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Open House: A Pink and Blue Diaperfur Identity Adventure!

(Level Four: The Message, Episodes 10-12)

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This continues directly on from

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

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

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

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

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

Rapid Recap: When we left our heroes, Roger, Rian, and the Baby Blue boys were recruiting for a massive counteroffensive timed to coincide with the Open House of the enemy sissy pink faction'! With both teams' agents pounding the pavement collecting recruits, lovers Rian and Serafina have found themselves at an ideological impasse. Meanwhile, Twitchy, who has been concealing information about his age, turned eighteen and put his master plan to cement his relationship with his incontinent boyfriend, Dex, into motion-and staged a laboratory accident that made the recalcitrant raccoon's heroic side public, at once giving the boys' lagging recruiting efforts a shot in the arm, and landing the unlucky raccoon his dream job. But when things went haywire in the lab, Dex came through anyway and saved the bunny for real. It looks like Twitch may have caught his tail in his own trap-and made himself more in love with Dex, rather than the other way around. When we left off, new recruits lured to the boys' camp by tales of Dex's heroism have promised intel from inside the sissy academy . . .

Let's run down the line-up quickly:

Baby Blue principals: Roger (Labrador), leader; Rian (wolf), second-in-command; Dex (raccoon), third-in-command, combat leader; Twitchy (rabbit) and Squeak (pocket-sized mouse), chief engineers; reliable second-stringers: Boy Scouts Ace (lynx) and Jax (tracking hound), recon and wilderness patrol; Byron the malamute (swimmer); Kyle the Dalmatian (cook)

Pink faction/Academy for Special Boys: Calliope (leopardess), leader, and, yes, biologically female; Cassandra (Newfoundland), second-in-command, trusted administrative aide; Serafina (fox), a sissy princess, love of young Rian's life, star of a local Shakespeare festival production, and academy instructor; Lin Lin (panda); and Shelley (squirrel), a mysterious mercenary just brought on board at the academy

Character Fun Facts:

*Roger: * _Personality when fully regressed!:_Goofy but responsible big brother! You've got him - this Labrador will sometimes let the boys he's sitting for drink root beer out of sippy cups and watch movies rated PG-13 - even though his boys are obviously babies. Yes, as a babysitter Roger, maybe because he is often wearing diapers himself (just so he doesn't need to leave the boys unattended during his bathroom breaks, of course), can be a bit of an easy touch - unless a little visitor has got crazy ideas about using the potty. His apartment is sleepover-ready at a moment's notice.

Rian: Personality when fully regressed!:_Harmlessly mischievous! The sort of scamp who is often a caretaker's secret favorite, little(r) Rian is always at the start of something, but he is quick to cover for regressed playmates mixed up in shenanigans with him and take spanks on their behalf. Whatever age he's acting, nothing makes this wolf bouncier than seeing an inhibited diaperboy accept who he is and really enjoy himself for the first time. What's that? Your pants? He's holding them, silly! No, no, you're mixed up, sweetheart - you asked Rian for help getting them _off, not on.

Dex: _Personality when fully regressed!:_Goody two shoes! A caretaker who follows his rules - play nice, no meat in his food, no disposable diapers, and no girly frilly stuff -will never hear a "but" out of mommy or daddy's quiet, adorable little angel - not even a crinkly one, since this sweet little baby boy is a cloth purist. Now where's his bottle? Aren't you going to hold it for him? You don't expect this little prince to drink out of a sippy cup while he's sitting on your lap, do you?

Twitchy: _Personality when fully regressed!:_Precocious smart aleck! The kid who'll never take "Because I said so" for an answer, Twitchy will viciously dismantle parental clichés like "If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?" with impressively logical (and incredibly whiny) objections, like, "Thanks for clarifyin' that I don't haffa get potty-trained just cuz the other cubs are doing it." Worse still, the talkative bunny has been known to make his playmates similarly subversive. Twitch will rarely use toys or devices in the manner they are intended and considers instruction and warranty sheets only as paper-airplane material.

The bossy petite panda *Lin Lin * takes sissy stuff seriously and looks down on part-timers; so seriously, in fact, that she's the real deal, a post-op transsexual, a secret known only to a pawful of teammates and to a boy's team member she once found an unlikely mission partner-and an unexpectedly supportive ally. To her students, she's a feared disciplinarian and physical education instructor at the sissy academy. Lately, she feels like the hardworking, underappreciated one among the pink team leaders, who have been keeping her on the sidelines, maybe because they hold a grudge. The panda schemed to destroy the boys' team and steal Serafina's post shortly after she came on the scene. She hasn't softened up much on the boys since then-or has she? _Favorite fictional character: _Blossom! (Powerpuff Girls) _Personality when fully regressed!: _Wouldn't you like to know.

You have chosen to play this level as . . . Roger! So . . . let's play!

Level Four (Roger), first part, Episodes 10-12

Episode 10: Nuclear Capability!

Episode 11: Training Day!

Episode 12: Car Trouble!

Episode 10: Nuclear Capability!

"I won't do it again!" the gray spotted hyena in the bondage cell whimpered, falling onto his knees from the restraint chair as soon as the straps came unfastened. "I won't, I swear!"

"Ya won't do what again, peaches?" the gray squirrel standing in front of him asked, tapping a riding crop against one open paw-and sounding bored.

Iggy whined and looked down at the used panties he'd been wearing for the past two days - since, as the squirrel's first recruit, he'd followed her here dragged by the collar-and, umm, following his built-in compass needle.

"I won't-I won't-" he whined as she knelt down behind him and reached underneath his shirt and up the front of it. When she reached the top, he felt something cold and cool brush against his skin, making him shiver. It was a Swiss army knife, and the squirrel flicked it open. Catching the blade on the collar of his pink tee-shirt, she ripped through it in one smooth, fluid motion, leaving him naked, except for the musky panties he was wearing, and the locked mitts still clapped on his paws.

"I won't wear a shirt that doesn't go with my underwear," he whimpered, and the crop came down on his back, causing him to wince, and drop onto his mittened forepaws on the floor. He was grateful that he was wearing thick leather mittens that cushioned the impact-it was real nice of her to let him wear those-even though the fingerless mitts left him helpless as a puppy when it came to complicated tasks like opening doors.

"Whose underwear?" Shelley asked, still sounding disinterested.

"Yours!" he whimpered. "I won't wear a shirt that doesn't go with your underwear. I won't wear one without a corset under it again!" he wailed. "I'm sorry. I was just in a hurry. But I have to wear corsets. I know. Otherwise I look all slovenly and disgusting. And I won't- I won't-"

He squirmed, writhing on the ground, looking at the top hat that had rolled over into the corner by his foot-the last piece of masculine clothing he'd been left with. Though he'd look ridiculous wearing it now, he could carry it, as a reminder, he'd been told, of his changes, and how much his mistresses had improved him.

"And I won't make a mess in your underwear again," he whimpered, rapidly becoming incoherent. "why don't I - I could have sworn I had more underwear - don't know where it went - I know I - if I'm not wearing mine I can't - I have - only you can- do anything in them - but can't I take them off? Can't I take them off just for five minutes so I can - three minutes so I can- I won't make a mess _in them_again. I won't! I'll clean up whatever I-"

Seeing how much he was squirming against the floor, the squirrel set her riding crop down carefully and shook her head. Reaching into a small green knapsack on the ground, Shelley produced a cold, stainless steel chastity cage, and set it on the floor.

Before she fastened it, she made a distasteful expression, pulled back the hyena's panties as far as she could, and let them snap, hard, which made him tremble and whine and strain to hump against the air. "Yah've gone and stretched them all out," she complained. "I don't want them any more. Since ya've got no others that suit you, you can stay in those until, I dunno, they have holes or somethin'. Why don' we start ya that way. Ya'll smell like a girl's kind of mess to anyfur that actually cares ta smell ya, but trust me," she said, wrinkling her nose, "that'll be an improvement."

She started rolling them down to his knees-taking care to bunch them up, so they'd feel more used when she rolled them back up.

"Two minutes," he whimpered, "so I can-" He shuddered as she held one paw, loosely around his member-not to help him, but to keep him from touching it - and reached with her other to pick up the chastity cage on the floor behind her.

"Everyone's gonna think you're a girl, peaches," she said. "Aren't you happy to be promoted that way? Y'all know girls are the superior sex. And ya were such a sorry specimen getting a date was hopeless for you before, why this is the only way ya might actually trick some females into spendin' time with you. Now you're no longer entirely worthless. Only like, ninety-five percent? Don't that make ya proud?"

The hyena whimpered, shook his head, and waved a mittened paw at his top hat; all he did was knock it over and he watched with wide eyes as it rolled out of reach. The cold steel of the chastity cage made his whole body tremble as it was locked into place. He loved it. He knew he shouldn't, but he did.

"Tell ya what, sugar plum," the squirrel said as she stood up, "if, in the next two weeks you manage to fool at least one girl into thinking that you're one, too, then, come that weekend," she said, and set one footpaw on his back, pushing him sideways and over, so that he flopped onto his side, mitted paws spread out on the floor and chastity device locked securely in place, and found himself staring up her white tennis skirt, at the blue silk panties she was now wearing, as she said, "you can have ninety seconds."

"Thank you," the hyena whined, "Miss Shelley, thank you so much, you've been so much more generous than I deserve-I hope that I can-"

"Hey, hey," the squirrel said, as she went over to a sink in the corner, turned it on, and lathered up her paws with the handsoap there, "who knows what you might have to do to fool a girl and get your minute and a half. Pleasure her boyfriend, convince her that female musk is your absolutely favorite smell-" she glanced over her shoulder at him and made a bored, casual shrug. "Something like that. Are any of your ex-girlfriends dating? Bet one of their new boyfriends might accept you as a girl. I mean it's obvious you're no kind of man."

She turned on her heels and slipped out the cell door; she found herself facing the Newfoundland and the leopardess who ran the academy as she locked it behind her.

"And that's the old-fashioned way," the squirrel explained, handing the keys back to them, and looking at her watch. "Your highest level of discipline went, mmmm, I dunno, more or less like that, I 'magine? Softer, even? And the panda's your meanest? Y'all see how much time I wasted in the last two days on one slave who wasen' a bit hard ta break?"

"Hey!" whined the squirming hyena from inside the cell, "I was _very_hard to br-"

"No you weren't, peaches," said the squirrel, still sounding bored as she interrupted him and shook her head at the Newfoundland, yawning. "Forgot to gag him, sorry, but I really don't want to touch him again." She banged the door with her riding crop. "Be quiet in there!"

The hyena slumped on his side and whimpered, quietly raising his mittened paws to his muzzle. Would it get him brownie points if he gagged himself? Oh, he hoped so! Maybe he would get two minutes of playtime that way? He opened his mouth, stuck one of the bondage mitts into it, and bit down on it obligingly, being sure to make at least a few muffled attempts at speech so the women outside might realize that he had muzzled himself and saved them the trouble.

The taste of leather overwhelmed him and made him choke at first-but he'd consider it training. If he wanted his playtime any time soon, the hyena had a feeling that his gag reflex had to go.

The squirrel business consultant began tapping her riding crop against one open paw as she walked down the row of punishment cells. "A very paws-on approach isn't it? Soo much attention wasted on each one of these critters. 'Sides the fact it's inefficient, you're stuck when ya've got a fur like bristles down here who you can't handle so directly. Y'all have got a business that promises to make sorry boys into slightly less sorry facsimiles of the stronger sex, either cuz they ask ya to, or cuz their partners do, and then you take, like, what, a year, maybe more to do it? Seriously, Cal, you ask most of these furs to make a," the squirrel shook her head mournfully as she remarked, "minimum commitment of six months to get into your school? No, honey. No. Maximum intake, maximum output, maximum revenue, that's what I'm talking about," she recited, punctuating her remarks with taps of her riding crop. "And that's what you'll see in the draft mission statement y'all asked for. That's why I've gotten so involved with the scenario camps, furs pay, they're in, they're out, they're gone, and after the weekend you don't have to bother with them. Boys who'll pay to be abused want to give you all their money anyway. I consider it part of the scene for them, you know, they get off on it. Your installment plans and all the time you spend on each fur are misguided. Charging more for less time is giving these wannabes _better_service, when ya think about it. They get off on financial abuse, just the same as on physical. I thought you knew that."

The squirrel cast a glance over her shoulder at Callie, and shook her muzzle at the leopardess. "Honestly, Cal, I know what you can do. I was there the first time you put someone under. I don't know why you don't just take these so-called boys for a week, send them back out the way their masters want them with a new wardrobe, and charge each five thousand dollars."

Callie chewed on her lip thoughtfully the whole time, nodding absently as though she hadn't heard a word the squirrel had said. Her sissy Newfoundland attendant took a long breath and filled the dead air in the conversation. "We tried deeper hypnosis as a method for Level 5, but there were-" the dog admitted, "problems. We had one bear with a _very_pushy boyfriend there, who kept butting into the induction. The boyfriend seemed pretty happy with how it went. But the mistress and I are worried about the student's ability to function, you know, in the world."

The squirrel shrugged. "Who cares?" she asked. "He was screwed up before he came to you or he wouldn't have come. Every male we see in this business is damaged goods. And the top's the one paying you right? So he's the one to make happy. But if it's a bother my suggestion for problem cases is cleaner that way, too. These fetishy types all wanna be subs really. Didja see how hard that hyena in there tried ta keep himself from pawing? He's a boy, they're weak anyway, so by male standards it was a heroic effort. Libido gets in the way of their own desires. Complicates everything."

"That," she continued, tapping her riding crop against her palm emphatically, "is really what makes it hard for them to function in the world, isn't it? All that frantic, desperate, sloppy pawing? So don't mess with the little control stick. Fix the CPU. You're selling yourself to tops here now, least that's what you're saying-they're the ones you keep reaching out to? If they're the ones paying the bills, then you want to show them you have access to total power-and can share it with them. It's like a nuke really. Just havin' it as an option and lettin' the boys know they can be switched off changes the game. Suddenly the unruly little monsters will be the sweetest little flowers their boyfriends or girlfriends or parents or whoever want them to be. They're on when you or their tops want them on-off when ya don't. Sure as if they came with a switch. And focused on their partner's pleasure, not secretly all squirmy for their own. Whether or not they feel that again is in your paws, and they know it."

The squirrel turned around, set down her green knapsack, and unfastened it, producing what looked like a small first aid kit as they stopped outside the cell where the rebellious hedgehog Swifty had delivered was being held.

Calliope watched curiously and broke her long silence. "So the rumors really are true. You aren't just bluffing about having concocted something. You're sure this is harmless, Shelley?" she asked. "This boy, Jason, and his caretaker expressed an interest in a kidnapping scene where the abductors turn out to be working for his boyfriend, and he's ultimately delivered back rendered entirely-compliant. He's been fighting, but he hasn't said any safe words yet. Still, he may be confused about what's real and what's not, and the question of consent after something like what you're proposing seems-complicated. There's really no trauma from this?"

Shelley smiled up at them. "I won't feel a thing," she said as she fitted a syringe. "And in a minute-neither will bristles. Relax, there's no knife, and it entirely wears off once y'all stop dosing." She flicked her tail and added, "Chemical castration's a misnomer really. It's more like hormone repression. This is watered down from what they use on sex offenders a'course. But you wanna see a sissy boy simper in spirit as well as in satin-"

Calliope tilted her head as she watched the squirrel. "Are you enjoying this, Shell?" she asked. "I can't tell. I know you run your dungeon for the money, but I hoped this trip might be fun for you. I do interview them all, so I like to think that the students here are - well, at the risk of sounding biased, special. And the current batch of kids Roger and I have-the way they all play off each other . . . it just keeps surprising us."

The squirrel shook her eyes as she loaded a syringe and let the liquid squirt out of it. "Will you listen to yourself, Calliope? Staying near you know who has_been bad for you. I knew it. These boys are cut from exactly the same cloth as my dungeon clients. I don't need to talk to them to know that. They like diapers, for goodness' sake. I can put up with a little of that from someone like you, but these are _boys. What else is there to know? Trust me, I've seen what furs are willing to pay for and there's not much left that will surprise me. Boys just want to get off on whatever weird thing gets them off. And I'm glad to help provided they pay for the privilege. My goodness my gracious, sweet thing," she remarked, shaking her head. "You're calling these fetishists kids now? What are they next, friends? Family? I can almost hear your brother making one of his losers love company speeches. You've finally followed my advice and found a way to profit from this little scene of yours. That's the only way to justify staying involved with this stuff, from a real life perspective. So use your talents, make some money off of it. Rog wouldn't know much about any of that, would he?"

Calliope smoothed out the folds in her dressing gown. "My brother doesn't have special physical," she eyed Shelley, then looked back down at her dress, "or mental abilities, no," she admitted, "but he is always there."

"Peaches," the squirrel said, rolling her eyes, "I know he's family so ya wanna make him sound better, but we both know," the squirrel gestured to Cassie for the keys to the cell, and took them as the huge dog handed them over with a jangle, "it's cuz that dog has nowhere else to be."

The mercenary squirrel turned her attention back to the jail cell. "Bristles sure has gotten quiet," she remarked as she opened the door and peeked inside. "What the-?" she blurted as she saw the hedgehog's bed, with its restraints unfastened, and blankets thrown over it.

The Newfoundland padded past her and over to the empty punishment cot where the hedgehog had been restrained, yanking the blankets off the bed. Instead of a diapered, defensively bristling hedgehog bound in place and ready to be injected on his spineless elbow joint, she found - a sack of flower. A sticky paper label on it bore a hastily scrawled inscription. Directly above the bed, a ceiling panel hung half out of place.

"Just one word. Maybe some kind of Baby Blue code," Cassie remarked, puzzled, snatching the label off the bag and scratching her head with one huge paw. "All it says is . . . Substitution?"

"Needless to say," the stubby-maned lion with the ninja headband hanging around his neck finished, panting, and he put a sympathetic arm around the quivering hedgehog's shoulder, "I got the cub out of there just as fast as I could. I'd been working as a caretaking assistant for the fox, changing some of her sissies while she was coaching others with, ermm, different things. They all started calling me mommy, and that was sort of-disconcerting-and once they put flowers in my mane. I snuck into the wardrobe one time and I almost-I took a dress and I-" he shuddered. "It's only because I wanted to take care of furs, I thought it might make them more comfortable-I didn't put it on, I just looked in the mirror, and thought-well, Serafina said a few times she thought they were all safer with a strong boy fur around. That might have saved me. I started sneaking around after I heard so many of them whispering about Level 5. Everyone was afraid of being sent there, but no one seemed to have seen it."

Ben was relating his story in hushed tones to Roger, Rian, Dex, and the Boy Scouts, all gathered in a small, private circle around a fading campfire outside Roger's nomadic command center tent. "I didn't even know where we were going at first, but we got off at a bus stop eventually, and there was the lynx. He gave me this newspaper." Ben pointed again at the paper he was jealously guarding, and the picture of Dex, staggering under the weight of Twitchy in his arms and the ferret cub clinging to his ankle, making his way out of a university lab building with columns of smoke billowing out of its lower windows.

"And there you were!" the lion escapee said, looked up at Dex, his eyes wide. "It was like a sign! Jason and I were talking about how worthless we've both felt sometimes. But one of us! A hero! And you're not just someone who just looks at pictures. You're a lifestyler, he said. But still a fighter-more than a fighter-you're a real shinobi, I can tell. Ace said there was a whole army of you assembling at a secret spot in the woods," the lion looked around at the circle of furs around the fire and started to breathe easier, relaxing, and releasing a tiny bit of warm pee into the front of his diaper, "like a village, hidden in the . . . ."

"Hidden in diapers," Jax finished for him, nodding gently and putting a paw on the two boys' shoulders. "Don't forget the diapers. They're very important for the hiding. Otherwise most of these boys would leave piddle trails that would lead anyone right back to our secret spot." The black-and-brown mottled tracking hound turned his attention to the shell-shocked hedgehog, offering him a s'more. "Welcome back, Jason. Do you still want to be a helicopter pilot-someday far away from now, when you're all big and potty-trained? We still have one of your friends from Camp 5 here. Do you remember Kit, your raccoon buddy? Do you wanna come scouting tomorrow and see him again? He's been worried about you. Gonna be real relieved to see you're not in a dress. Tell me about your caretaker. Do you live together? Have you two been talking since ya came here, or is he just someone you visit once in a while?"

Rian, still wearing his soccer outfit, had dropped a half-eaten S'more on to the ground without noticing. He was trembling. His muzzle and whiskers were still covered with chocolate and he was staring into the fire, looking horrified. "There's no way that Serry knows about this," he said, shaking his head. "I refuse to believe it."

Dex had raised a finger to his muzzle and was chewing on it thoughtfully. "I don't think that's legal," he mused. "That isn't legal is it? I mean isn't it like something the police do?"

"I'm sure it's like a super-diluted play formula," Ace said, putting a paw on his friend's knee and squeezing it. "Maybe even a placebo. Don't look worried. We're gonna bring the roof down around those girls' ears once and for all, anyway, remember? They'll never touch our boys after this. Baby Blue will be the age-playing scene in this town. There's no stopping us now." The lynx squeezed Dex's knee again, and jerked a thumb at him, then at Rian, remarking, "We have two 24/7 boys, and they're the coolest diaperfurs in the city right now. Furs are lining up around blocks to play with the two of you. Rian and Dex," Ace said, nodding proudly, "the bluest and the truest. _Our_not-so-secret weapons."

Roger had crossed his arms and bit his lip, shifting around and crinkling audibly. He seemed less concerned about the syringe part of the story than anyone else. "Rewind a minute," the leader of the group said, waving one paw in a circle. "What did my sister say after that 'Rog has got nowhere else to be' dig? Didn't she stick up for me?"

Ben shrugged and looked apologetic. "Look, I'm sorry," the lion said, "I don't think she did, but I wasn't really listening to that stuff and I didn't know who all you people were yet."

Rian looked up from the fire out of the corner of his eyes and thought he heard the older canid sniffle. "Are you okay, Rog?" he asked.

"I'm fine," the Labrador said. "Smoke got in my eyes." He tossed half a log from the pile next to him on to the fire and watched the little blaze flare up again. Then he smiled and tilted his head to look at his sidekick.

"But I'm kind of mad now," the dog pouted.

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

"I have my paws full coordinating the Open House," the leopardess and pink team leader, leaning her chin on her palms and resting her elbows on her Victorian writing desk, said to her Newfoundland aide. "I'm just not convinced it's that serious, Cassie, I'm sorry. There's no point in getting myself involved."

The giant sissy dog was staring down at her lap and her milkmaid apron, looking depressed, when the door was flung open, and a panda in a purple Powerpuff Girls sweater and sweatpants burst in.

"Oh, it's serious!" snapped Lin Lin, bustling right under the arm that squirrel lounging outside, sipping at a Diet Coke, had lazily raised to stop her. The panda held up a folded campus newspaper. She threw it down on to the headmistress' desk. Cassie stiffened and fidgeted uncomfortably for a moment, although the feline headmistress looked unfazed.

"This recruiting situation is very_serious. A defector gave this to me," the undersized bear said, pointing down at it. "I knew this would be a problem someday, I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, Mr. 'stand back, world, I'm coming out of my shell any decade now' is _finally_stepping up. And right before our Open House. The boys have been giving these out all over town!" She waved her paw at it and gritted her teeth. "He's like their new poster cub. Him! Mr. Goody-two-shoes. Mr. 'I hope that's _vegetarian_baby formula.' The bluest and weirdest and- and- ungirliest one over there. Did I say weirdest? At least the wolf is all about sex. We can respond to that. But everything about that raccoon is just so-" she shuddered "so _boy." Then she banged one fist into her opposite palm in frustration. "Just read it. What kind of a stupid-" the panda shook her head despairingly. "How are we supposed to compete," she said, sounding upset, "with some moron who does idiot things like he's trying to get himself killed?"

The Newfoundland picked up the newspaper and eyed it curiously, looking up over the edge of it at the leopardess.

"You said," the panda continued accusingly, pointing at the huge black dog, "that once you'd sidelined the wolf things would be fine. You keep saying things will be fine because you have some mysterious backup plan. I have a news flash for you, Zen dog: Just saying that things are going to be okay does _not_make them okay! We'll be shown up at our Open House and we'll never recover from the embarrassment. You're supposed to be in charge of security for this event. We are having a crisis. You should be ashamed," she continued, gathering steam as she wagged a paw up at the dog's giant nose, "that you're not out there in the field and that you're hearing this from me! You should feel terrible!"

"Actually," the dog said, setting the newspaper down in her lap and looking from Lin Lin down to the picture of Dex carrying the two furs out of the building with smoke pouring out of its windows, then out of the corner of her eyes at her mistress, "now I feel better."

The leopardess pursed her lips, folded her paws together, and rested her chin on them thoughtfully. "We've put a lot of work into this event and the timing of the announcements needs to be right," she said thoughtfully. "I'm not overly concerned. Our security should be adequate for anything my brother is likely to put together. But, still, if Roger's whole group actually charges into the building during the Open House at the wrong time it could muddle things up and make the academy look very bad. Do you know how many furs they have now, Lin Lin?"

The panda looked thoughtful for a moment and calculated quickly. "I'd guess close to sixty," she admitted, grudgingly. "But they probably can't convince all their newbies and part-timers to come in for something like this."

The leopardess nodded slowly. "I'm not sure. Everyone who joins is getting some kind of operation order. Serry retrieved one of them from her spy," she remarked, laying a paw on a slit blue envelope at the edge of her desk. "By itself it doesn't make much sense."

Lin Lin padded over to the desk and snatched the envelope up. The outside said, "S. Fox." She yanked the paper out and unfolded it, scanning the message on it for a moment as she held the missive up to the light:

"There's been a mess-up about playing dress-up:

A fox with your skills is required.

There's no alarm ringing, just bring what you're bringing,

I don't mean the forest's been fired."

The Newfoundland shrugged. "It may be some sort of cipher, or I assume if you put them all together the message would become-"

Lin Lin cut off Cassie abruptly. "It's not supposed to make sense, it's just a singsong baby rhyme. They probably made up something for each recruit. The poem isn't the message; just ignore it," she said, pivoting on her heels and, without asking, plunging her paw into the squirrel's soda cup and withdrawing the lemon slice floating in it.

"Hey!" Shelley said, taking an interest in the happenings around her for the first time, "I was drinking that!"

"I noticed," Lin Lin answered acidly as she squeezed the lemon slice out and let its juice dribble on to the enemy team's communique, which she then pressed against the warm case of the leopardess' desk lamp. "Standing around drinking diet soda seems to be what you're billing us for." Without waiting for a response, she pointed to a white outline emerging on the pale blue paper and handed it back to Cassie. "Invisible ink," she explained rapidly. "This has the bunny written all over it. It's a basic solution so it won't show up if you leave it near something warm accidentally, the way lemon juice does. Grape juice might make whatever's drawn here a little clearer."

The Newfoundland shook her head. "Invisible ink? Who uses that besides little kid-"

Lin Lin rolled her eyes in annoyance, and interrupted, sounding exasperated, "Exactly." Then she blew on the paper, causing the outline to appear in sharper relief. "It's not a code. It's a map. And it looks like a part of a map of . . ." she pointed at a marked spot and frowned. "Our basement. With a dotted line coming. . . from below."

Cassie's eyes glimmered. "They're digging tunnels under the academy," the dog concluded, sounding surprised. "He really is planning a traditional attack!" Then she slumped back in her chair, seeming relaxed again. "Good to know," she remarked calmly. "We should still be okay. He must not know Shelley is in town or he never would have risked something so direct."

Shelley tilted her head, watching the group with a raised eyebrow. "Y'all take your stupid game pretty seriously, doncha?"

"Okay, really," the panda said, tugging at her Powerpuff Girls sweater, and addressing the school's feline headmistress directly, pointing up at Shelley without addressing or looking at her, "what is this squirrel doing here? This is not the time to be adding new furs. It's making all the girls nervous."

Callie took a long breath, but the Newfoundland cut in. "Shelley isn't an age-player," she explained. "But her paws-on dungeon experience might be beneficial to our business plan. And, she's a security expert in case we're attacked. You saw how quickly she rigged the woods. Entrapment and containment are her specialties. She's run kidnapping teams at scenario camps for years, and she also weekend-long abduction scenarios."

The squirrel shrugged. "Girl scouts," she remarked. "Backcountry girl. Daddy used to take me trapping. Ought to be good for something."

"Of course, if the boys are coming in from underground," Cassie resumed, frowning, "we might need to get more creative. We may even need to fight. I was hoping to avoid that."

Lin Lin narrowed her eyes and looked at the perpetually bored squirrel critically. "What is she going to do when her nets don't catch all of them," she asked, "file her claws and look annoyed until they leave? She couldn't even keep me from-" She whirled and swung for the squirrel's soda glass again-only to find herself stumble as her paws slid through empty air-she stopped her foot just short of stepping into the spreading puddle from the squirrel's spilled soft drink-wait, the plastic cup was open-side down-had she spilled it by accident, or had she just dumped it as a trap as soon as Lin Lin swung?! Was she really that quick?

The panda's eyes darted to the left, then to the right, as she settled into a defensive stance-and she whirled as heard the soft tap of footpaws touching the floor, lightly, behind her, raising both paws to swing.

Lin Lin caught only air, again, but she saw a gray and white blur rebounding from one of the walls, as the squirrel caught herself, and hung suspended, by both forepaws, from the room's ceiling, her tail twitching lazily, but her eyes glinting.

"Y'all move so two-dimensional like," Shelley remarked as she swung and, letting herself drop a few inches, caught on to the opposite wall, clinging lightly to the porous conrete with both feet and one forepaw. "It _is_a little dull to watch."

Lin Lin's eyes widened. "She has feral climbing abilities!" the panda marveled. "Even on smooth surfaces. I've heard of things like this, but I've never seen it. . . ."

Cassie nodded. "Shelley's skills are well-suited to our current needs. Traps, dungeon containment, countering climbing types . . . other things . . ." the Newfoundland explained. "We should be able to have a skeleton security crew of you two with some backup. Besides, as soon as Roger sees her here, I'm sure he'll order his boys to pull out right away in return for our releasing any captives."

"Did you say there are sixty of these mewling little diaperboys coming?" Shelley asked as she released the wall and dropped, lightly, back on to the floor.

Lin Lin nodded.

"Be a dear," said the squirrel, tussling the undersized panda's headfur patronizingly. "Take care of the other ten."

Next time: The sissies are drawing battle lines! But boys have power-ups not available to girls. That's right - training pants, I mean, training scenes!

Episode 11: Training Day!

From his vantage point behind a tree on the south slope of a hill, Rian, who had slipped into a matching set of camouflage sweatpants and sweatshirt, watched the teams he was surveying critically.

"Let's get down to business!" Ace shouted, a whistle hanging around his neck on a cord, as he rested one paw on his holstered paintball gun and paced back and forth in front of a contingent of boys lounging, leaning against trees, or sitting on their padded rears on the forest floor. "You slackers need to understand that girls and sissies do _not_play fair. They sure as heck won't-"

Ace whirled on his heels mid-sentence, whipped out his paintball gun, and released a volley at the giraffe who stumbled backwards, tumbling into the fur behind him, causing them to both land on the ground with a thud, "Won't tell you to get ready and give you until the count of three!" the lynx concluded, shaking his head mournfully. "You're the saddest bunch I've ever met."

"Hey!" Steven whined, straining his longer-than-average neck to look down at his shirt. "How bad is it?" the tall fur asked the one next to him. "I can't even see. This is my kite-flying shirt." The other boys shuffled and made some studious and some half-hearted efforts to stand at attention. Most stared at their feet. One, a hedgehog, who had been picking his nose, jammed his paws into his pockets.

"Sorry," growled the lynx, "I thought you were the ones who hadn't been sissified yet. What is it that you think we're trying to do in this training?"

The hedgehog answered cautiously, "Make men out of us?"

Ace guffawed. "Men? Out of you?" The lynx shook his head. "Now I see what the problem is. You goofs are trying to be men. Standing up straight and tucking your clothes in and keeping your pants dry. It takes more concentration than any of you can spare. Since every," he paced down the line, eyeing reach recruit in his unit as he spoke, "last," he flicked a beaver's chin with his finger, "one," he straightened a skunk's bandana, "of you is a paw-sucking," the lynx withdrew a pacifier from his pocket and stuck it in the mouth of the next recruit in line, who whined around it, but Ace refused to let go until he began suckling on it, slowly, then he released it, and the recruit continued sucking, "pants-soaking," he yanked the giraffe's tucked-in-tee-shirt out of his jeans and, letting it hang loosely, glowered up at him, "toy-loving baby. Men," he shook his head and snorted. "Your_only hope of not ending up sissified, private," he said to the hedgehog, grabbing his wrists and yanking both paws out of his pockets, "is to think and act and fight and feel exactly like a _little, littleboy. Now, why didn't you put what you've been doing on your list of hobbies?"

The hedgehog, who seemed to have a pair of headphones permanently settled around his neck, looked confused. "List what hobby?" he asked.

"Picking your nose like a two-year-old who just figured out how to do it," said Ace. "You stick your paw in there like a toddler when nofur's looking and you think I haven't noticed."

Jason looked down at his feet. "I doooon't," he said.

Ace snorted. "That's a very bad secret. Habits like that should be listed on your regressive profile. So the other furs on duty with you know they should carry tissues to wipe your paws and nose in case you get excited about it and try to show them what you got. Well, the whole unit knows now. I'm going to have to order them all to tease you about it so you won't be so sneaky next time."

"Jason picks his nose with a rubber hose," the beaver next to him said in a singsong voice.

"I doooooon't," the hedgehog protested again, holding out his hand toward the beaver demonstratively as he added, defensively, "I use my paaaaw!"

"Ewww," the short beaver sidled away, eyeing it cautiously, "keep your paw away from me!"

"Seeeee," whined the hedgehog, "it grosses people ouuuuut."

"Jason," said the lynx severely, "after the trouble you've gotten into by trying to play both sides of this game, we can't let you sneak off unsupervised even on the pretense of going potty or changing yourself and get into who knows what kind of mess. I know your problem. You say yes to whoever you're talking to. It's very bad and it will only get you into scrapes like that one. I know that for a baby, saying 'no' the first time can be very hard. You're staying under the eyes and paws of the bigger boys until you have a better sense of what you like and we know you're at least big enough to say no to a caretaker sometimes. So with everything you'll be using your diapers for, and your dependence on the other boys for changes, I wouldn't worry about your nose-picking habit being the one that grosses your teammates out. Don't worry _too_much though-you're on double the normal chlorophyll and fiber ration, effective immediately."

The hedgehog looked crestfallen. "But no alone time is just like at the academ-"

"Hey hey," Ace interrupted the hedgehog, tucking the bottom of his chin, "we're not like that at all. It just means you can't run off and do it in private for fear you'll get yourself in some kind of mess again. Get a copy of the cheat sheet and see which big brother types are comfortable lending a paw or letting you paw when they change you. Then _try_to be on your best behavior around those folks, _do_act your cutest when you ask them for help, and _don't_bug any furs who haven't noted there or told you privately that it's okay."

Rian nodded approvingly at how things were going and moved on to his next observation stop. 'Take a look around before we decamp to the main operation site,' Roger had told him. 'See how the recruits' characters are coming. All their work helping get the main site together's worked wonders for them! I think you'll be happy with how much their maturity's dropped in such a short time, and how little boy they're all shaping up to be. Even the ones who came in experimenters are practically certified diaperboys. Once you've seen how they are we'll consult on final deployments.' So far, Rian liked what he saw. His mentor had been doing good work while his veteran agents had been recruiting. No one in that unit was acting a day over five! Now, to check on some of the bigger kids.

From behind another tree, he saw Dex standing in the center of a clearing, and two of his new strike team trainees at the edge of it. The two of them seemed to have been pestering Dex about something.

"I am _not_a ninja," the coon was insisting, tugging at his yellow karate gi. "Why would a ninja wear bright colors? That's just stupid."

A white canine standing next to the lion muttered to his fellow advanced combat trainee, "Told you. It's pointless quoting it to him. He hasn't even seen it."

"But he _has_seen it," Ben, tugging at the headband with a reflective silver forehead guard around his neck, protested to the white canine, "I'm sure he has. He's just yanking my tail."

Dex, who was standing in the middle of a clearing, beckoned with one paw. "All right, whatcha waiting for, guys?" the coon asked, holding up a box of wipes in his other paw. "You boys in training pants and pull-ups are big kids now. But you _do_want a box of these to use on your cubbies, don't you? And for yourself? _Juuuust_in case? Shame there's only one box-and two of you. Guess someone will have to end up with a rash."

Ben's eyes narrowed and he charged toward the raccoon; at the same time his canine partner ran at him from the other side, brandishing a foam sword, both ready to grab for the wipes; Dex hopped up into the air, and hung from a low-hanging tree branch, swinging his feet in the air and watching the two boys tumble into a shallow pit that had been covered over with brush in front of him.

"Lesson one," the raccoon said, as he hoisted himself up to sit on the branch on his rear, "especially, if you're going to be fighting sissies, you have to learn to see through deception. Think before you launch an attack. Your opponent might use it against you. Also, if the bait is obvious," he added, shaking his head, "don't take it."

"Okay," moaned Ryo, setting down his foam katana at the edge of the pit and then hoisting himself out of it with both paws. The white dog's shorts slid down enough in the process that his pull-up-like swim diapers were showing. "We get it."

"I'm telling you this," Dex said cockily, sitting on the tree branch, "because you _don't_get it."

"I knew it!" yipped the lion, scrambling out of the pit. "You're cribbing straight out of-"

Dex shrugged. "Don't know what you're talking about," the coon interrupted. "I'm a bit big for Saturday morning baaaby shows - if you're still on about one of those, Ben."

The lion clenched both fists and looked up at the raccoon. "That's it, you're going down," he growled. "Starting with those pants you _think_are hiding your underwear. Are you with me, Ryo?"

By the time Rian had made his way back to the first troop for a closer look, the lynx in the safari outfit was launching another round of exercises. "All right," Ace said, "on the count of-" but before he started counting, a pillow thudded into him, and as he reached for his paintball gun, five of the boys had flung themselves at his waist and legs, two were lying on their stomachs and gripping his feet, and three others were on top of him tickling him as he fell.

"That," said the lynx between giggles, as he rolled to and fro wrestling with the nearest boys and reaching for the pillow with one of his own paws, beating at them with it, "is more like it! Keep fighting without potty breaks! Don't even stop to go! You have to piddle while you're moving! If you slow down cuz you need to concentrate or hide behind a tree or something ridiculous, I'll get you and it's noogie time! Trust your protection-if you were good little boys and let a qualified caretaker help you into those diapers, they can handle the force of a coursing river."

Rian bit his index finger musingly. "Maybe I _did_misjudge Ace," he said to himself as he watched the cat wrestling, daddy-like, with the boys.

"Break!" shouted the lynx's boyfriend after a few minutes of wrestling and running around, blowing a bird whistle. Jax appeared with a Dalmatian at his side. "Snack time!" The two of them were sharing the work of carrying tote bags filled with brown-bagged snacks and lunches. The lot staggered, uneasily to their feet - many only made it up onto all fours and crawled over to inspect the offerings that way. But Ace hopped right up, adjusting his safari hat to its usual rakish tilt.

Kyle watched the wrestling, grass-stained, mud-covered boys with what appeared to be relief. "I'm sooooo glad I'm not in combat and scouting any more," the Dalmatian said, breathing a long sigh of relief. "I sucked at all that."

"You sure did!" said Ace to the Dalmatian brightly as he accepted the first pawful of bags from Kyle and began distributing them. "You sucked something awful!"

His more sensitive tracking hound boyfriend and fellow wilderness team leader reached up and flicked Ace's hat off his head and into the air, causing his tufted ears to twitch. "What?" protested the tough lynx as he bent over to pick it up. "I was being supportive!"

Rian, from his concealed vantage point, rolled his eyes. "Or maybe not," he said to himself and moved on to the other side of the hill. He returned to watching Dex's small unit, and saw the coon hopping up over a low swing of Ryo's sword. Using his tail to adjust his trajectory in mid-air, the raccoon martial artist propelled himself backwards away from the bola that Ben hurled at the air above it. The spinning rope weapon caught Ryo instead and sent him tumbling back on to his rear, tangled up.

"Still fighting with each other? Let me know when I should start paying attention," Dex said, still holding the box of cub wipes in one paw, and sticking his tongue out at them as he landed-only to find his footpaws touching down on toy cars that the fallen canine had just launched out of his pocket from his tangled position on the ground!

Dex slipped and staggered backward as the miniature vehicles careened out from under him. He recovered his balance quickly-but not quickly enough to keep the lion, who had pounced as soon as the cars were launched, from laying one paw on the box of wet wipes, and begin tugging at them. "Ryo and I are teammates so the two of us are one!" the lion said proudly. "We can share the wipes!"

"Excellent!" their raccoon sensei said, grinning, releasing the box and giving the two of them a thumbs-up as he straightened. "Then you two are ready to learn some real taijutsu."

"Now come on, just admit that you took that word from-" Ben started to say, fiddling with the headband around his neck.

"Aikido," Dex said with a smile, cutting the lion off as he padded over to the entangled canine and bent over him, "They finish right before karate starts. I sit in on the end of their class sometimes."

Rian was about to move on when he felt two paws grab him from the rear and yank down his sweatpants. "Hey!" the wolf barked, hopping out of them, to leave them in the paws of a slight brown milk-chocolate-brown raccoon, the wolf's own triple diapers exposed.

"I did it Jax!" shouted the coon, pressing the button on a plastic walkie-talkie on his belt. He was wearing a cub scout uniform. "I caught another spy! Heading north by northwest, twelve paces from camp 3, on the opposite slope of the hill, Ryo is three paces to the east and he's just breaking from training if you need backup!"

"I'm not a spy," Rian said, his eyes narrowing as he pointed to the shiny rank badge, a gold emblem of two crossed safety pins, on his camouflage shirt, "I'm your commanding officer! And you pantsed me." Rian said frowning. Then, seeing the raccoon looking embarrassed, the wolf flipped his frown almost immediately, saying, "Thanks! They were getting stifling. You must be the legendary coon called Kit. Jax and Ryo have told me about you."

"Lejennary?" asked the coon.

Rian nodded and looked around shiftily. "Oh yes. The star newbie who kept Swifty from making off with more than a piece of our message. You might have saved our entire operation from being torpedoed by my mistake. I heard Roger gave you a medal. . . there it is," said Rian, examining the cub scout's small sash. He smiled at it and nodded. The wolf's eyes glistened a little, as he recollected his own first act of blue team heroism, and he continued wistfully, "This used to be mine you know. I gave it back to Rog when I got my circle badge. I'd planned to visit you earlier," the wolf said, managing to snatch his sweatpants back as the distracted coon relaxed his grip. Instead of putting them on, though, Rian flung them over his shoulder, seeming entirely unconcerned by the visibility of his diapers, which, since he had just put them on recently, gave off a fresh, talcum scent and small puffs of powder as he shifted in them. "The thing is," he eyed the cub scout, "Jax said you'd be a challenge for me." The raccoon looked curious. "I like to say," said Rian, "that every fur I play with feels a little smaller afterward. But Jax said you came ready to play and it would be hard for me to come up with a way to make _you_any cubbier."

"Just because my diapers say 'Baby' on 'em doesn't make me a baby," the brown raccoon protested unconvincingly, crossing his arms. "I have an awesome car. All-terrain vehicle! Waterproof interior! Great for camping."

"Is this one of the Power Wheels?" Rian asked suspiciously.

"Noooo," said the coon shaking his head and motioning in its general direction. "It's right at the edge of the woods over-"

Rian's eyes twinkled. "I have an idea," he said, pointing at the raccoon and then setting off in the direction of the coon's car. "You're coming with me."

The coon hesitated for a moment, looking back over his shoulder toward the rest of his unit. Rian glanced back for him.

"Cubby," the lupine explained, grinning wolfishly as he gestured to the rookie, "you have to follow me first."

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

Twitchy fiddled with the goggles on his forehead and hummed as he settled into his desk chair at Hideout #4, tapping his foot rhythmically against the floor as he switched his three monitors, one at a time, to bring up images of the main operation site on one, a blueprint-style map indicating tunnel routes, and on the third, tabbed through footage shots from the boys' recently installed security cameras facing the river.

"Perfect," he said as he watched some of the sissies rigging additional traps in the woods, under Lin Lin's direction, earlier in the day. "They'll never know what hit them." He pointed a paw at the panda. "Have fun trying to decode our message, miss smarty-panties," he taunted the screen. "Or catching up with our recruit numbers after Dex's hat trick. Hope you're getting used to losing to me!" He took a long breath. "Everything has worked out perfect. Okay - things did get a little bit hairy in the middle there, I admit - but, in the final analysis," he reassured himself, "just as planned. I saved Dex, and Baby Blue, and everyone! The boys from Hideout #4 can do-" he looked down at his pocket for a moment, and shook his head. Something didn't feel right.

The rabbit began whistling as he slid back in his wheeled chair and hopped up. He heard anxious squeaking - and giggled involuntarily, hopping around, as he felt a scuffle in his pant leg, and a warm little body scurrying up his thigh, then through his shirt and onto his shoulder, to nose at one of his floppy ears.

"Squeak squeak squeak!" the mouse squeaked into his ear anxiously.

"Squeak!" Twitchy exclaimed. "You haven't run up my pants leg in months. Yeah," the rabbit blushed and patted the small mouse on his head. "I'm okay. Especially now that you're here. We're all okay. I did it, Squeak," Twitchy said as he looked at the recruit counts on one of his monitors.

"Squeak?" said the mouse into his ear, curiously.

"That was close," the rabbit said, sitting into his chair and sliding backward across the room. "I was worried for a while there. I could feel him slipping into a dark place. But he's going to be okay now. He's back. For one day Dex had everything the way he'd wish for it to be. Now he knows what he wants and what life can be like if he doesn't fixate on Rian and all the things Rian has." Twitchy took a long breath. "But he's not bad either, you know, Squeak. Rian was the first fur from here to come over and see me. He never meant to be messing things up for me and Dex. He just doesn't get boundaries sometimes," the rabbit sniffled. "I bet he grew up with so much stuff that sharing was never a big deal. I would have liked to have a childhood like that. But he's a good friend really. He wants us to be happy, too. Oh, Squeak!" Twitch exclaimed brightly, reaching for the bookbag he'd dumped under his desk, "I have some projects I need your help with!"

"Squeak?" asked the mouse.

"Noooo, it's not for school," said Twitchy, shaking his head as he pulled out a sheaf of papers, "I'm so not worried about schoolwork while I'm here. I can do that stuff back on campus. Besides, I took myself out of the lab assistant pool. I have enough work to do anyway and, errmmmm-it seemed like the safer thing to do after the accident. No point doing extra if I end up killing myself, right? Sooo first, I have these nursery plans for Dex that I want you to look at-I want your input on what kind of cables and ropes I'd need to hold his weight safely. Oh, but don't tell anyone! It's a secret. Only Rian knows what I'm up to. And this is for Kyle - oh," added the rabbit with a giggle, "this is for him too, cuz he put up with me being snappish lately," he said, producing a collar from the front pocket. "I made a detour on the way here to a pet shop that could engrave things. It says 'Point me to Hideout #4' on the front side of the tag. And the other side says, 'Help a puppy.'" Twitchy rubbed his paws together. "It's for next time he gets lost in the woods and can't find his way back here on time. I'm gonna make him wear it on BB territory," the bunny said gleefully, "cuz I've never met someone with so little sense of direction. It's one part of my part of a project for him."

"Squeak?" said the mouse, sounding surprised.

Twitchy batted a paw at him. "Well of course I like Kyle, Squeak, don't be silly!" the bunny said lightly. "K is not that bright, and kind of clumsy, but he's our teammate. And our friend." The rabbit resumed typing as the mouse scurried down his arm, on to the desk, to examine the blueprints he'd set down there.

"And to think," Twitchy said, "for a few seconds I thought I might not see any of them again."

The mouse scampered over Twitchy's papers while the rabbit surveyed operation plans on his screens from various angles, frowning and chewing on his lip thoughtfully. "You should have seen how happy Dex looked on that rooftop, standing up and doing what he wanted to do. I helped him get to that point! Me! And I knew as soon as I saw it it was a life-changing moment. I told you, Squeak," the rabbit said, humming, "one perfect day is enough to change a fur."

The small mouse took two of Twitchy's fingers in his paws and tugged on them; the bunny tilted his head and looked down at him curiously. "Squeak?" queried the mouse. "Squeak squeak?"

Twitchy snorted. "You and your reverse psychology, Squeak," he said, shaking his head. "Of course I'm sure I'm talking about my boyfriend. He's like a new fur. Who else _would_I be talking about? I'm not wrong you know," the bunny added distractedly, "this Dex and Rian situation was trouble waiting to happen. It's a good thing that someone finally did something about that and fixed everything before one of those two did something really stupid. But it's taken care of. My little coon kit hero is going to get the job of his dreams and have the sort of life he deserves. No more of this depressive feeling second-best stuff. It all happened even faster than I hoped." The rabbit tilted his head and patted the mouse gently, concluding, "I know it's never smart to say this, Squeak, but we aren't on TV, so here goes," he knocked on his desk with one paw, just in case. "Nothing can go wrong now."

Next time: Car Trouble! We all know Twitchy shouldn't have said that, right?

Episode 12: Car Trouble!

The Doberman mechanic assistant stepped out of the gas station garage just in time to see a brown-and-white collie wearing jeans, a purple fleece shirt with a pocket over the tummy, and a baseball cap sideways on his head slam his hood shut with one paw, and twirl a wrench with the other.

"Hey! What the H-E-double-hockey-sticks, man?" Diesel demanded as the collie, who was wagging his tail, leaned over and replaced the wrench in a toolbox. "Did you just use our stuff to fix your own car?"

"Oh, hi," Blaze said brightly, turning around and slouching against the hood of his Honda. "I called, but when no one came out I thought maybe you guys forgot about me." The happy-go-lucky collie grinned at him. "I don't like it when furs forget about me."

The Doberman opened and closed his muzzle wordlessly, and shook his head. "I-uh-was eating lunch," he lied, narrowing his eyes. He had in fact been caught up in what had become a difficult changing situation, and he had knocked something over. But, when he heard noises, he had gotten himself together-and clean-as fast as he could to come out here. "Whatever you did," Diesel warned him, "it won't be insured. Don't expect us to fix it cheap if you have a problem either."

The collie shrugged. "I'll live," he said. "It's just an oil change. I can handle my own changes." His ears pricked, and his head tilted. He regarded the Doberman shop worker, who was wearing overalls, curiously.

Diesel's ears pricked, too. Had he heard a crinkle when the collie reclined against his car? Did he smell talcum powder? The collie straightened up, the Doberman straightened the crooked shoulder straps of his overalls, and for several minutes, the two dogs each moved a couple paces in opposite directions, circling each other suspiciously.

Eventually, the collie reached behind him, through an open car window, and produced a newspaper folded up on his front seat. Maybe this would be his break. Whenever he seemed to be getting close to answers about the fur he was tracking, whoever he was talking to suddenly become cagey.

"Say," he said, operating on the evidence of a crinkle, "is there any chance you know," he unfolded the newspaper, and held it up with both paws, thrusting the unfolded front page with the picture of Dex directly into the Doberman's face, "this guy?"

"_That_guy!" the Doberman exclaimed, as he stumbled backward and caught himself with one paw against the gas pump, since the collie had opened the newspaper right in front of his muzzle. "Why I know that he's-" Wait a minute, he caught himself. Who was this dog? If he was a diaperfur, why hadn't he been recruited? They'd contacted almost everyone active in town. Maybe he was another spy. Or some worse kind of snoop. And Dex, one of the most reserved and private members of the group, had never put up a profile on any fetish sites; before he had recently gotten better control of his regressive episodes, the coon had been wary of playing with anyone besides his closest friends. The Doberman changed his tone abruptly. "Some total stranger guy who I've never seen before."

"Uh huh," said the collie, nodding and tilting his head as he reached into his pocket. "I'm hearing that a lot." He produced a card with a phone number and the name 'Blaze' scribbled on it. Should that sound familiar? Diesel thought he might have read it somewhere recently. "Well if you never see him again," the collie said, "tell him I want to talk?"

"I never will," the assistant mechanic said decisively, but took the card and pocketed it, "but why would you want to?"

"I just want to give credit," the collie reporter said, "where credit is due. I've been trying to find out his name for going on two days but it seems like there's no easy way to do it. He's-"

At that moment, smoke came pouring out of the canine mechanic's office. "Oh, darn it," exclaimed the Doberman, turning on his tail and dashing to the door. "I thought I took care of that!"

Blaze tossed the paper back into his car, reaching for his cell phone. Why were things catching fire everywhere he went lately? Did the universe have it in for him? "Hey!" the collie shouted. "Be careful, man! Don't do anything-"

But the dog opened his door and walked right in, much to the collie's consternation. He stuck his head out in a moment, coughing a little, as he waved a paw at Blaze, who had raised his phone to his ear. "It's okay," the Doberman said. "Don't call anybody!"

The collie's eyes narrowed suspiciously and he padded over to the door.

"Look, see," explained Diesel, pointing at a few small, apple and cherry-sized spheres covered with holes, with smoke spewing out of them, that had scattered over the floor amid a haphazard collection of car parts, tools, Hot Wheels, radios, and large electric battery packs. "The stuff inside burns up. We made some to simulate exhaust smoke! My idea. They're the final touch for a project I'm working on for Ba-err, just a personal project. Industrial-grade smoke bombs! These are just small ones. Perfectly safe: as long as you don't break them open or drop them into anything flammable. The fuel burns up inside the sphere. Baking soda slows the rate of burning, so that they mainly give off smoke. It's called a moderant. Basic chemistry." The Doberman then scowled at him and added, "See, your mechanic really does know more about how things work than you do."

Blaze blinked, stunned. "Baking soda?" he remarked, as though a puzzle piece had just fallen into place. "You.don't say."

The collie turned on his heels and marched back to his car.

"Hey!" Diesel called after him, running out after he had opened the window in back of the office and turned on a fan. He arrived just as the collie was starting to back up. "Listen, man," the Doberman said into his car window, "you don't seem like too bad a guy to me. But don't march around barking questions like that. You might not realize it, but - playing things the way you are, you could be missing your chance to be part of something really big."

"Listen man back at you," the collie, tilting his head and flashing a last, cheery smile, said, adding right before he rolled up his window, "I was about to tell you the same thing. Give me a call if your memory suddenly improves."

Blaze turned on his radio as he pulled out into the street, shaking his head as he made his first turn away from the gas station. "Another closet case. That guy back there and I should just be able to talk to each other without all these hang-ups and weirdnesses. It's sad that we diaperfurs all have to be so secretive and inhibited," the collie reporter mused aloud, casting a glance sideways at the story he had written about Dex.

It had gotten more comments on the school paper website than anything else he had written in his almost four years of articles. He remembered one anonymous one that said simply, 'This made my day. Yes, Virginia, good furs do exist.' He had booked back to the fire scene to clean up the changing paraphernalia Dex had spilled as soon as he saw the coon off, and scrambled out of there as soon as he heard the fire truck coming, having decided to leave Dex's secret out of his story. But after a day of skittish, frightened looks and abruptly ended chat sessions from half the furs he tried to talk to about the coon, he was wondering if he had done the right thing. "Things shouldn't be this way," he mused.

The collie plugged an earpiece into his cell phone and clicked the speaker on with his free paw as he continued thinking. "I wonder if that would change," he thought aloud, sketching a verbal outline, "if there was one of us every fur could look up to. Our hero revealed. All around great guy. Rescues people. Stands up to the system. We caught up with him the other day and had a nice chat. And by the way, here's why _our_superhero doesn't wear his underwear outside his pants -secretly, he's a -," Blaze cut off, pressed the second dial button on his phone and it began ringing. "Well, buddy," he said as he waited, "I've got a feeling someone who oughta know you's gonna open up to me."

"Yo, man, it's your favorite roommate," he said into the speaker as soon as the call was picked up. "That geeky kid, your bunny lab partner," Blaze asked as he continued driving. "Any chance you've got a cell number for him?"

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

"Your car has a lot of trunk space," said Rian as he circled around and, bowing to the raccoon cub scout in a gentlemanly fashion, opened the passenger side door for him. "Like your pants. I bet I know what all that storage space is for!"

Both pairs of pants had ended up over the wolf's shoulders on the way; as he had explained, they would move faster if pants couldn't get snagged on things. Besides, since the coon had pantsed Rian, it was only fair that he also remove his own. It all seemed fair when Rian explained it, anyway.

The chocolaty coon hopped up into the car, following Rian's lead, and settled into the passenger seat. He started to reach for the seat belt, thinking that a good scout would always wear one, but the wolf leaned over him, through the side door, and took his wrist, lightly in one paw, lowering it to his hip. "I will get that for you, Kit Raccoon," Rian said, "You are too little."

The coon let Rian guide his paws to rest on the edge of his thighs, by his hips, and looked up at the wolf curiously. Rian pulled down the seatbelt, clicked it into place over the raccoon's waist and, incidentally, his wrists. Then Rian pressed him back into the seat, softly with his free paw, while he pulled the belt as tight as it could go with the other.

The coon fidgeted a bit. "Iss tight," he said in a not-quite pouty tone, afraid to start any outright whining too quickly.

Rian nodded and said, "It is for your own safety." The wolf reached over him and tossed both pairs of pants into the back seat. Then, instead of closing the door and going to the driver side, as the coon expected, the wolf hopped in and pulled it shut behind him, scooting his way over the raccoon without ever resting his weight on him. It served to squash Kit back into the seat even deeper and make him feel impossibly small, even though rationally he knew Rian was only able to scoot over him and the armrest that way because the wolf was slight himself. On his way, Rian kept brushing - was it accidentally? - the front of his exposed "BABY" diaper. Since the wolf was thickly padded and shifting quite a bit himself, all the maneuvering in the otherwise silent car filled the small space with crinkling.

After a moment Rian settled comfortably into the driver's seat. "Waterproof interior," he remarked in a neutral tone as he looked around. "I definitely approve. Now there is something I noticed about your profile statement, Kit Raccoon. I want to clarify it before we go ahead and order your reward for unmasking a dangerous, cooty-carrying spy."

The cub scout scrunched his face up. Some of those words were pretty big, but he caught the important one! "Whass my reward?" he asked.

"Something you need really bad, so that you do not get squished back into your seat and choked by your seat belt any more," Rian remarked casually. "You are so small I almost did not see you there when I got in."

The coon's ears pricked. He had a hunch where this was going, but he decided to play dumb. "Whass I gotta do?" he asked. "A mission! Does I haffta fight Swifty again? I won't let any more of my buddies get sissied," he said huffily. "Don't worry, Commander. That fox is going down! I'll never forgive those girly types for what almost happened to Jason. I'll fight them forever. I've been training hard, and I'm twice as cubby already as last time I gave him the slip. The cubbier I get, the more effectual I am. It's because I am a cub scout! Not a regular boy scout." He nodded decisively and tugged at the handkerchief hanging loosely from his collar.

Rian nodded, still keeping his tone level. "Then we better keep you cubby most of the time, huh? That way you will always be ready for action. Kit Raccoon, Ace's report says that when you were asked about skills, you only listed one. Now that is okay. You have already found out you have more. When Kyle came to us he thought he had no skills besides being a champion piddler. As important as that is-and believe me, Kyle's pants-piddling abilities are impressive-he has since discovered his other talents. Like you have a talent. I heard the report you radioed on me. And Jax has told me you never get lost in the woods. He said that when you go off with your little buddies you always seem to know the way back to one of the big brother-caretaker-type furs nearby. You are like a brainy Brightheart Raccoon when it comes to directions. But do you remember what you had said to Ace as your one skill back when you were recruited?"

"Driving?" said the coon.

"Kit Raccoon," said Rian seriously, and the cub scout noted that Rian was only using the full form of his nickname and speaking slowly and without contractions, as though the wolf were giving a lecture to a small, easily confused child, "you did not say, 'I can drive.' You said, 'I have a car.' Those are different and I think as a good cub scout maybe you chose your words carefully to avoid lying. I know that you have a car because I am sitting in it, and because you opened it for me. That makes me nervous about highway safety though, since you are obviously a baby. I suppose they will sell cars to any fur nowadays. But your reward will help to keep you safe in it."

The scout cadet just nodded, ready to follow his leader wherever this went. "Is my reward," he guessed, trying to conceal his mounting excitement, "a car seat?"

"You are very smart!" said Rian, reaching over to pat the strapped-in coon's head while still looking straight ahead out of the windshield. "Your teammate Ryo said that you are a gifted subby player, very good at figuring out what your big brothers want even without being told. I wonder if you can figure out what I am thinking, though. I am going to think really hard about something that I hear you say in your car all the time. You will use all your subby cubby skills to guess the phrase I am thinking. And if you end up thinking the same thoughts as me along the way, well, then, what we have thought of together, will become true. Does that make sense to you? Until you have guessed, I will be very serious and avoid eye contact, so as not to give you any clues. That is the only way to be absolutely sure that we are both thinking of the same thing, so that it will become true."

The raccoon in the cub scout uniform-well, the top half of a cub scout uniform-nodded, and cleared his throat, then repeated a series of phrases, pausing after each, as seriously as though he were reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. "Are we there yet?" he guessed first, his eyes flickering to their corners to eye Rian for signs of the brotherly wolf's approval after each attempt. "How about now?" A twinkle in his eye, but otherwise the wolf maintained a stoic demeanor. "I need to use the poootty." Still nothing. "I see a doggy at that house! Hello, doggy! Arf! Arf!" No acknowledgment, and he had even barked a real bark! Maybe if he needled him. "I spy with my little eye a . . . big wolf cub baby's waistband!" The corner of Rian's lips curled up in the start of a smile, but he still didn't speak. This was hard! Maybe he had to test the boundaries of his role. The cub scout coon cleared his throat. "Let's play license plates!" he announced. "I see California!"

The wolf was visibly stifling a chuckle and fighting his own impulses to cuddle and tickle the cubby scout strapped in next to him until they found out how waterproof his seats really were.

"You need to read to play the license plate game," Rian explained in a tone of sententious disbelief, as though the cub scout had proposed a manned mission to Mars. "And you are too little to read, Kit Raccoon! Having things read to you by bigger boys is not the same thing as reading them yourself."

The coon fidgeted and tugged at the handkerchief tied around his neck, and bit his lips pensively. Darn it. Why couldn't he guess what the wolf was thinking? He wanted his car seat! He wanted to be a helpless backseat driver in his own vehicle, yipping directions to the bigger boys, barely potty-trained themselves, who were at least big enough to drive a team pet like him around.

Yeah, he wanted to be everybody's pet. He wanted to be changed in his backseat. Rian was right - why did he have a car with so much trunk space, except to always have multiple packs of padding in it? Big packs of big diapers. Big, puffy diapers. And wipes. And powder. And a tote bag. So his big brothers never had to bring supplies for the ride on his account!

He wondered if his trunk was really big enough for all _his_diapers, though, because suddenly Kit thought he might need large diapers instead of mediums. He thought that because the diaper he was wearing suddenly felt sooo tight. He squirmed under his seat belt and let out a whimper, biting his lip harder. He had to do something in his diapers bad, but his paws were pinned in place, to his hips, by the tightly fastened seat belt. Did Rian know that's what would happen?

Well of course-this is what always happened when he tried to wear a seatbelt just in the seat like a big kid! He would be way comfier in a car seat. Even if it didn't fit under his steering wheel and meant he could never drive himself anywhere, and had to always ask bigger boys to drop him off places he had to go when they could, on their way to do grown-up stuff.

"Kit Raccoon," said the wolf gently, emphasizing the first part of the nickname, "I know that you can do this." Rian rested a paw on the raccoon's knee and gave it a gentle squeeze, his eyes sparkling as he felt the coon, pinned in place by the tight shoulder strap of the seatbelt, wriggling around in the seat as he tried to maneuver one of his forepaws closer to his crotch, sliding it up his thigh a little bit at a time. "I know that you want things to be how we are imagining them."

The wolf rested one paw atop the coon's small one, arresting its progress, and stroked his knuckles and the back of his paw gently, smiling.

"Guesses you've made so far are things that any cub in first or second grade would say," the wolf hinted, prodding him. "I am sure that when you are driving around with a bigger fur, you say them all the time. All of our Baby Blue boys who drive are already used to ignoring the constant refrain of 'Are we there yet? How about now?' when their little bro teammates are in the back seat. You should try driving with Twitchy in the back. Sometimes he will start reciting counts of miles out to three decimal places. But we are talking about _your_car. Why do you have a car with a waterproof interior? I bet you specifically said that you could only look for cars with that feature when you were shopping for cars. Why is that?"

The wolf ran one of his fingers along the cushion of the rubber-covered seat, beneath the raccoon's closer thigh, approvingly. The coon started and whined; that tickled the back of his leg! How did Rian know he was ticklish there? His diaper was soooo much tighter all of a sudden. When and how did his Medium get sooooooo tight? Maybe large diapers wouldn't have enough room. Maybe he needed extra large diapers! I mean, really, he felt like the tapes were about to pop! He had to get his paws to his crotch-to adjust it! Pronto. But they were still pinned to his hips because Rian had fastened his seatbelt so tight. The cub scout wriggled helplessly, letting out a long whine.

Rian reached up for the rearview mirror, and adjusted it with his left paw, so that he could watch the raccoon in the passenger seat through it, and gauge his degree of squirminess that way. The little guy looked just about ready.

"What I am asking is," the wolf explained in a patient, fraternal tone, "not what any cub says a lot in the car, but what is something that Kit Raccoon says all the time in his car, maybe more than any other boy even on this team, since he is always being driven around?"

The raccoon whimpered. The short, diapered wolf in the front seat next to him suddenly seemed impossibly grown up. But then, he told himself, this was Rian's car practically! Well, Baby Blue's car. He was just holding it for them! It's not like he drove by himself anywhere. Ever. The only things he'd ever think to go shopping for if the team didn't drag him to other places were toys and ice cream! Besides, he needed a car seat, and that wouldn't fit under the steering wheel!

And he had to have a car with a waterproof interior: what other kind of vehicle could he ask anyone to drive him in? Asking for a ride in someone else's car would just be rude. Because of all the times he had an accident and said to the other boys in his car - yes, that was it! He did say that a lot, didn't he? A glimmer of an idea had come to him! And not a moment too soon, judging by the bulge in front of his diaper. He prayed that it worked.

Eying his super-grown-up looking lupine chauffeur curiously out of the corner of his eyes, the cub scout raccoon whimpered, "I - I don't need to use the potty any more." He gulped and added, for good measure, "Mr. Commander Rian boss wolfy big brother cubsitter sir."

He inhaled sharply before he had finished, though, because Rian's paw had slid from his thigh to his crotch and begun patting it gently. The wolf's eyes sparkled with pleasure, as he watched his blissfully squirmy playmate indirectly, through the rearview mirror, and observed how relieved he instantly looked at the touch of his commanding officer's paw.

"Exactly that. Your teammate Ryo is right, Kit Raccoon," the wolf said, in a tone of congratulations. "You," he gave his first gentle squeeze to the coonie's well-padded crotch, and instantly felt the diaper reach its maximum degree of tightness under his paw, as he concluded, "are a genius."

They both felt one of the four tapes pop open - but that would be okay. The scout cadet would need a change in less than fifteen minutes, anyhow. He had a whole lot stored up and his diaper was about to be really flooded-albeit in such a way that leaking ought not to be a problem. In fact, Rian took advantage of the situation to squeeze the diaper loosely around the coon's shaft, and slide it up and down as he rubbed, feeling the kit quiver.

"I think you have a very big future on this team," Rian remarked as he stroked, "as a very small raccoon."

Rian rested his left paw on the steering wheel of the inert car, gripping it tightly to anchor himself as he worked on the coon's crotch, watching him through the mirror all the while.

The wriggly cub scout managed to whimper, "Do ya need to drive somewhere Mr. Commander Rian sir? Ya can have my keys. They're back in my pocket in my pants on the back seat."

The coon exhaled sharply as he felt the first dribble of pre-cum trickle out into the thick, cottony padding pressed tightly all around his very small-feeling cock. "Please take my keys," he added plaintively. "I'd just looose them. I can't dwive myself anywhere! I just gotted a car so I'd haff something to bring to the group and for bigger boys to make it worth takin' care of me! And cuz it would be rude to ask for a ride in anyone else's car, wiff all th' accidents I have! I 'member that now! You helped me remember!! My big brothers can drive it whenever and wherever they need it. That's always more important than wherever I need to go! They can just drop me off and pick me up places when it's on their way! Since I'm good at directions, I'll navigate for them, from my car seat! Drive me somewhere an' I'll proof it!" He whimpered, and squeezed his eyes shut. "Taaaake me shopping," he whined. "I need new cloooothes. I knooow the waaaay to Kits R Us." He fidgeted and added, plaintively, "Toys 'R Us miiiiiiiight be near it so we could go there too real quick?"

Rian giggled as he kept pumping away at the coon, who felt himself melting into a full-on climax, as the wolf lightly explained, "Not quite yet, I'm just getting a feel a for your car, Kit Raccoon. I may need to do a few rounds of practice just feeling out all these controls while we talk about your future. You see, little guy-"

Just at the moment he felt the coon's whole body flopping against the seat he was pinned to and what would be the first very long release into his diaper beginning, Rian broke into a wide grin and concluded, gently, "I'm not used to driving a stick."

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

"If I help you pwactice tomorrow, Princess, will I have to read the boy parts again?" the cross fox, wearing a frilly purple dress, with ribbons tied around his tail and one ear, and a daisy tucked behind the other, whined.

"Probably," she said gently, before motioning him out the door and adding in a whisper, "You're good at it."

"Awww," Swifty whined, his tail and ears dropping. "That's what Mama says too."

Serry patted him on the head and handed the cross fox a teddy bear in a dress matching his, who had been sitting between them with a tea cup during the rehearsals. "You can talk the girliest pillow talk you want with Dolly to make up for it. I think you should go out with the other girls and talk with Dolly in front of them about outfits until naptime, and how unfair it is that you have to be a boy sometimes, until you fall asleep together. Dolly will understand. And she'll send you girly dreams in return, if you snuggle her enough."

Swifty nodded, gripping the doll tightly in both paws, and shuffled off quietly. The sissy fox princess left the door cracked open, as was her habit, as she turned back to the vanity table in her "office," remade into a dressing room with a small computer table. Serafina was known as the academy's most approachable instructor, and it wasn't unheard of for students to sneak into her room to talk privately about their relationship or school problems. Serry wasn't prepared for her next visitor, though, and blinked as she saw, in her mirror, the undersized panda poking her head in, and, unsure of how best to enter, clearing her throat and knocking lightly on the door.

"Lin Lin?" said Serry, raising an eyebrow. "Umm . . . come in . . . I guess."

"So, fox," the panda, wearing her Powerpuff Girls sweater, pink sweatpants and jogging shoes, looked around the room awkwardly and padded over to two laundry bags and a laundry hamper filled with old clothes, "I guess it's true, you're a lifestyler now. Girls' clothes full time."

The fox lowered her script. "Oh," she said, relaxing, as though the visit suddenly made sense. "You came because you heard I'm giving away stuff. Well, all my boys' clothes are in those baskets. In fact, that's almost every piece of outerwear I own without a skirt. Help yourself. Maybe there's some active wear you can use for your gym classes."

"Actually," admitted the panda, "I came to show you this before I send it anywhere. Since it is about you." She practically threw a clipboard on the vulpine's vanity table, and then padded over to the hampers. "But I'm definitely raiding your stuff while I'm here."

"What _is_this?" Serry stared at the clipboard and raised her eyebrows. "Did you collect all these signatures?"

The panda answered nonchalantly, "I _told_the girls they didn't all _have to_sign it. But I don't think they believed me when I said it was optional and I wasn't keeping track and there'd be no consequences if they didn't. I just decided our students should know the boys' team isn't the only one with a member who's been in the press. And you were in a newspaper recently, that dumb festival story about how you and your director-furson told people you were, umm, transgendered, if that's what you're calling yourself now. Whatever the word means in _your_case. So, unfortunately, you're all I had to work with."

"Azzie . . . Muffy. . . Bri . . . Kitty. . . .," Serry remarked the sissy names of some of the furs whose legal ones she recognized as she turned through the pages carefully. "Where's this thing going?" she asked. "Am I supposed to sign it? Or do anything?"

"To any place that covers your dumb festival thing," said the panda as she rummaged through Serry's hand-me-downs. "And your stupid sponsors. And ex-sponsor, I guess, saying that we won't be patronizing their cruddy movie nights and bake sales. No, fox, it's _about_you, so you shouldn't sign it. Haven't you ever seen a petition or heard of a boycott before?" She shook her head. "Look, I knew _you'd_be too busy mooning over some boy or other to make any kind of response yourself. But I thought you might want to see it before it got sent anywhere, in case you had, I don't know, changes or anything. It's not that often that furs in our groups actually take a stand for something. It seems like we should support them if they do." The panda had assembled a small pile of clothes, and took a break from rummaging to lean on them on one elbow. "This is a _lot_of stuff. What made you decide to get rid of all of your boy things?"

The sissy fox eyed Lin Lin curiously for a moment. "Well, honestly," she said, as she began scanning the draft of the statement on the first page, blushing as she recollected, "It was about Rian."

"Oh," said the panda gravely, sounding disappointed, but Serry, warming to the subject, barreled ahead without looking up from the paper and without noticing Lin Lin's pained reaction. She momentarily debated the wisdom of telling the panda anything personal - but her desire to talk about the boyfriend she hadn't spoken to since the night behind the waterfall quickly won out.

"He was getting to be such a desperate case. He was so nervous about going 24/7 himself and he wanted my support so badly. I felt like I had to do something. We had this date in between the audition and the start of rehearsals, before I quit the stationery store," Serry related, her cheeks flushing as she did, "and he surprised me by showing up outside the store when I was leaving. He brought me a tin of candy hearts. They were custom ones- I don't know where the little guy finds all these things - and every one of them was different, they all said things like, 'For my leading lady,' and, 'The course of true love never did stay dry,' and 'My pampered princess.' I said I wanted to save them all. He kind of insisted on feeding them to me during the night, but I made him give me a list of all the inscriptions first. Umm - that all happened later, though - where I meant to start -"

Lin Lin considered making an excuse and bolting for the door, but decided not to abandon her clipboard - instead she distracted herself by sitting up again and moving to the giveaway hamper, which also had some used sporting equipment resting alongside it.

"Anyway," Serry continued as she read through the letter, pausing to reread most of the sentences since her mind kept wandering back to the memories she recounted, "when he met me, I was wearing street clothes - I mean, my old street clothes, boys' clothes - and he said 'Serry?' in a voice that sounded sooo sad, and I said 'No fun seeing me like this, huh? Don't worry, hon. I'll get changed as soon as we get back to my place, we don't have to hold paws or anything until I'm pretty.' Well, we were on the sidewalk, and he hugged me so tight, and kissed me, hard, then he buried his little head in my chest and said, 'You're radiant. I'm just sad for the dress you're not wearing right now. It's missing its chance to be beautiful.' Then when we got back to my apartment he scratched and whimpered at the door to my bedroom the whole time I was changing. I decided then I _had_to do something."

Lin Lin, who was doing her best to ignore the fox's sappy reminiscences, stifled her gagging with a pretend cough. "Sounds like he's pretty far gone," she said noncommitally.

The fox shook her head and smiled, looking over her shoulder at the years' worth of male apparel she was discarding. "You have no idea. Poor Rian. That guy," she said wistfully, "will do the craziest things for love." Serry tapped a finger against the clipboard thoughtfully. "I hope he's okay over there. I've hardly seen him for days. He didn't return my call yet about the Dex and Twitchy stuff. He's got to be worried sick about his friends. I can't bear to bother him with all this festival stuff. It would put him over the edge. And," the fox blushed, "I _did_kind of pull a dirty trick on him with Swifty."

Lin Lin, sitting by the final laundry bag, turned around and unfurled a tee shirt with both paws, concealing her smirk behind its images of flying, spiky-haired muscled fighters. "This was yours? I mean, _you_actually wore it?" she asked with a chortle. "Dragonball Z?"

The sissy fox nodded. "My life was different back then. You had to be there, I guess."

"Well, I'm keeping this," the panda remarked, folding it up. "For future blackmail material. I can't let that go unremarked."

"See," Serry, softened by talking about her wolfy, giggled involuntarily, and remarked, "I knew you came here with something nefarious up your sleeve."

There was a long moment of silence. Then Lin Lin dropped the shirt on to her pile and stood up, experimenting with the best way to carry the items to carry she'd collected. "You have missed a lot of meetings lately, fox. Are you up to date with Cassie's mysterious fallback plan? And this Level 5 stuff? Have you sent anyone there? You haven't said anything about it."

The vulpine princess shrugged. "My paws are kind of full between my girls and the play. No, I haven't. I heard there were a couple problems. But I'm sure Callie and Cassie have everything in paw for the Open House. I trust those two and I'm not going to second guess them this time."

Lin Lin frowned as she stood awkwardly by the door, a pile of folded clothes tucked under each arm, and a pair of sneakers hanging in her other paw.

"Why?" Serry asked, looking over her shoulder slowly. "What's going on? Were you hoping I would say something?"

"Of course not," the panda snapped, shaking her head emphatically. "It's just - That squirrel Cassie's been spending so much time with - I think she just hates_boys, you know - which is good, I mean, that's why we're here, right - but I don't know what she _likes- well, maybe that's not it. But I _really_have a bad feeling about her. And the way she drags her recruits in here and then a few of them disappear upstairs. There's something off. Mark my words, she," Lin Lin said biting her lip, "is a bad influence."

"Well," said Serry, smiling, as she handed the petition back to the panda's free paw, "give the new girl a little time."

The door was already swinging shut behind the panda by the time the fox added, quietly, "Maybe she'll grow on you."

Next time: Level Four continues in the next batch of episodes with: Invitations! Some potentially life changing ones are made!