Jax as he stood up from the ground and looked off after the collie vanishing into the distance. The other dog, looking backward over his shoulder the whole time, had run right into the tracking hound and knocked him over, dashing by as though something were on fire-or rather, as though something were still on fire.

"Jerk," the tracking hound muttered, as he brushed off the trench coat he'd borrowed from Rian earlier to cover his Boy Scout uniform and resumed sniffing as he climbed the stairs up to the laboratory door. Smoke was still billowing out of the basement window.

He opened the door and stepped onto the basement stairway when he caught sight of a firefighter at the bottom of the stairwell waving his paw at him. "Hey, get out of here, kid!" the firefur shouted. "Umm, if you had a class or something it's cancelled! Run along."

Heedless, Jax continued to walk down the stairs, sniffing carefully and tilting his head in the firefighter's direction, as he neared the laboratory door. "What happened here?" he asked, ignoring the firefighter's gestures for him to leave. "A couple friends of mine were down there. I smell them."

The firefighter shook his head. "Small chemical fire. Lab accident. Someone was taken to the medical center. Could have been serious, but some kid put it out in time. I'm just going to write up a report and send it to the school safety people. Cite them for not having a fire extinguisher in the front of the room. They better hope neither of those kids is litigious. Now I really need to ask you to-"

Jax knelt down at the bottom of the stairs and touched the linoleum floor, then raised his paw to his nose, and blanched. "Do you guys scrub this down? Do some kind of chemical analysis? What is that stench?"

The firefighter regarded him skeptically. "Chemical analysis? Do you watch CSI or something? It's a school lab fire with no serious damage, kid. I'll file a report and the school can decide what they want to do. Kind of surprising, to be honest. No prior record of safety problems here."

Jax shook his head. "It's just - I think the smells in that room - it's like they've been scrubbed - like with ammonia or something." He frowned. "Like someone was trying to cover up some of them."

The firefighter shrugged. "Some beakers were broken after the fire was put out. The kid who put it out carried two other furs out of here I was told, probably knocked some things over in the smoke and spilled something like that. Look, kid I really need to ask you to leave now while I finish up and check the rest of the building. Why don't you go call your friends? See if they're okay?"

The Scout dog nodded uncertainly and got to his feet, furrowing his brow worriedly. "Good idea," he said. "I think someone better check on him."

"Hey," the firefighter called after him, "Don't look so worried. I heard your bunny friend's going to be fine."

Jax shook his head as he headed up the stairs and reached into his pocket for his cell phone. "That's not who I'm worried about," he muttered.

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

Dex stared from the business card in his paw to the door that had swung shut behind the two ferrets for a good five minutes before he turned back to Twitchy, shaking his still foggy head.

"That's why you didn't want anyfur here to know we're dating," the coon concluded, pointing after the two ferrets. "You have no credibility to recommend me for a job if I'm your boyfriend."

The rabbit blinked. "That's one reason-" he started to say. "But Dex- I - I - "

The coon dropped on to his knees, to be on a level with Twitchy's bed. "Well you just had to tell me! But it hardly matters now, does it?" The coon shook his head. "You've been tutoring his kid since spring break? That's almost as soon as we got back from the fairground . . . I was starting to think you didn't want to be with me, really. But all this time you've been doing things-I mean, not like changing my diapers and putting me in a costume-" said the coon, sounding impressed, "you do, like-real life things. I suppose that paper of mine you said you lost- "

"I proofread it and was going to give it to him when you were definitely coming here," admitted Twitchy, blushing and looking down at his footpaws. "It was good." The rabbit coughed, gathered his breath, then began speaking quickly, the wheels in his mind turning and adjusting to the present scenario. "You should leave it for him yourself with a note late tonight or first thing in the morning before you go to talk with him tomorrow. That way he'll glance at it before you come. Don't bring it for him to read afterward; that's not as smart; he'll put it in a pile and forget about it. His kid's not bad, just hyperactive. I volunteered to tutor him after I found his dad's book in your room. I mean you only have like ten books, Dex. Don't get all modest on me and say you can't impose on his dad's time any further than you already have or something like that. I swear if you do I will get out of this bed and I will spank you so hard . . ."

Dex shook his head. "This is the weirdest night of my life," the raccoon said. "I can't believe any of this is happening."

"I can!" the rabbit said firmly, sitting up. He wheezed as the oxygen tubes slid a little too far up his nose and the IV jostled, then he slumped back down, and let out a loud, oddly contented yawn. "Listen to me, honey. Listen to me carefully. That Jeremy was in there- that he'd run out like that and scare me half to death - that a fire would start - that his dad would come here tonight - I couldn't have known those things. But look what happened when things went wrong. You saved me. I mean, you really saved me, Dex. I opened my eyes and it's like - it's like I saw you for the first time. I can believe everything that happened after that. The world owes you, kitten. It's like it just needed a nudge in the right direction. I just wanted-"

The raccoon nosed at Twitchy's whiskers. "Hey, stay down there," he said gently. "Calm, remember? What do you mean 'really' saved you? Oh-" the coon blushed and looked at the floor. "I guess last time I got in as much trouble myself, huh? Look, Twitch, I just opened a door and carried you across a room. It was a small fire and you hit the alarm. You didn't help things any by passing out, but still, you probably didn't even need me. This karma stuff doesn't sound like you. You're always saying things like 'Even a miracle needs a paw,' and 'Every problem has an engineering solution.' There were no miracles tonight. There was just an accident and I feel terrible if I benefit from it because somefur almost got hurt really badly - you. Are you sure you feel all right?"

"I just want," Twitchy continued, gripping Dex's paw tight in his, "for you not to spend your whole life in anyone's shadow, Dex. You can come to this school, and you don't have to be the kid I tutored, and you can still be a part of Baby Blue, but you don't have to feel like you're just Rian's number two, because everyone on this campus will think you're a - no, I mean, they'll know you're a - no, I mean, they'll all love you here - "

The rabbit grabbed Dex's paw in both of his and looked up at the raccoon, and for a minute he couldn't see anything besides a relieved Dex standing over a collapsed circus tent in his tattered karate uniform, one paw bristling with splinters, playfully saluting him.

"They'll all love you," he whimpered, a tear streaming down his face, as he said to his boyfriend, and to himself, for the first time, "as much as I do. Get me out of here, Dex," he said, suddenly anxious, reaching down with one paw to slip the IV out of his arm, and then tugging on the raccoon's paws imploringly. "I don't need this junk," he said. "I just need to be with you. Bring me home. Stay with me. Turn off our phones. Lock the door. Forget about everything else."

Twitchy looked up at the raccoon and concluded with a plaintive whimper that surprised even himself, "We can do whatever you want."

Next time: Morning After! Dex and Twitchy wake up, after. . . what exactly?

Episode 9: Morning After!

"There you finally are, Rian," said the tracking hound, raising the tent flap and peeking into Roger's mobile command center in its new location, spying the wolf slumped, half-asleep, in a beanbag chair, only a pawprint-patterned, white terrycloth bathrobe. Roger was out with the new recruits-digging tunnels.

The wolf started up. "I have it! I mean I did it! I mean-it's in your mailbox! Oh," he relaxed as he recalled where he was. "Hi, Jax. Come in. Don't mind me. You just go ahead with the recruits. It's better if I'm not recruiting anyway. It would be like, Hello, Rian, I'm a ticking time bomb; oh, hello, Mr. Time Bomb, let me give you a paw with that diaper and take you straight to my friends."

The tracking hound, back, on Baby Blue territory, in his comfortable Boy Scout uniform, took a deep breath and raised his eyes to the sky-or in this case, the tent roof-and shook his head. "I'm sorry I didn't answer your voice mails about getting lost in the library," the dog explained patiently, "But that's not really the kind of orienteering I do and it looks like you found your way out. I was a little busy last night trying to find Dex. I never did and I'm still not sure where he ended up. Did you get your term paper turned in by whenever it was due?"

Rian crossed his arms, bit his lip, and said archly, "I don't want to talk about it."

"All right, well, there are worse things in the world. I'm sure you'll survive one bad grade. I need to talk to you about Tw-" Jax said.

Then the wolf broke into a giggle and clapped his paws, "Yeah, I'm all done!" he interrupted, and hopped up, wagging his tail. "I goooot you! It was for sociology so I wrote it about potty-training around the world! Cuz I'm awesome! I'll go first! I have a surprise for you too, Jax! I really like how you've been with the recruits. Almost everyone's mentioned you. You remember all their names! And your buddy system chart has worked terrific in keeping track of everyone. Have you thought about wearing full-time? It'd be cute on you. And I think it's time I talk with Roger about getting you promoted. The Circle's been frozen a little too long. It doesn't need to be just me, Dex, and Twitchy and Squeak, you know, especially not now that Rog has gotten so busy. Did you know he-"

The tracking hound's ears flicked. He had stopped listening to Rian really, and opened and closed his muzzle several times, then glanced over his shoulder. "Oh, I get it," he said finally. "You'll tell me, and Dex will tell Ace?" The dog's ears drooped. "I hoped we'd be together for this. No fur deserves it more than my-"

Rian yawned, squeakily. "Still a bit sleepy. Maybe I'm not explaining myself right," the wolf said, as he poured milk from a self-cooling pitcher into a mug, and handed it to Jax, gesturing invitingly toward the half-eaten plate of peanut butter cookies on the command center table that had provided his breakfast. "I'm hoping you'll see how we are, in the meetings and stuff, and you can, you know, show Ace how to be more like that. So that when he does join us, it can be a smooth, happy transition. Plus you'll get two celebrations that way."

The black-and-brown dog flopped down into a beanbag chair and stared up at Rian. "You want to promote me ahead of my boyfriend?" he said blankly. "Did you talk with Dex about this?"

Rian took a deep breath and slid some of the cookies onto a plate, offering them to Jax. "Look, I think Dex and Twitchy are out recruiting," he said. "I haven't been able to reach those eager beavers yet. But I don't need to tell you, Jax, because you know Ace better than anyone, that he can be a little, well, tactless."

Jax crossed his arms and did his best to look indignant from his slumped position in the beanbag chair, shaking his head at the milk and cookies.

"That is the most ridiculous and untrue thing I've ever heard," the dog said. "Ace is the sweetest, most protective, most considerate fur that I know. You obviously don't understand him."

Rian looked flustered. "You say he's insensitive all the time, Jax," the wolf pointed out.

"It's different when I say it," the tracking hound answered petulantly. "I'm sorry but I refuse your promotion or recommendation or whatever it is. We're a package deal. And I can't help thinking this is really because you don't like the fact that Ace is the only leader on our team who's politically conservative."

The wolf put a paw on Jax's shoulder and flopped back into the beanbag chair next to his. "It has absolutely nothing to do with that fact which does not bother me in any way shape or form," he said too hastily, then added, "Although, really, I don't understand how someone like us can be-" The wolf stopped when he noticed Jax glaring at him and took a different tack. "Listen, it's just that being in the Circle requires discretion. That's part of why we call it the Secret Circle. Ace is, well, he can't keep his mouth shut. He has a habit of saying the wrong thing."

Jax took a single cookie from the plate Rian was holding, and munched on it decisively, as though gathering his strength for a fight. "I know he can come on a bit strong," the tracking hound said, "but Ace is a combat leader, you know! He can't tell furs they're good at combat if they're not! They might get cocky and get themselves hurt. Besides, he's a very important member of this group. I appreciate how nice you all try to be, but sometimes, he's the only fur here who will tell people on this team things they need to hear."

Rian shook his head. "Jax, I keep my finger on everyone's pulse, and my paw on everyone's diaper, and I am proud to say," he replied patiently, "that no fur who reports to me is insensitive enough that he needs to be yelled at like that."

Both of them started as the tent flap stirred and the lynx, his safari outfit already marked with wet spots, paint splatters, and grass stains, staggered in, a newspaper held under his arm. Jax, despite the worries swirling in his head, wrapped his arms around the lynx's waist as he walked by. He hadn't seen him the whole night he'd been trying to track down Dex and he felt tremendously relieved.

For the moment, though, they had an errand to run. Ace looked down, patted him on the head and gently brushed his paws away. "Rian," the lynx said, doing a double take, "when you didn't show up at start time I assumed you were already on top of things. Why on earth are you lounging around here?"

The wolf smiled uneasily and looked at Jax out of the corner of his eyes, as though saying, 'Here we go,' to him. "Good morning to you too, Ace," he said. "I'm recovering from a very disconcerting yesterday and night of not much sleeping. After I've napped a little I'll be ready to face the day."

The lynx shook his head. "You haven't seen the newspaper article," he remarked sourly, "or you wouldn't be moping around in your bathrobe, I hope."

The wolf looked surprised, then moved, then surprised again. "I am planning to do something about that today," he finally said seriously. "How come all these people read the city arts section? It's very sweet of you to mention it to me, Ace. I didn't know you cared about my relationship. In fact as soon as I'm more awake I thought I'd go over to Serry's theater in the fur to apologize and explain I didn't know her director was under fire for casting her and to let her know that nothing in the world is more important to me than-"

Ace's eyes had narrowed and he cut the wolf off abruptly, snapping, "I have no idea what you're talking about and I could do with hearing a little less about your girlfriend, actually. The whole world doesn't revolve around your love life, you know."

The lynx thrust a slender university newspaper in front of him and pointed at a black-and-white photo on the front page. "And I bet it's a lot less likely to end with you getting laid," he continued firmly, "but maybe-you should check on your friends who nearly got blown up last night instead."

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

"That was amazing," the raccoon moaned, a dreamy expression on his face, and one paw still held under his tail, feeling where the rabbit had been as though he wanted to keep feeling Twitchy entering him, again, and again, as though it pained him that the bunny had eventually withdrawn.

"It was the best night of my life. To actually do - I mean, not just paw off in diapers goof around kind of stuff, but you know, full-blown sex. The real thing. I've needed that so bad. Thank goodness nothing happened to you. I've been taking you for granted, Twitch. As soon as I got to your lab and saw the smoke spilling out, it's like I flashed right back to the last time you were in trouble. I felt just like I did then. I could have lost you that time, big bro. Not going to happen; no one around to get in my way this time. I felt like - I can do anything for my bunny. And you repaid me for it, didn't you? You made things worth the wait." He tilted his head, his eyes glinting, as he regarded Twitchy knowingly. "You're the one who's really been practicing for this, huh?"

"Oh, Dex," Twitchy said, patting and smoothing out the black stripe that ran down the center of Dex's headfur as the raccoon trembled, on the brink of releasing into the soft, puffy cloth diaper unfolded underneath him, but holding himself back. "Sweetheart. You can relax already. I'm just glad nofur else was there," the rabbit said.

"I kind of got hit by the mass of all that smoke, I knocked some things over when I put out the burner fire, and the smoke overwhelmed me, and I fell over. That's all. Be more careful, sweety. What if there'd been an actual fire, not just a smoke bo-err, huge-scary-looking-but totally harmless-smoke explosion-of smoke? It looked a whole lot worse than it was. You charged in there like a tiger and you practically pounced on me. It might have gone to your head that it was something serious cuz that school paper kid just totally randomly happened to be there by sheer coincidence in no way that I could have arranged or predicted. He's always blowing things out of proportion; I've read his stuff and it's so pulpy. I shudder to think what his little news story about you is going to say. He'll make it sound like you carried me out of a burning building. Well-now the real world's seen your heedless, heroic self. There'll be a little gossip about you now before you show up, and that will be a nice confidence builder before- Do you think, you might do your recruiting stuff in my part of town tomorrow? I want to introduce you to some furs here. There's a big lecture most of the administrator type people will be at, and probably some of the people deciding about your aid application, and I think we can catch them at the after party. There's one professor I think should meet the local hero - I'm tutoring his - Hey-" Twitchy said, looking down, "why aren't you finishing, Dex-? Are you okay?"

Dex whined and strained desperately to keep himself from cumming, and grabbed the rabbit, rolling him over. Twitchy giggled and pawed at the coon futilely as he nosed at the bunny's length. Dex began licking at the head of his cock, where the residue of his prior emissions was just beginning to dry.

"Come on, Twitch," the raccoon said, "don't leave me to cum half a virgin still, sweety. I'm making up for lost time here."

"Oh but-it's ten o'clock," the rabbit said, looking over Dex at his alarm clock as the raccoon slid down to rest his weight on Twitchy's knees and focus more intensely on the bunny's crotch. "Rian's going to be starting for the day-"

"Rian will be fine, it's not like he doesn't have a billion other friends. He can take care of himself," Dex said, his eyes glinting, as the rabbit's member stiffened. "At least for another two hours." He took a long, gentle lick, and kissed its head, causing Twitchy to kick his large feet in the air involuntarily. While they were up there though, he gripped Dex's shoulders between them, squeezing inwards. "Or three hours," the coon continued, and added, just before he thrust three fingers into his newly penetrated rectum, as though wishing he could still have the rabbit back there and in his muzzle at the same time, and began sucking on Twitchy in earnest, "Or twenty-four."

The rabbit's eyes snapped open and he ran a paw over the warm, slightly wet spot on his bed. He'd been dreaming. He'd been sleeping so little lately, no wonder he'd dreamed when he finally fell into a deep one.

Is what he dreamed what had happened? No. It had been different. Dex's cute little whiskers were singed. Someone else had been there. Where was he now? He was in his dorm room. Where was Dex? When did they get back here? Last night they had-

He took a deep breath, and kept caressing the warm imprint Dex had left on his mattress.

He let the smell of the raccoon-soggy, smoky, burnt-who had left a urine stain on his bed wash over him. It smelled wonderful.

Yesterday Twitch, if he was being entirely honest, would have said he was probably gay. This morning he knew.

He heard the door creak open and swing shut, and flopped his head sideways. "Dex!" he exclaimed weakly as the raccoon, wearing his karate uniform, entered and locked the door behind him, carrying a bowl of cereal with a spoon in it. "What are you doing? Why'd you go out dressed like that?"

Dex blushed. "Only thing I had with me that wasn't burnt or dirty. I had to put something on. I just ran into the cafeteria with a bowl," he explained, as he padded across the room and hopped up on to Twitch's mattress. "I'm bringing you breakfast in bed."

The rabbit reached up and accepted the bowl hesitantly in both paws, sniffing, and shifting himself backward so he could lean up against the wall enough to eat. "Hey!" the bunny said, "These are Trix! My parents would never let me have these! Too much sugar, they said. I didn't know the cafeteria had them. They must be new." He fidgeted. "Can you get me one of my energy drinks from the fridge please?"

"No!" said Dex, crossing his arms and looking down at the rabbit sternly as he began crunching on cereal. "I threw them all away. Well, I mean I emptied the cans and recycled them. I'm going to ask Kyle to get rid of the ones at the hideout too. I don't like how those energy drinks were making you act. All jumpy and paranoid. I thought all night about how you of all furs could have let something explode and knock you over, and then I remembered those things you just started drinking like twelve of a day-I'm sure that's what was making you so nervous and caused this whole mess. It's not like you to have an accident. Well, a laboratory accident, I mean. Lavatory accidents I expect."

Dex sat down on the empty space at the foot of the rabbit's bed, bent over, and, with both paws, started massaging one of the bunny's large feet. Twitchy shivered as the raccoon continued speaking, "And that's just rule one. No more all-nighters either. I'm sure the worst that would happen if you work a few less hours is that you'd get an A- or a B+ on something."

Twitchy's ears fell flat, hanging from the side of his head. "I've never gotten a B on anything," he said, sounding depressed by the suggestion. He would have protested more, but he felt a sudden release in a spot right in the arch of his foot that he didn't even know had felt tight, and it made him slump a little lower into the bed. Dex's foot massages felt good-real good-he must know something about pressure points from doing karate, Twitchy mused.

Dex shook his head and continued speaking as his fingers worked their way down the rabbit's other foot. "Sleep's too important. Your health's too important. To me, if not to you. I'm instituting a tuck-in time if I come here. If you're not in bed by midnight, I will find you, wherever you are, and carry you back to it."

The rabbit whimpered and looked up over the milk in his cereal bowl, which had changed color as the sugar from the cereal spread. He had been carried to bed once already; it was slowly coming back to him. "Dex," he said, "when did you carry me here? Did we really spend most of last night . . .?"

The coon nodded. "Alone in the planetarium," he said gently as he continued massaging. "I needed to take you somewhere that would calm you down and where you wouldn't be frantic about getting on a computer either. You were being all jittery and weird and you kept crying. I thought you were going to have some kind of attack if I left you in that medical center all night. The nurse said you were fine, except maybe emotionally. When ferret junior snuck back to visit us, I asked him if there was one and he let us in and showed me the controls before he got dragged home again."

The raccoon looked up at Twitch over his large foot as he continued massaging it, unknotting tight spots the rabbit didn't know were there, and prompted him, "Do you remember now? I know you used to love them when you were little-well, littler. It worked, too. You were giggling and pointing out constellations to me in no time. I put it in galaxy mode and you said something like, 'That's Earth! Turns out we're all living in a cramped little neighborhood, on top of each other, with furs just like us.' Remember? Makes you feel better to remember we're part of a whole big universe, huh? Or maybe it just makes you feel like an even smaller bunny?"

Twitchy nodded slowly and said, with a whimper, "I'm sorry I pulled away from you when we got back here, Dex. I'm sorry I just huddled in a ball until we fell asleep. I'm sorry nothing, you know, sexual, happened. I'm sorry I've been so weird lately, or always, about us. The reason I've been putting you off is that-"

"Hey," the raccoon said gently, stopping his massage to scootch up further on the bed and pat the rabbit's head. "It's okay. I'm glad we could just be together. To be honest, Twitch, I blame myself for the stress you've obviously been under, too. I mean, here I keep pressing you, you must think I'd roll into bed with the first diaperfur I could find. And I know I'm not exactly a normal babyfur."

"No, Dex, you aren't," said Twitchy, sniffling, as he smiled up at the raccoon. "There's only one of you. I'm glad we could just be together, too. I've needed something like this real bad I think. A real, honest-to-goodness date. No fetish content or anything. Just-me and a special guy. Really focused on each other. For a little while there really was no one in the whole world except the two of us."

He stared down into the discolored milk for a long minute, and then added, "It was the best night of my life."

Next time: New Day! Dex walks into a different world. But is he really the one who's been made different by the night before?

Episode 10. New Day!

"Okay, I insist on seeing you eat breakfast, too," Twitchy said to Dex, as the two, wearing their backpacks, and Dex dressed in a passably fitting black tee-shirt and black pair of jeans that Twitchy had borrowed from a dorm neighbor, made their way across the bustling quad, starting to warm up in the mid-morning daylight, "before you meet with Professor Keener."

The raccoon nodded and sighed. "Yes, Twitch," he said patiently as they entered the cafeteria and scanned the room for a seat, eventually settling at a table. "And I left my paper for him after I made the corrections like you said." The coon opened his backpack. "Can you tell Jax I'm fine and ask him what's going on when you check in?" he said, frowning at his cell phone. "It looks like he tried to call me four times last night. And give Ace-" Dex fumbled around in his backpack for a minute, before he pulled out a sheaf of papers, and frowned at it.

"Yeah," Twitchy said, nodding and kicking the coon's knee under the table. "I'll keep the scouts off your back for a little while. Finish telling me what to do. Give Ace what?"

"I think I did something really stupid when I printed out that paper," the coon said, shaking his head. "Really, really stupid! I'll be right back. I need to run and grab it back from his mailbox."

Twitchy looked at his watch. "Dex, you're meeting him in half an hour! Just-"

But the coon was already dashing out of the room. Twitchy was about to get up and follow him when a pair of tiny paws grabbed him from behind and covered his eyes. "Hi Twitch!" the little ferret shouted, hopping up and down behind him. "Guess who?"

Twitchy sighed. "Umm, I don't know," he said patiently. "Jeremy Keener."

"You're good at this game!" the ferret said releasing his paws, and hopping down from the empty chair he'd been standing on to sit next to the rabbit, shouting a bunch of questions that weren't really questions. "Where'd your friend go! How come I'd never seen him before! Did you see the newspaper story about him! They quoted everything I said! It's because I'm good at telling stories! I'll tell one now! Once upon a time when I was in Tokyo I went to Akihabara it's where they keep all the anime stuff when they're not filming anime-"

"Oh no," the rabbit moaned. "I almost forgot about the newspaper!" Twitchy spun around, snatched a copy of the campus newspaper from the small ferret, and unfolded it. His eyes widened. Then, as he read further and further, he sunk into his chair, relieved. "I can't believe it," the rabbit said. "Cited for one missing fire extinguisher. That's the whole fire department report. I'm hardly mentioned. The rest of this is all about . . . " He looked up at the headline.

Jeremy grinned down at him. "Yeah they left out the boring stuff!" he exclaimed, bouncing on the chair. "I think it's cool that they don't know your friend's name, it makes me sound like Jimmy Olsen or something! Do you have like a watch that will call him! Is that why he showed up so fast! Can I get one too! Can you help me with my algebra homework now?"

Twitchy frowned and rolled up the newspaper, swatting at the middle schooler with it. "Get down. I think first you better tell me why you were so upset with your dad that you were hiding in a chemistry lab supply closet. That was very bad. You scared me half to death-maybe more than half. You're lucky to have a dad so important. I mean, your dad ran for President. My dad fixes air conditioners."

The little ferret crossed his arms and let himself drop onto the chair next to Twitchy with a thud. "What's not to be upset about?" he pouted. "Five years ago, my dad was cool. I've gone to schools in China, and Brazil, and Peru. He'd be out all day talking with furs about setting up national parks and carbon markets and things. That's when he still used to do stuff. He never recovered after he didn't get enough votes in that election for his party to get allowance money or public funding or whatever it's called. Now we're stuck in this boring place and I never go anywhere because he's become a sell-out."

Twitchy grimaced. "I think you're exaggerating," he said. "Your dad just wants to provide for you. And you're at the age when everyone's dad starts to seem less cool. Trust me, I know. I used to be my father's little helper once, too."

The little ferret shook his head. "You don't understand. He's given up. Do you know what he's here for? This school made him a dean so it can do whatever it wants, and still look like it cares about the environment because he works here. It should change its name to 'Give-us-a-bazillion-dollars University.' The president of the oil spill company spoke here last week, for goodness' sake. They gave him a prize because he donates a lot of money and sends his kids here. A prize! For clean-up efforts! When his company made the mess in the first place. Even I know that's bad. You know where my dad was when that prize dinner happened? Signing copies of his book across town. He doesn't want to rock the boat any more."

Twitchy frowned and looked back at the newspaper. "That does sound kind of bad," he admitted, "but I'm sure there's an explanation. And anyway it's no reason to run away and lock yourself in a supply closet!"

The little ferret shook his head. "He doesn't listen to me! He says I should just take my Ritalin and I'll feel better about this place! But he can't use me as an excuse! Some furs like to settle down. Not me!" he hopped up onto the chair again, and held out his arms as though imitating an airplane. "I miss going to different places! I have Internet friends around the world! I'm bored here! I'm like the only kid my age who lives on this campus. You and your friend are neat! And I like the mouse you have sometimes too! I thought maybe you were looking for me when I saw you in the lab and we were playing hide-and-seek! You're good with kids! I can tell! Do you have little brothers! What is your friend's name! Last night was the most exciting thing that's happened on this campus in six months!"

The rabbit shook his head. "Let's hope it stays that way," he said patiently and gestured up to the ferret with one paw. "Just give me your algebra homework."

On the top floor of the laboratory building a short jog away, Dex looked up at the closed office door hesitantly. The paper hadn't been in his mailbox any more. He didn't hear anything from behind the door. If the office was empty, Dex would just snatch it off his desk before he read it, and run out of there. He could switch it for the one in his bag without Twitchy's corrections. He'd never notice. If there were still a few mistakes that would be better than-

As he was standing there, his paw rising to the doorknob, the door creaked open, and he found the tall ferret, about to run out for something, staring down at him. "Good morning, Dex!" he said, sounding happy, and heading back to his desk to sit down. "It's a new day! You're early. Just full of surprises, aren't you?"

The raccoon gulped and fidgeted, unslinging his backpack from his shoulder and walking inside. He saw his paper on the desk. He cringed. It was folded open; the ferret was halfway done reading it. "Listen, Professor Keen-"

"Bill," the ferret corrected him as he looked back down at the paper.

"Bill," Dex said uneasily, "about my paper-"

The ferret chuckled and flipped back to the front page to read the title. "'Baby steps for the environment, Notes on a cost-benefit analysis of biodegradable diapers, as compared to existing reusable cloth alternatives,'" he read. "I like it. It's not saving the rainforest or picking up litter, is it? You came up with this topic for an econ term paper, huh? And ended up writing almost 60 pages about it?"

Dex looked confused and nodded. Was it possible he was only looking at the front side of the pages? The raccoon nodded and smiled nervously. "I kind of got carried away recycling paper. I never print anything on blank pages, so I hope that wasn't distracting-"

The ferret grinned at him. "Oh, I noticed," he said. "You have guts to do something like this at our first meeting, Dex. Even when I had student assistants they would usually just suck up, pardon my language. Quote my own books to me, and tell me what a genius I was. But you're not like that, are you? See, I think I understand," the ferret said, holding up the back side of one page, "what you're saying."

Dex frowned and let himself drop into the ferret's guest chair, feeling like a limp rag as he stared up at the Baby Blue combat plan sketch on the back of another page the ferret hadn't turned yet. "You do?" the raccoon said skeptically.

"I've heard it before, of course," the ferret continued saying.

"You have?" Dex asked, blinking in disbelief.

"Sure," the ferret continued, waving one paw at him as he rested his elbows on his large wooden desk and looked at the piles of ecology and political science books around him. "All the time. Even my son says it to me."

"He does?" said the raccoon, sounding horrified. "Listen, I haven't said anything to your son, I swear. I would never try to recruit someone his age for-" he gestured at the paper vaguely, "all that stuff. It's unethical. He's way too young to talk about or understand it. Way, way too young. I would sooner cut off my own paw than involve a minor. You have to believe me. It has absolutely nothing to do with-"

"Umm, I appreciate your conscientiousness, Dex, and I agree kids shouldn't be in the field, but don't worry, Jeremy's at the age where he's just saying it to me to rebel, he doesn't really understand what's involved," the adult ferret said, for the first time looking at the raccoon a little strangely before resuming a professional demeanor. "I mean, it's easy for furs to sit on the sidelines and criticize you for not doing enough for a cause when they aren't doing anything either. Like there's not enough of that to go around. It's different to hear it from someone who's actually done the work, and tried to give you something you can respond to. Let's see, what's here-"

The ferret turned Dex's paper over and paged through the reverse side of the pages. "Nonviolent strike plans," he commented. Dex gulped. It was a round of notes from when he'd been working up a new raid plan on the academy; the one Roger had told him to keep in his back pocket; with some of the ideas he had assembled on countering Lin Lin's tricks.

"Mission priorities: no team members hurt - I like the team talk," the ferret commented, "that's a nice touch. . . Let's see, entangling weapons that won't cause injury - Training for new recruits -train to be blasted with water - train to be blinded - with flour, why not, that seems safe and it's quite creative, actually - impressive stuff - and I already know you can put out fires," the ferret remarked, then flipped several pages ahead and looked up, grinning, "Now this is my favorite part, even if it's a little unorthodox, and to be honest I'm not quite on board with your suggestions here, Dex; I'm just assuming some of it, given the subject of your paper, is like an inside joke. I like that you have a sense of humor. Trust me-too many furs in our line of work don't. Still, even that this section is there shows how hard you've thought about this from the perspective of the furs on the ground. Or, uh, your teammates, I guess you call them. I don't know if I've ever actually seen it in an operation manual before. But it is a real problem, isn't it-" Dex gulped and sank lower in the chair, staring at his feet, as the ferret read, "New recruits will not be used to going so long without a bathroom break. Ways to deal . . ."

Dex raised a paw. "That's enough," he said, blushing. "You don't need to keep reading."

"You're right," the ferret said, setting the paper down. "I think we understand each other very well."

"We do?" Dex asked, looking up cautiously out of the top of his eyes, trying to gauge if the ferret was joking, but he wasn't sure what to make of the glint in the older fur's eye as he set the paper down.

"Of course," the ferret said. "You're telling me there's a place for policy memos like this," he said, shaking the title page of the paper at Dex, "but it's not enough just to read and write those, is it? We need to combine them with action. You little devil," he said, standing up and tussling the raccoon's headfur as he walked across the room, "Twitch didn't tell me you were a protest organizer, too."

Dex's muzzle hung open for a moment, then closed, as it slowly dawned on him that he wasn't about to be booted of the ferret's office and told never to come near his family again. "I am?" the raccoon said blankly.

"Come on, Dex," the ferret said, dropping the paper on his desk as he looked at his watch. "You're hired, if I haven't said that yet. And we," he said, as he opened the door, and started out, "have work to do."

"But I haven't," the raccoon looked at his watch. "I was just supposed to be here for half an hour - I need to- I'm supposed to be somewhere- Rian's going to need-"

The ferret peeked back in the door in a minute when he noticed Dex wasn't following. "There are just two of us so far. How does second-in-command sound?" he suggested.

The raccoon took a long breath and hopped to his feet, slinging his backpack over his shoulders. "Like a promotion!" Dex answered, and started off after him.

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

Twitchy was laying propped up on his elbows on his bed, sketching on a sketchpad, one paw straying into the diaper he had slipped on, when he heard a knock on his dorm room door. His large ears flicked and he called out, "Come in! It's open."

The door creaked open and a familiar wolf, wearing a soccer tee-shirt and unusually bulky sporting shorts, poked his head in. "Hey," Rian said uneasily, stepping inside and pushing the door shut behind him, "Twitchy. Are you okay? I, uh, read about what happened. I haven't been able to reach Dex yet. Which is kind of weird. Since it's like, noon." He looked around the room suspiciously. "I thought maybe you two were-" he eyed, through the bathroom door, the sodden clothes hanging on Twitchy's shower curtain rod. "Together," he concluded vaguely.

Twitchy smiled at his friend. "Rian," he said brightly, sitting up with his pad and crossing his arms. "I'm glad to see you." He seemed unsure what else to say for a moment, then added belatedly, "Thank you for coming all the way here. We're both fine. Dex and I," he nodded decisively, "are going to be fine."

The wolf looked uncomfortable. "That's good. Better than good. Say, I wanted to talk to you about Dex actually," Rian said. "Fur to fur." Twitchy could hear him crinkle, of course - but Rian was long past the point that that ever made him uncomfortable. "Is he-" the wolf leaned to peek further into the bathroom.

"To be honest, I don't know where Dex is either," the rabbit admitted. "He went to meet with the dad of the cub he saved. I mean," he added, with a blush, "the real cub he saved. And he hasn't come back yet. Did you read the newspaper story? Wasn't it great? It couldn't have been better if I wrote it myself."

Rian fidgeted and looked at the rabbit strangely. "You have that look you get when you beat me at checkers, Twitch."

The rabbit smiled. "I win a lot, don't I?" he said, confidently, but not in a mean way.

Rian shook his head. "Look, Twitch, I need to be straight with you, I've been worried about you for the last few days, and I-well, is everything okay? Certain furs on the team think that, well, there might be something wrong with you. I mean, not like, defective wrong. Just right now." He fumbled. "Not like you're bad. No one is saying that . . . exactly. You're our friend, okay? You're my happy hoppy little bro bunny. But some furs are wondering if, like, your judgment might be compromised. I realize I kind of talk about dating Serry and my feelings for her and what we're doing together, like when we yiffed in-" Rian blushed, feeling himself getting carried away, and moved on, "I know I talk about that a lot-maybe a little too much. But I'm still around, ya know? You can talk to me. I always have time for that. You seem to be under a lot of stress about school and-"

Twitchy shrugged. "Ah," he waved a paw dismissively. "I'm dealing with it. What's the worst that will happen, maybe I'll get an A- or a B+ in something. No big deal. There are worse things that can happen."

"Uh huh," said Rian, leaning forward on his toes, then backward on his heels, eyeing Twitchy from head to toe. "So I'm working on this project, I call it B & K, I'm not quite sure which way to spin it, and I thought it would benefit from your input. Given who's involved, I wouldn't want to do it, without checking in with you."

He leaned forward and whispered something to the rabbit. Twitchy clasped the sketchbook to his chest with both paws as he did, noticing Rian was trying to steal a look at it. He thought about what the wolf had said for a moment and twitched his whiskers. For the first time in a long time, he felt like he and Rian might be in on something together. Partners. Remembering the unexpected pep talk he had gotten from his hideout teammate the other day, the rabbit said, "Kyle," nodding decisively. "I'll help you if it's Kyle."

Rian smiled. "Not the obvious choice to top," he said approvingly. "But then you never do things the obvious way, do you Twitchy?" He poked at the sketchpad he couldn't see, and asked outright, "So what are you drawing?"

"It's a secret," the rabbit said, clutching it tighter to his chest. "I'm working on a big surprise for Dex."

Rian nodded. "I heard talk about something like that," he said, stepping closer to the bed. "So when the accident happened some of us worried-well, I think you better just show it to me."

Twitchy flicked an ear. "Jeez, Rian," the bunny said, holding it out. "You'd think you're the only one who's allowed to surprise Dex or something."

Rian took the pad and turned it upside down, then all the way around, slowly, his head tilting back and forth as he examined the sketch. "This is a floor plan," the wolf concluded, finally, sounding a little surprised and quite relieved. "With toys and things on it."

Twitchy rolled his eyes. "Right, Sherlock. It's the floor plan of a standard two-room university apartment," he confessed. "I've been trying to get one off campus next semester and selling some of my old electronics to make room and raise some capital. See, if Dex comes here, I thought that, I mean, I don't know if he'd want to live together yet, but I thought I'd clear out some stuff and rearrange things to make a place he could chill out in."

The rabbit lowered his voice and looked around the room, shiftily. "A special place," he whispered. "A nursery. You know how much trouble Dex can have easing into the cubby headpsace, I mean for fun. Well, this isn't gonna be an ordinary nursery. It's gonna make him feel really taken care of, I mean like taken care of from 360 degrees. Umm, which is all the angles in a circle," he added critically, squinting up at Rian, "so it's like saying 'from every angle' - in case you don't know that."

Then he took the plan back and started pointing at things on it with his pencil. "The days of Dex feeling sad and lonely when he's kit-like are over. Just for starters, I'm gonna rig a pulley," he explained, getting visibly excited as he did, "that can hook to the old harness you gave him, and lift him directly in the air from the playpen to the crib, and from the crib to the playpen. When he's regressed, his little paws will never have to touch the floor. He won't even have to crawl from place to place without help!"

Twitchy grinned up at the wolf. "I think I can do it. He's not that heavy. Squeak can help me figure out the right thickness of rope and stuff. There'll be a tub I can give him baths in, not just a shower like here. They'd all be bubble baths of course, and I thought that I could suspend a couple of our spare river nets above the shower curtain," he tapped the spot for the tub three times with the tip of his pencil, "and store bath toys up there, and connect a cord that's juuuust out of reach unless you stand on the potty, which we know he's never going near when he's at my place, so that when he's in the bubble bath, I could cover him with bubbles, and make him cover his face with his paws, and play peek-a-boo, but then I'd hop up and pull the cord, and he'd open them just in time to see all his favorite bath toys falling into the bubbles around him at once. And I'll put a baby monitor in the playpen, and one in the crib, but here's the cool part about that-I think I can rig the monitors to call or text my cell phone when he cries. So even if I'm like, a few blocks away, and he's in kit mode, he'll know one of his caretakers will always be keeping an eye-or an ear-out for him."

"Huh," Rian said, holding the paper close to his nose, then at arm's length away, shaking his head. "You know what?" he finally said, eying the rabbit appraisingly. "That sounds great, Twitch." The wolf shifted from one foot to another uncertainly. "I'm kind of jealous," he added good-naturedly, relaxing into a smile.

Twitchy smiled back. "You know what?" he said, nodding in satisfaction, as one paw reached back into his diaper. "You should be. Umm, I mean, everyone should be. Dex is a very special guy, and he may be friends with y-all of you, but I'm the one he's dating. I can't wait to see the look on his face when I take him to it for the first time. He can spend whole weekends in the playpen if he wants and, and uh - umm - you know, if you'll excuse me, Rian, talking about this has reminded me that I really need to do something bad."

Rian raised an eyebrow and looked down at Twitchy's wrist, above the waistband of his plastic undergarment. "What," the wolf asked incredulously as he put the pad down on the rabbit's desk, "you mean like right now, while I'm standing here?"

Twitchy waved his single free paw at him. "Nature calls," he said as he flopped over onto his side and started humping sideways against his paw, blushing only slightly. "Wouldn't be in a diaper if I could control it, right? Thanks for dropping by. Can you be a good big brother and click the little lock button on the side of the door on your way out so I don't have to get up and walk over there? I'd be soooo grateful I'll take your next messy change. Tell everyone I'll be back at the hideout to relieve K later on."

Rian shook his head, turned, clicked the lock switch on, and let it swing shut behind him. He was outside the dorm building when the tracking hound rejoined him.

"Are they okay?" Jax asked, back in his borrowed trench coat. "What did you find out? Did they-"

"No," said Rian, and glared at the dog. "They definitely didn't. Twitch is too pent-up. I found out that except for the accident things are fine," he went on, wagging a paw at the Boy Scout. "Better than I thought even. Twitchy is our friend. I appreciate that you're concerned. But I'm ordering an end to this sneaking around. I don't want to hear any other gossip and speculation about him."

Jax raised an eyebrow. "But he's been so secretive lately, and then the accident site-somefur was trying to cover something up about it, I'm sure-"

"Something just got spilled that screwed up your nose, like the fire department said. Jeez, Jax. Don't think so much about things. Your face will stay scrunched up like that. It turns out Twitchy has been working on a perfectly innocent surprise for Dex," the wolf explained. "It was right in his paws when I walked in and with a little coaxing he showed me his whole plan; it's great. And I'm not about to tell you what it is in case you spoil it."

Jax's eyes narrowed. "So, you showed up unannounced and asked about this surprise," he mused out loud, "and after months of secrecy and paw-wringing surrounding this relationship he casually handed you a piece of paper he just happened to have nearby that conveniently explains everything? That seems a little strange, doesn't it?"

Rian wagged a paw at him again, in case it hadn't taken the first time. "Didn't I just order you not to say things like that? He's recovering from an injury and I think he's coming to terms with the fact that he won't have a 7.5 or a 3.0 or a-" the wolf calculated quickly on his fingers, looked flustered, then gave up, "or whatever the top of the grade scale is, I forget. I'd hoped that you would make Ace more sensitive. But I think maybe he's making you less sensitive, Jax. Maybe it's better that he's the one out recruiting right now."

The tracking hound raised his eyes to the ceiling and shook his muzzle. "I'm just worried that something will happen they'll both feel bad about," he said. "There's been so much weirdness about sex there . . . Twitchy can't be very experienced. Who knows what he expects? And poor Dex has been through so many disappointments. If it happens under a false pretense to boot . . . ."

"Look," Rian laid a paw on Jax's shoulder and motioned for him to step into an alleyway-an unnecessary precaution, since no fur nearby knew either of them, but the tracking hound shrugged and followed him. There the wolf said, "Confidentially, Dex is my best friend."

Jax frowned. "That's not confidential," the dog said.

"No, but this is," Rian continued, a paw reaching for his double-diapered crotch protectively as he thought about it. "Being pawed by Dex is a bit like being used as a punching bag. I'm sure it's fine if you're, oh, I don't know, an insensitive cat who likes that sort of thing."

Jax rolled his eyes as the wolf continued, "I felt too bad to say anything after I nudged him a couple times because it was obvious that he was still trying sooo hard-and wanted so badly-to make me feel good whenever he tried to stroke me, or to, umm, finger-" the wolf shivered as though he had a chill and skipped ahead. "The point is-he's very sweet and he tried really hard. Hard is definitely the operative word. I couldn't bring myself to say anything after, like, the third time. He just looked so hopeful and anxious and his eyes were so big when he asked how I felt. How could I say anything negative? Dex is good at lots of things, but he just does not have a natural feel for what will please other boys. I chalk it up to him never pawing for so long after he got injured. So I've just tried to give him oodles of good examples. I've done bigger and better scenes for Dex than anybody, he gets double-extra-special play treatment from me, and I'm sure he will only keep getting better. But I'm not surprised he and Twitch have been sluggish about the whole, you know, hanky panky business. Don't make it more awkward by looking over their shoulders."

"Okay," the tracking hound conceded, crossing his arms. "I will lay off. Maybe Twitch was just going through a rough patch in school. But I better not catch wind of any other dodgy behavior behind Dex's back. Let me make this clear to you-" the Boy Scout raised a finger and pointed it at Rian's nose. "I told you Ace is more sensitive than you think. Well, I'm tougher than you think, too."

Rian shrugged. "Fair enough," he said.

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

"Hello, President Tanner," the adult ferret said, grinning brightly as he breezed into the imposing jaguar's office uninvited, sat down, and pulled his guest chair over to a spot where he could lean against the door as he sat down on it. "It's a new day!"

"Bill?" the university president said, looking up at him blankly. "How did you get in here?"

The ferret, who was wearing a rumpled, pressed blue shirt with the collar open and no tie, shrugged as he proceeded to make himself comfortable, and put his feet up on the president's low glass table. "Turns out when you're a dean and you say you have a meeting with the university president furs believe you! Nice perk."

"That secretary," the jaguar sighed and shook his head. "Well you'll have to go. Send me an e-mail about whatever it is you want to talk about. I need to leave to meet the Vice-President of China and some of our board members in fifteen minutes, we're having a private talk before his lecture this afternoon."

"Really?" said the ferret activist innocently, looking at his watch. "I didn't know that! Seems like there are a lot of off-the-books meetings between board members I'm not invited to. Well, gosh, what a coincidence. I dropped by to talk with you about how our endowment money's being invested in China. I've been reviewing those investments very carefully and many of them strike me as, how can I say, not really consistent with some of the things we stand for, as a non-profit institution of higher learning. I mean, if we don't set an example, we don't really have much standing to tell businesses to invest responsibly, do we? In fact, I have some suggestions for how some of that money can be redirected. So maybe I can tag along?"

The jaguar's eyes narrowed as he reached under his desk. "Bill," he said seriously, "this is a private meeting. You have to leave. Now. You and I have an understanding. You made a statement about this at the board meeting and we gave your position serious consideration. We always give your statements serious consideration." The jaguar looked at his watch. "This isn't playtime. Every minute we're talking, I'm keeping the Vice President of the world's most populous country waiting. So just-"

"Gosh that does sound serious," the ferret interrupted him, shrugging, as he let the guest chair tilt backward and leaned into the lock button on the door handle behind him. "I hope he brought a book."

The imposing feline shook his head as he pressed the security button under his desk. "Bill, I just told you there was an assigned time for reasonable discussion about this, and now it's over."

"Okay," the ferret said, shrugging again. "Then we're here to pick a fight."

"What's gotten into you, Bill? And who on earth," the jaguar exclaimed, shaking his head, "are 'we?'"

Down the hall, two bored-looking university security guards, yawning as they made their way up the stairs, started as they surveyed the waiting room to the president's office and saw the secretary desks empty, just before the door closed behind them and a raccoon wearing black leaned against it, letting all his weight slump back against the door as its lock clicked.

"Hey, kid," one of them said, "what's the big idea? Where is-"

"We're just having some fun," Dex said, smiling, as he moved his paws behind him, wedging a stout, reinforced metal cylinder into the door handle to jam it shut. He reached in front with the other and fastened the end of a restraint strap that looked like it had been taken from a climbing harness around himself. It was connected to the door frame on one side and the cylinder on the other, pinning him there so he couldn't easily be pushed aside, but leaving his paws free. "Professor Keener and I brought pizzas for the reception furs to liven up their afternoon. They're all in the lounge by the water cooler. Grab some slices, why don't you? Do you like cards? Some of them are playing Go Fish in there. It's like a little party."

One of the lupine guards turned his head curiously in that direction, but his partner whacked his shoulder. "Don't you dare eat their food," he said to his colleague, then turned back to Dex. "How about you come along with us and have a slice of pizza, kid? Join in the fun. Just unbuckle that thing and step away from that door . . ."

"Oh, sorry," Dex said. "Can't do that. It's break time for all of you, but I'm. . ." the coon smiled at them, "on a mission. Just trying to help my boss improve the school's image, you know. Like he was hired to do."

One of the two wolves glowered at him. "Look, you don't seem like a crazy kid. You probably have a clean record. So don't make us call the cops," he said. "We can't arrest you, but we can tell them to."

"Yeah," Dex cast a glance toward the sealed window. "That might be awkward with a dignitary on campus. Plus, there's a kid outside from the school paper who kind of blows things out of proportion. He'd probably notice. And you might want to check with someone before you make the call because it could be extra bad PR," he said, reaching behind his back again to produce the copy of the campus newspaper he'd wedged under his shirt and wave it in front of them, "to arrest me today."

The guard who hadn't spoken grabbed the newspaper from Dex and looked at it curiously, squinting at the picture, then glancing at Dex over the edge of the paper. His colleague grinned. "Well, smart guy, you didn't think this all the way through, did you? Your big plan is to stand there and hold this shut for what, twenty minutes and make the President miss one meeting. He can just make an excuse and go over there at the end of the day after the China lecture instead of before it. You can't stand in one spot that long. If nothing else," the wolf said, crossing his arms, "you'll have to go the bathroom between now and then." He cast a glance at his partner and added, smirking, "None of them ever think about that."

Dex grinned. "Don't count on it," he said.

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

"Hi Twitchy! Got you!" the small ferret shouted as he leapt out from behind a statue of a long-dead cougar professor and latched on to the rabbit's arm, then, noticing something going on elsewhere, instantly became distracted and pointed across the quad. "Twitch!" he shouted. "What's happening in that building now!"

Twitchy shook his head and squinted as he hopped closer to what Jeremy was pointing at, the little ferret trailing along behind him. A small crowd of students was milling around the administration building, whispering about the fact that there were security guards stationed at all the exits.

"I don't know," the rabbit admitted, and he nudged the fur next to him and started whispering questions.

In a few moments, though, the small crowd stirred as three furs appeared on the top of the building: a jaguar in a suit, a ferret about half his weight in a rumpled blue shirt, holding a borrowed megaphone, and, trailing behind him, his eyes twinkling, a raccoon in a black tee-shirt and black jeans still gripping a the sawed-off pipe he'd used to jam the door in one clenched fist.

"Hello, everyone," the adult ferret, said through his megaphone, "It's a new day at our university! You'll all be the first to hear about the leadership role we'll be taking in-well, I'll let our President explain it-after all-it was all his idea-"

The ferret handed the megaphone over to the jaguar next to him, who took it reluctantly, and began speaking, "In working with the Chinese government and industry to develop non-toxic electronics recycling programs. Our school has always been sensitive to the fact that waste from discarded consumer electronics is a pressing concern." He fidgeted uncomfortably and attempted a joke, "Especially now that the number of iPods per student is approaching critical mass. Like it or not we can't just wash our paws of the problem and ship it to another country," he paused to glare at the ferret out of the corner of his eyes for a moment before he added, "as much as we might like to. So today we're..."

The furs nearest Twitchy groaned audibly and began to disperse. The small ferret next to Twitchy, though, began bouncing up and down and pointing at the top of the building. "That's my Dad!" he shouted.

Twitchy fidgeted with the goggles on his head, almost bouncing himself as he said to the fur next to him, who he didn't even know, "That's my boyfriend!" and pointed up at Dex. The fur shrugged and moved away from him.

Twitchy just smiled. "And he looks happy," he said, to himself.

"I didn't know you were gay!" shouted the kid ferret at his ankle, and Twitchy winced at his volume, blushed, then looked down at him.

"Yeah," he admitted. "This is actually the first time I told anyone besides-ummmm-" the rabbit fidgeted, thinking about how best to describe his Baby Blue teammates, before settling on, "besides my gay friends. It feels good."

Twitchy waited a few seconds for an emotional response, then the ferret blurted out, "How did you get to date someone so cool?"

"Hey!" whined Twitchy, and whapped one of the fuzzy little ferret's small ears.

"Hey," remarked the brown and white collie reporter, near the front of the crowd, flipping open a notebook and scribbling frantically as he stared up at the top of the building, his eyes lighting on the raccoon, "I know that guy!"

For once following an anonymous phone tip hadn't been a waste of time. The collie stopped writing long enough to sneeze-Blaze still smelled faintly of baking soda, and the cub wipes and spilled baby powder that had fallen out of the coon's backpack when he dumped out his changing kit to fight the fire-and the ammonia he had used to clean the forgotten mess up as quickly as he could before the firefighter arrived.

"At least-" the collie said to himself, his eyes narrowing, "I know one thing about that guy."

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

"And that's why I didn't do any recruiting today," Dex, back in his yellow karate uniform, told the wolf and the dog apologetically as the three of them entered Roger's mobile command tent in its present location. "I thought about calling when the guards were trying to pull me off the door, but I, umm, kind of needed all my paws. I'm really sorry. I know the whole team was counting on me. Jax, you were trying to reach me last night, and Rian, I told you I'd always have my phone on since you went 24/7, but, well, for the last 24 hours one thing just led to another. I still haven't really processed what happened. It was almost like someone was pulling all the strings for me. I've certainly never had that feeling before."

"What do you mean you didn't do any recruiting today, Dex?" asked the lynx waiting inside.

A lion wearing a headband around his neck was standing next to him, holding a frightened looking hedgehog by the paw. In fact, though, those were only the first two he noticed. The tent was crowded with furs, and Roger, at the command table, was wagging his tail and talking to them one at a time eagerly.

The coon looked around. "What's going on? Were you back out in the field today, Rian? I knew they couldn't keep you down! Are they all here for you?"

The wolf shook his head and grinned as he stepped aside. "That was so two days ago, Dex," Rian remarked casually, waving a paw and wagging his tail. "There's a cooler fur to be like now."

"How many are here?" Dex asked, looking confused.

"Enough!" barked Roger over the crowd. "Recruitment phase is finished! We enter full operation mode! Team leaders all report to me tomorrow at 0900 and newbies for training at 10! Our counteroffensive goes ahead exactly as planned! Good work, boys!"

"I've been giving these out all day," Ace explained, holding up a university newspaper. "And saying that's one of our top boys. Jax brought an entire pack of them home when he came back from Twitchy's campus this morning. We've been papering the town. A lot of us finished our entire prospect lists. In fact," he tussled the lion's headfur, "even some boys who were at the academy are coming back."

"You are a shinobi," Ben said, pointing up at Dex, eyes wide at the sight of his karate uniform. "I knew it! A real shinobi! When the cat showed me that story I knew you would be able to help! I can tell you things! I heard things I wasn't supposed to hear. About what's happening at that school! About what they're planning! But, first you have to agree to train me," he said. "So I can help free the others there."

Dex just blinked and stared at him vacantly. "Well, okay, you can train with me," he said after a minute. "But it's advanced training. That means you'll need to wear training pants for it to work."

The lion grinned and bounced up and down.

"You know," Dex admitted to Ace, "People keep waving this newspaper around, and I even waved it at someone myself, but I haven't actually read this story. What does it say?"

The lynx handed him a newspaper, folded to a black-and-white picture of a beaten-up looking Dex carrying the unconscious rabbit, with the ferret cub clinging to his leg, out of a building with smoke pouring out of the door and window visible behind him. The headline read: "Anonymous raccoon is our own masked hero."

Dex started reading to himself: "By Blaze Collie. This reporter was in the right place at the right time to see something amazing last night. Not the accident, but what came out of it: The kind of fur who restores your faith in furries. He appeared out of the night as though expressly sent there to help us. He broke down a sealed door; unable to reach an extinguisher, undaunted, he beat out a blazing fire; and weighed down by the two furs he rescued, he managed to outrun a blast of acrid, toxic smoke. All without a second's panic or hesitation. It wasn't his speed or his strength or his courage that really impressed me, though. Comic book characters always have those. It was his clear thinking and his instinctive concern for the safety of every fur on the scene-except himself. He even maneuvered me out of harm's way so skillfully I only realized later what he was doing. When asked to comment afterward, the mysterious raccoon declined to, even withholding his name. But this reporter knows what to call him: a hero. . . ."

"I'm all out, but you can have my copy, Dex," Ace said as the raccoon read, and clapped a paw on his friend's shoulder. "It doesn't say anything I didn't already know."

Next episode: Nuclear capability! The boys are warned about a secret weapon.

Level Cleared!

Congratulations! You have successfully completed Level Three (Dex)!

You have unlocked a Hidden Achievement: You're more versatile than you've been giving yourself credit for. Class Change! You have become a Paladin! Add the Level One abilities of another class to your current abilities as a Fighter.

Be careful! You have activated a Wild Card: Blaze Collie knows just enough to be the fur who knows too much.

You have unlocked a new environment for the next level!

You may now visit:

Roger's main operation site!

Select your PC. . .

Rian

Twitchy

Dex

--> Roger

You have selected: Roger! Get your diapers on, dog! It's time to duel!

Level Four Preview:

The Message!: Loose ends nag at Twitchy; a door opens for Dex; and Rian and Serry worry about each other. But all that's in the background, when . . . on the evening of the sissy academy's Open House, Roger rallies all of Baby Blue and launches the boys' ultimate counterattack!

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