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Level 5: Graduation!

Fourth and Final Part of: The Pink and Blue Diaperfur Adventures Finale!

kitncub

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Continues directly from [Level Five: Graduation, Part Three!](%5C)

If you haven't read that (or don't remember if you've read it), go there first!

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

If you are brand-new: the Pink and Blue Diaperfur Adventures series [starts here](%5C). Go check it out and if you like, keep going as long as you keep having fun!

Special recap format!: Two rival factions, Roger's ragtag fraternity of boyish and adventure-loving Baby Blue AB/DL boys and the pink team headquartered at his sister Calliope's feminizing Academy for Special Boys, have torn the city's ageplay scene asunder! When Roger, concerned of rumblings about extreme discipline methods at the academy, got a hold of his sister's secret recruiting list, the final battle began, and the boys sabotaged their sissy opponents' Open House event by throwing a better party at the same time-and digging tunnels into the girly school that led to their secret party site, then inviting them over!

When all seemed lost for the pink team, though, boys' team combat leader Dex, unhinged by a fight with his boyfriend Twitchy, showed up seeking amnesty - and learned to accept, with the help of the boys' longtime enemy, the panda Lin Lin, in what first appeared to be a repressive sissifying trap, a difficult truth about his own sexual orientation! A rescue party of his friends Rian, Ace, and Jax crashed in before things were finished, though, and put an explosive end to the sissies' schemes! Maybe too late, Rian figured out the truth and acted the part of the bad guy, working with a timely assist from his sissy love Serafina to send their desperate and disheartened teammates, Dex and Lin Lin, back into each other's arms-maybe, for the panda marched off into the night, in the opposite direction than she had been told to, intending to leave town! Meanwhile, Baby Blue's leader Roger has given a second chance to the bunny engineer Twitchy, whose actions in the countdown to zero hour demonstrated a selfless drive to protect the raccoon even with their relationship on the rocks.

Where will everyone land when the dust settles? And what did we learn so far on our diaperfur identity adventure? Rian learned that he can't always be the hero. Dex learned that the truth about yourself isn't always what you'd like it to be, and sometimes you need to figure out how to live with that instead of going against your own grain. And what about Twitchy? What did the bunny learn? Well, we have a little time left. Why don't you join us, and see?

Episodes in this part:

Episode 7: Legacy!

Episode 8: The Future!

Episode 7: Legacy!

"My preliminary bill," said Shelley, crossing her legs, as she sat down on the student side of the teacher's desk in Cassandra's home economics classroom and set an envelope on it. "Now that clean-up is more or less done and I can leave with a clear conscience."

The Newfoundland set down her open management book and grinned. "Shelley!" she said. "Good afternoon!"

The athletic gray squirrel, who had changed back into a silk blouse and faded jeans, snorted. "Read that before you decide how good it is," she suggested.

Cassandra reached down to her desk and turned a piece of paper that had been resting there already around to face Shelley. "Our preliminary bill," she said. Shelley raised an eyebrow, and the dog proceeded to explain, "We lost almost all of our chastity devices while you were on security Open House night, because of damage you let the Scouts cause. And we can't replace them until next year because of Callie's word to Roger, and the fact that we agreed to pay some of the rabbit's hospital bills out of the reparation proceeds. In the meantime we have a serious disciplinary situation."

Shelley inspected the itemized list skeptically. "When did those two break a bed frame?" she demanded.

Cassandra turned the paper back around and frowned, then removed a pencil from behind her ears and drew a long, thin line through one item, also correcting the total. "Sorry. That happened . . . after we all got back and fell asleep that morning," she said, clicking her tongue. "That's not your responsibility."

"None of this is 'my responsibility,'" said the squirrel, flicking a paw at her. "It's not my responsibility that you're paying inflated prices for cheap pieces of plastic, either."

"Shelley," said the Newfoundland, sliding the estimate aside to reveal another piece of paper, "You led the lynx straight into that area. Our agreement was that you would provide security for the duration of the Open House. And that you'd protect areas we'd advised you to protect."

"Pfft," Shelley waved a paw. "I was never told those were in there."

"All Lin Lin's security plans," the Newfoundland said, turning the paper over, "which you ended up not using, marked that closet a protected area. You did go over Lin Lin's files after you got them, didn't you?"

The squirrel glared up at the dog, who knew full well she had ignored countless briefings from the panda.

Then, after a moment, her glare softened, and she laughed, and slapped her knee with one paw. "You know something, big and black," she said, "You aren't so bad at this. Maybe you'll even keep Callie from going out of business."

A shy, muffled knock at the door gave way to the scuffling of footpaws as a male grey hyena, wearing a pink blouse and a simple skirt that came to his knees. His paws were held behind his back, but he had to reach in front to curtsy, and anyway the padlocked bondage mitts he was wearing were large enough that they weren't easy to hide. As the well-intentioned note pinned to him had suggested, Iggy found himself fitting in much better with the other cross-dressing boys since his mistress had condescended to plug his tailhole. He had typed a thank you note to mail to his mysterious wolf benefactor, naturally using his nose and his tongue since he'd been mitted as punishment practically since he had been found and untied, and given it to his mistress to approve for delivery since he didn't know Mr. Rian's address.

"Miss Shelley," Iggy said, as he curtsied, "I heard you were leaving. I went ahead and started folding all your clothes. I thought it would be helpful. It's not easy, wearing these." The squirrel glowered at him for a second, and he added quickly, dropping to his knees, "I'm not complaining though, mistress! I deserve these and worse! I'm just letting you know I might not finish on time! And I don't want you to have to pack anything! Maybe one of the better sissies can help me!" The hyena looked at the ground and quivered, preparing to be hit. He hadn't fully processed the fact that Shelley's riding crop was gone, as he had become so used so quickly to being threatened with it. "Also, I found my key, and, and, and . . . I need to ask you what to do about it! Are you . . . giving me to someone?" He looked from the Newfoundland to the squirrel hesitantly, the chastity cage under his panties clinking as he shifted his weight from one footpaw to the other.

Shelley tilted her head and looked at the quivering fur a little oddly. What was in the water in this place? She'd expected to find a bunch of boys who didn't care about anything except pawing off in their diapers. The raccoon and the panda everyone went out looking for had never come back in the fur and no one seemed to want to talk about it. Meanwhile she'd sat in a hospital waiting room in the wee hours of the morning talking with a diaperboy she knew as a birdwatcher about the National Outdoor Leadership School while they took turns helping Twitchy practice walking on his crutches. An ex-army trainee had invited her to go rock climbing with him a couple days later by way of apology for setting off an explosion behind her. Now, a slaveboy found his key-and he hadn't purloined it. What a strange place Callie's hometown had turned out to be.

Shelley shook her head and smiled at the feminized gray hyena boy. "Why don't I hang on to it, peaches?" she suggested, "I might need it when you come visit. Or the next time I'm out here."

Iggy blushed and trembled, gulping and nodding enthusiastically. He had a long-distance mistress! He'd like to see the other so-called subs compete with him. How could any of those gay sissy boys possibly be as good a slave if her top was looking over her shoulders all the time so she had to be obedient? Ha ha! No, those other sissy boys would never be able to prove they were half the slave he was.

The Newfoundland smiled at them. "The balance still owed is -" she said, punching numbers into a large flat calculator, but Shelley waved a paw at her as she stood up and stretched.

"Y'all know what," she said. "Thanks for the plane tickets. I'm gonna consider the rest of this trip," she concluded as she swung her arms from side to side, loosening up in anticipation of a long travel day, "a vacation."

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

In the secret conference room under Roger's shop, plans were afoot by the members of Baby Blue's Secret Circle!

"Take all the boys you can with you! Attack in waves during the weekend when I'm gone," Rian ordered, pointing up at the theater plans on the projector screen behind him, "and pack every seat! No one is getting off without seeing it! There's a duel scene, and a shipwreck and a-"

Roger cleared his throat and uncrossed his legs, which were up on the table. "I think we should move on to the operation plans now," the Labrador suggested.

Rian grumbled and took the golf cap he'd been wearing off his head, using it to fan himself. "Serry's play!" he concluded tersely, pointing up at the screen one last time before sitting down. "Be there! If you haven't yet!" he glared across the table at one of the two newest members of the Secret Circle, a lynx wearing a safari hat and a camouflage vest over a khaki shirt, who rolled his eyes.

"Now," resumed Roger, "one of our tunnels has collapsed, but the other is still operative and it's time we used it for something. I'm sick and tired of these guilt-trippy bake sales and lemonade stands we've been obligated to get our summer rations from to help pay off damage caused to the academy."

The other new Circle member, a tracking hound in a Boy Scout sash, looked down at the floor. "I like the apricot squares," Jax said pensively. "I think Kyle should ask for their recipe." Then he hmphed. "I don't believe that they bake the Girl Scout cookies or the donuts themselves, though," he added. "It's false advertising to include them in a bake sale like they baked them."

"The cupcakes," Roger said emphatically, "always have pink frosting, they serve these pink cream pastries that get pink cream all over our muzzles, the so-called gingerbread men are all wearing skirts like gingerbread sissies, and they only ever serve pink lemonade. There's no point in adding insult to injury and it's time to remind them there's still a war on. Rian's intelligence suggests the girls are planning a school book fair. Doubtless filled with all sorts of Babysitter's Club chapter books and the girliest baby books you can imagine. Well just wait," the Labrador rubbed his paws together, "until they come into their gym and find nothing available except action superhero comics. That they will have to read through in order to find a coded message about where their real stuff is. We will watch them read those comics and see how girly they can stay! We're going to slip in through the tunnel and-"

The lynx cleared his throat. "As combat leader, I think this is a pansy operation," he interrupted. "I still vote for Operation Recess. We trick the girls to come to the party playsite location, make them think we're up to something big there, and then we slip in and lock them out of the school. And while they're locked out we'll use that gym for what it's meant for, but they never do there, to play basketball. And no, it doesn't leave out the non-jocks: Every boy on this team can dribble. Let the girls be the ones trying to break into that place for a change."

"Comic books!" barked Rian, pounding a fist on the table.

"Basketball!" shouted Ace, doing the same.

The lynx and the wolf glared at each other from across the conference table. "It's all your fault we're in trouble with them anyway!" the bickering furs shouted at the same time, each pointing at the other's muzzle.

"It was your raid!" said Ace, throwing his paws up.

"They were your explosives!" growled Rian.

"Let's see if we can settle this democratically," said Roger with a sigh. "Paws for Operation Recess," he looked around the room. "I'll only vote to break a tie."

"Mr. and Mr. for basketball," muttered Rian, looking at Ace and Jax, and scribbling the numbers down, "Shocking to see you two vote together. Again."

"Paws for Operation Story Hour," the Labrador said next. Rian's shot up.

"Squeak?" said a small gray mouse, tugging on the paw of the white rabbit in a black tee-shirt and jeans sitting at the far end of the table, who was staring down at the wood finish despondently. "Comic books," said Twitchy to the mouse without looking up, smiling faintly. "But do what you want Squeak, you have our one vote."

"Squeak squeak!" said the mouse.

"One on probation who does not count," said Rian caustically, flicking his eyes over Twitchy, "Squeak for comic books plus me makes two, and then there's one," he gazed at an empty chair across the room for a moment, "one abstention," he said sadly.

"My boys are getting restless. This operation gives us no chance to use the combat team," complained Ace, "and it makes us look like wimps. By the way, so does your hat," he said, pointing at Rian's golf cap. "Why are you wearing that? It's-"

"Who asked you?" interrupted the wolf, adjusting it on his head indignantly. "You're only a temporary combat leader anyway! Stop saying, 'I'm combat leader, I'm combat leader,' as though we don't know who the real combat leader is! You getting promoted! Him getting promoted!" He flicked a paw at Twitchy. Then he looked at the empty chair again and, feeling himself choke up, turned and ran out of the room.

"I'm sorry," Roger said to the Boy Scouts. "I'll talk to-"

He was surprised, though, to hear a metallic clanking as the rabbit pushed his chair back and laid hold of the crutches that were propped against the table next to him, and set one paw decisively on the top of each. "I'll talk to him," Twitchy said as he forced himself to his feet, found his footing on his crutches, and hobbled after Rian.

The rabbit followed Rian through the door and left his crutches behind to crawl up the tunnel that led to the changing shed behind Roger's shop, putting all his weight on his knees and forepaws. Squeak scampered down the leg of the table, racing after his friend and squeaking in concern.

"Hey," said Twitchy as he pulled himself up through the hole and sighted the shrimpy wolf in the golf cap sitting on his bottom in the corner of the shed, his back to Twitchy, his knees hunched up close to his face. "You haven't said a word to me for weeks."

"Then I'm doing good! Why break the streak now?" snapped Rian. He shook his head. "You think you know who your friends are," he muttered to himself.

"Yeah, you think you know who your friends are," repeated Twitchy, taking a long breath. "I know that you're the one who called that protest meeting behind Rog's back to try and overrule him and have me thrown off the team, Rian," he said. "I know Jax and Kyle are the ones who talked you down. I have big ears, see? They hear things," he gestured at his long, floppy ears, but Rian didn't turn to look. "It's okay. I'm not upset about it. You were smarting from Dex leaving. I don't blame you and you don't need to avoid me for fear of being asked about it. Come on, chew me out if you want to get it out of your system."

"I guess this is a test run," Roger said to the Scouts below.

"Of what? Promoted? What was Rian talking about?" asked Ace, looking at Jax quizzically. "Who's promoting Twitchy?"

"Oh," the Lab looked a little surprised. "Jax, you didn't tell him? Twitch has some skills and perspective that might be useful to us. I want to give him something to do that will get him circulating a bit again instead of just sitting there until enough corner time has passed for him to go on full duty. He's afraid to talk to furs on the team more than he has to. And this might free me up to have a little more fun with you boys again-and keep a closer eye on you rascals. Twitch is going to be doing a lot of the Internet monitoring and alerting I used to do. He . . . well, I think he had good instincts about Dex's privacy, at least. Let's leave it that. And as our . . . youngest member, he's going to take over some of my responsibilities dealing with underage furs who are interested in the group. I think it will make him more aware of how dealing with him throughout this recent relationship has been for the rest of us."

"Youth officer," said Rian upstairs, shaking his head. "I can't believe Rog is giving you anything important to do."

"It's not really that big a deal," Twitchy explained to Rian upstairs. "He said the main thing I have to do is keep my contact information available, stay visible and responsive on messengers when I'm online, and say that other teenage diaperfurs who want to talk about their fursonal problems, in a, you know, PG-13 way, could reach me anytime."

Rian blinked and stared over his shoulder up at the rabbit. "Any time?" he asked, a little nervously. "You're going to tell teenagers that?"

Ace, below, blinked and widened his eyes. Here he thought the Labrador never got angry. "Does he know what he's in for?" he asked. "I was going to hit him for Dex as soon as his ankle healed, but it's starting to seem unnecessary."

"If it goes okay, and he's surviving, there's a thought he might organize and host infrequent get-togethers where diaperfurs just a year or two too young for the group could talk to each other and hang out. Nothing fancy, maybe play board games, and nothing too big, an invitation only sort of thing. A see to your own changes one at a time in the bathroom affair," Roger said. "But it would be a chance to get a look at them for Baby Blue, to give them a safe space to meet some others, and to tell them just a little about the group. And if it goes well, he can go in with Rian on some of the bigger events. I'll be working with Twitch closely to see how he does and what develops."

"So will I," said the sensitive tracking hound, looking up from the floor, and looking from Ace to Roger. "I'm sorry I didn't mention it yet, hon. The truth is I've been thinking about your proposal, sir, and I wanted to say, I'll help Twitchy with his youth group stuff. I want to keep a close eye on him. Somefur has to. And . . ." he remembered the rabbit he had been so suspicious of, wincing as he stamped around the nearly empty hospital waiting room on his crutches, asking him and Shelley again and again for confirmation that Dex would be okay, "I want to keep an eye out for him, too," he added.

Roger eyed the two Boy Scouts closely. "I'm as much to blame for things ending how they did as anyone. I got too busy, and too distracted, and let the Circle get too tight. I should never have let it become quite so incestuous. You two always vote together. You aren't about to get drawn into anyone's love triangles or," he squinted and counted on his fingers, "quadrangles, or . . ." he bit his lip "other love-related shapes. And even though you were a bit nosy, you were asking the right questions at the right times. We have a saying in the comics business that it was foolish of me to forget," he said, "'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?' But I think you two might be my answer."

"Who watches the watchmen?" translated Jax.

"You know Latin now? When did you learn that? If you say that you know Latin from bird watching," threatened Ace, "I am going to punch you."

"State mottoes," said Jax, tugging on his Boy Scout sash, with a smile.

Up above, Rian turned a cold shoulder to Twitchy. "Well, if they're in your own age bracket," he snapped, "at least we know you won't try to have sex with them."

"Squeak!" said the mouse who had just scampered on to Twitchy's lap, sounding a bit miffed at that remark, and rubbed his nose against Twitchy's leg supportively. The rabbit was sitting at the edge of the tunnel back to the conference room, letting his feet dangle into the hole.

Twitchy didn't bristle at or respond to the insult. Instead he put a paw on Rian's shoulder. "I might need your advice," he said.

"Don't set anything on fire this time," the wolf advised curtly, wrapping his own arms around his knees and rocking back and forth.

Twitchy still didn't take the bait. He just sat there, keeping his paw on Rian's shoulder. "Is he coming back?" the rabbit asked after a while.

"I don't know," answered Rian, breaking down and sobbing into his knees. "He left after he saw Roger and Ace," the wolf wailed, letting himself go. "He hugged Ace! He didn't come to see me and he didn't call! He's only called Rog. I don't even know where he is right now."

"He left like that because of me," the bunny said, gulping. "And telling this crazy story about liking girls. I sent him running right to the opposite sex. I'll never believe that's where Dex wants to be. He's angrier than I thought. He's still that angry at me. It's my fault. I thought there would be a fight when I did tell him but I never thought he would go that far just to push me away. Sleep with a girl?" Twitchy shuddered. "How could he do something so crazy? Who does he think he's fooling? Who knows how long it will be before he comes back to his senses? Poor Dex."

Rian looked up at the rabbit through teary eyes, a little doubtfully. Did the bunny really believe that? Dex had moved on, clearly. But Twitchy still saw everything that happened as though through the prism of their relationship, as though he couldn't accept that it might actually be over. Gosh, thought Rian, looking at him, he tries to act so grown-up, but he really is just a kid in so many ways. The opposite of me.

"No," said Rian, crying, "it's my fault he left that way." He steadied his breathing after a moment. "Rog told me about your problem," he said, extending a tentative olive branch. "The night-time one. He said you don't want to tell anyone about it because you didn't want it to seem like a ploy for sympathy. But he must know it's just stupid for you not to tell furs who could obviously help."

"Oh," Twitchy shifted, feeling himself release a little into the diaper he was wearing at the moment, "the bedwetting. It's not so bad. I only need them at night. I leak a lot, though."

"Is it because of your fall?" asked Rian, still crying, for in truth he had been fighting against his instinct to show compassion to the bunny for weeks.

"It's psychosomatic," the bunny answered.

"So can't they operate on your pyscho-stoma. . . tiser?" Rian asked shakily.

"Rian, you idiot," the bunny answered, also tearing up as he flicked one of Rian's ears, "that means it's all in my head."

"You know what that says to me?" the little wolf suggested, still sobbing. "It means you aren't just saying you feel bad. You need diapers at night," he sniffled, "because you're a good person."

"I told Dex something like that once," said the bunny.

"Did it make him feel better?" the crying wolf asked hopefully.

"No," said Twitchy, looking down at his crotch. "But now I guess I have a little better idea what life was like for him."

"You said you leak. Why are you leaking?" Rian asked, his sobs slowing down. "You should know better than that."

"I don't have a budget for nightly use, Rian," said Twitchy, fidgeting a little, "and I don't want to take a lot from the group right now. For now I got one big case of Depends undergarment things and I take towels and-"

Rian wailed loudly as he looked at the rabbit's crutches and heard him speak those words. That was the last straw. As angry as he had been at first, and as angry as he had stayed this far into the summer, he only had the heart to see his friend punished so much.

"No friend of mine," the wolf cried at once, "is using Depends or belted undergarments! The group's diapers are your diapers. And my diapers are your diapers, you stupid idiot; we wear the same size. And I'll get you rubber mattress stuff if you don't have that, too. I won't take no for an answer. None of this counts as a gift or anything, okay? Think of it as back wages for the things you've made for us. How bulky do you need on the diapers? I will adjust my ordering."

"Based on the data so far," Twitchy said apprehensively, "pretty bulky."

"Is pretty bulky waddle-inducing, or crawl-inducing?" asked Rian, rubbing his sniffly nose with the back of one paw.

Twitchy paused, chewing on his lip and considering the state of his previously white mattress cover. "Crawl," he confessed after a moment, "definitely crawl."

Rian nodded. "Well, I'm still going padded 24/7 either way. Maybe if I wear some of those during the day, without breaking my resolution about trying to wear multiple layers, you'll feel less bad about having to wear them at night." He paused for a minute. "You know, Twitch," he said, "I can show you a little better what life was like for Dex."

"What do you mean?" the rabbit asked apprehensively.

The wolf answered a question with a question. "What are you doing," he suggested, "next weekend?"

"I get my next X-rays Friday," said the bunny. "After that, I don't know."

"I do," said Rian, extending a paw to help him up. "You're having a sleepover with me and Rog. I'm certain, little bunny, that I can manage to wet heavier than someone your size. Or I'm not the one who gets to wear the mostest layers around here. Now let's put an end to this nonsense about the rest of the team playing basketball while your ankle is still healing. I don't want you having to sit there and watch that."

Rian fidgeted and added after a moment, "No strings attached fun at the sleepover. I guess I should say that all explicit-like? I'll probably do things in your diapers and you'll probably enjoy it, you naughty bunny, but don't go crushing on me."

Twitchy accepted his paw and stuck his tongue out, blowing a raspberry as the wolf hoisted him up. "Don't worry," he said. "I'm only sleeping with you so I'll have an alibi for the puddles."

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

In the headmistress' office at Empress Calliope's Academy for Special Boys, plans for the first in a series of experimental schooltime events were afoot!

"I'm just saying," said Serafina, looking from the Newfoundland to the leopardess, "that if the boys know about our book fair, we should be prepared for them to do something."

Calliope snorted dismissively. "They won't be able to pull anything together right now," she said, typing at her laptop without looking up. "They're being ridiculously overcautious about breaking the weapons rules. That lynx running their combat team knows he's on shaky ground. Besides, they're dependent on our bake sale goods until reparations have been paid. They know full well that if we suspected an attack we could retaliate by spiking them with laxatives. That's a sufficient deterrent."

"Even if the boys do crash our book fair, things will work themselves out in the end," added the Newfoundland, who was knitting a crochet pattern. "And the girls would rather be taking dance lessons than doing security or combat drills, especially since we're without a gym teacher at present to cater to the athletic ones."

The sissy fox smoothed out her green silk dress and tugged at the barrette behind her ear, staring at an empty pink chair in the corner. "I think we should just be a little bit more competitive, so that Rian and Roger don't start to think they can walk all over us," she fidgeted, "maybe. At least let me reconnoiter and find out what they might be up to before we get too far along to change anything."

"Well," said Calliope without looking up from her laptop, "I'll take it under advisement."

Cassandra continued knitting. Calliope continued typing. Serafina sighed again. She couldn't believe it, but she missed the fur who should have been sitting across from her.

After a moment, Callie finished something and closed her computer, and motioned for the Newfoundland to leave, though she began talking while Cassie was still gathering up her knitting supplies. "Serafina," the leopardess said, "have you given any more thought to my proposal? After the way you stood up for sissies on stage, I think the announcement would be an exciting one. And if not for you and your boyfriend, well . . . the Open House could have ended in disaster for everyone."

The sissy fox fidgeted and waited until she heard the door close. "I told you," she insisted, "it should be Cassie. She knew there was something between Dex and Lin Lin ages before I did."

The leopardess smiled, resting elbows on the desk and her chin on her folded forepaws, and twitched her tail. "I'm glad to hear you say that. But Cassandra and I have had this conversation many times and she's always refused. She knows I'm asking you now. She prefers to be a number two. You will find her an invaluable assistant, even in your education. She is a quiet, but talented player. Take this from me: When she does start speaking up about something, listen to her. Fursonally, I think it's a bit early, and I wish you were a little more responsible, but, perhaps you need to have responsibility thrust upon you to grow into it. Besides, since my brother is making plans, I don't want the girls to worry that my team won't outlast his. I certainly can't have them think we're less organized."

Serafina's ears twitched. Roger was making plans? She eyed Calliope suspiciously. Were those two up to what she thought they were up to?

"Then, yes, your majesty," she said cautiously, blushing and defaulting to a form of address from the pink team's apartment tea party and imperial court days, "I'll accept being next in line to the imperial throne. Will there be some kind of announcement or...?"

Calliope shrugged. "We'll wait for a fitting occasion. In the meantime, strengthen your out of town ties. You have one important ally already. Stay in touch with him and try to make more however you can. There's a rumor that someone has been in touch with one of the boys for advice about starting a group in the Northwest. We can't let ourselves be outflanked if they're going to start making alliances." She reached into her drawer, and withdrew a sparkly tiara, and a locked, pony-covered diary. "Your training will begin with observing me screen some of the new recruits. We'll need to put you through a refresher course of charm school and Cassie will escort you to some of the useful BDSM events so you can get a better handle on what tools are available. We import them very selectively. And you might take notes after each talk with your boyfriend. There are a few boys over there I'm curious about. Those two newer combat boys Brianna is spending so much time with, for instance, the lion and the white German shepherd. Not," she added quickly, "that we would ever break the rules of engagement, of course."

Serafina looked at the tiara and touched it with one paw. It was real crystal-not a bendable toy. Rian would go nuts if he saw her in this. A real princess. "This is sized for me," she said. "I only said yes just now."

Calliope smiled at her archly. "I've always been good," the leopardess said, "at predicting what furs would do. You will become so, too. Your instincts are good, you just need more practice in tricky situations. For instance . . . let me walk you through what I saw and how I handled it, the night that Lin Lin came to my office to quit."

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

The Labrador held the rope ladder steady as Rian climbed up it, collapsing into his arms at the top with visible relief, looking backward at the tremendous height he had climbed.

"What do you think?" asked Roger, proudly, "The new Hideout Number Zero! That will throw off those girls' spies when they try to figure out how many bases we have! The Overlook! You can see all of Baby Blue's territory from here." He waved one paw over the sprawling forest below. The two furs were standing on a wooden platform, with a railing around its edges, and two perches where binoculars or telescopes could be set. The river, the Enchanted Forest, and the sissy academy were visible from this height, too. Rian's eyes widened in awe.

Then he looked sad. "Rog," he said, "where is Dex? When is he coming back? I want to show him this."

"I'm sorry, little buddy," said the Labrador, sitting down, and wrapping Rian in a hug. "He said he doesn't know. He asked me to keep the whole team at bay for a while. I think it's time for Dex to do some things on his own. He may come back later this summer, or he may not. You know not everyone who comes through our group is meant to stay forever. Some take what they need and go. They scatter. It's not all bad. The days here and there you can still spend with them become precious. Don't cut those times short when you have them."

The Labrador sounded sad when he said that. Rian looked up over his shoulder at him. He had tried to come up with something he could do for Roger to repay him for everything. Maybe this was it. "I'll stay forever, Rog," he said.

"I've heard that before," said the dog, staring off into the distance. "Forever doesn't mean anything."

The wolf wasn't about to let him get away with looking sad. "Then I'll stay," retorted Rian, grabbing his paw and tugging it until the dog looked down at him, "until I've outgrown my diapers."

Roger smiled. "Now," he said, "you're talking."

"Does it ever get easier," Rian asked, "letting go of furs? If they have to leave? Standing out of the way and saying you can't help them any more?"

"No," said the dog, his eyes moist as he looked down at Rian. "Not for me. And, I think, not for you. It's not something dogs and wolves are good at. But, you're learning, little guy, that you can do it, if it's really for the best, and that's the last thing that I needed to see you could learn. If you and Serafina hadn't gotten together and thought fast on Open House night - I know it was a bit of a mess, but, things could have ended much worse. You two have a special kind of relationship. You were working against each other for your teams that whole time, but when it mattered and you thought you saw something, even though you each only had some of the jigsaw pieces, you joined paws to try to nudge two furs from opposite sides together. Callie and I have been talking about it. That's why I'm showing you this now, before it's finished," he said, "Right now, this place should stay secret. This is a place for the leaders of Baby Blue."

Rian's ears perked up. "Is this the big secret," he asked excitedly, "you told me about once?"

"Oh," said Roger, laughing, "no! The big secret about regression! I almost forgot about that!"

"Can you tell me now? Would it help me?" asked Rian. "Dex ran away and I don't know if he'll be back. Twitchy might spend half of his summer vacation on crutches. Furs I thought I knew totally weren't totally the furs I thought I knew. The perfect Circle group we had before is now a group of furs who don't get along as good. I could really use anything that would help me come to terms with all of it better."

"Well I think it's a secret you know already, Rian, even if you don't realize you know it," said Roger. "Besides, if I tell you, then I've given up the store. I mean I know some hiding places and halfway houses here and there, and there's my secret network of friends, sure, but this is the last big Baby Blue secret I haven't told you yet. This is the one," he said, gesturing to the academy below them, "that they don't get."

Rian smiled in anticipation. "You can tell me, Rog," he said. "I'm ready."

"Well, okay," said the dog, "but it might be a bit of a shock at first." The dog leaned over, and whispered in Rian's ear.

The wolf's eyes widened, and he raised a paw to his muzzle. "That's it?" he said after a moment. "One sentence?"

"That's it," said Roger, and nodded. "Don't tell anyone. It's top-level classified. Baby Blue leaders only."

"Regression," repeated Rian, looking up at his mentor, stunned, "is about growing up."

Roger nodded. "You're ready now," he said. "I might as well make it official. I'm not planning anything, mind, but there are rumblings the girls might make some kind of announcement, and I don't want to be caught with my plastic pants down when they do. I'm hoping that you'll be the one who keeps all this running if I ever, well, can't."

"There's nothing," exclaimed Rian, "that I would rather do. Do we need to start some kind of training? Or is there like a black box or a secret book that I should-"

"Nah," said Roger, patting Rian on the head and wagging his tail. "You'll figure it out."

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

Far away, after the end of a train route, after the end of a bus route, a chubby middle-aged female skunk with faded pink head dye in her fur and a piercing in her nose opened her door and squinted down at the diffident raccoon standing on her doorstep, holding a bicycle helmet by its strap in one paw. He was wearing a karate uniform, of all things. Did they come straight from their afterschool activities without showering and changing now?

"Did you order pizza again?" Jenny called over her shoulder into the house. "How lazy are you? We just had it last-"

"I'm not a pizza delivery boy," said the raccoon, the helmet swinging on its straps in the mid-summer breeze as he smiled up at her. "Can I come inside?"

"I'm sorry, kid," the skunk said, frowning down at him. "No boys allowed. You're also a bit early for Halloween. I don't have anything to give you."

"Yes," the raccoon said, "you do. I thought we'd never find you before we had to leave, and you're one of the furs she promised to introduce me to before the China trip." He looked over his shoulder as his traveling companion, a petite panda wearing a black backpack with his name on it, finished locking the bicycle to a tree in the small yard and padded over.

"Which is no vacation for me if I'm going as your interpreter," Lin Lin said to him as she put a paw over his shoulder and set the backpack that included his changing supplies. "I don't know how I'm supposed to keep_you_ from getting robbed blind. I bet you're going to be more work to look after than that middle-school ferret kid. His dad will have the easy job."

Dex just grinned.

"Well," said Jenny, looking down at the panda, "Double L! You're a sight for sore eyes, girl." Dex blinked. Of course it made sense; the skunk had known her as a boy first, so it behooved her to come up with a cross-gender form of address. It was a coincidence Dex hadn't expected, but it explained why the panda had warmed to the second iteration of his nickname. "This kid is your friend?"

Lin Lin smiled up at Dex, and put an arm around his shoulder.

"He's my boyfriend. And he's not like any other boy. You can trust him," she said, turning bright red as she realized her voice was quivering. "But not as a cyclist," she snapped, retreating at once from this show of vulnerability. "He nearly ran me over at a bus stop in the rain. If he didn't hit my suitcase first he might have killed me! As it was he knocked both of us right into a puddle."

At the same time, at the end of a bike ride at the end of a bus ride at the end of a train ride at the end of a hike away, by the river that marked the border between pink and blue territory, Rian and Serry met each other standing on opposite sides of the riverbank. "Swim over!" the wolf shouted, gesturing to her. "I have news!"

"You swim over here!" the sissy fox in the green silk dress shouted back. "I have bigger news!"

"Uh-uh! You couldn't possibly!" he retorted, nevertheless taking off his golf cap and stripping off his tee-shirt, sneakers, and socks, and diving into the water. She was giggling by the time he came ashore, for the wolf was wearing a pair of red suspenders with steam engines printed on them holding up an unusually baggy pair of plastic pants, decaled with crescent moons and rising suns, an experiment to see if it would allow him to layer the maximally bulky overnight diapers he had begun ordering on account of Twitchy, just made even heavier by his swim. He had not, in fact, been able to sprint to the river in them without shifting his weight visibly from left to right in a waddling sort of run.

The two lovers stood that way for a while in the midsummer night, Rian looking up at his taller, bony sissy boy partner, her green, clingy silk dress blowing in the wind around her, and Serafina looking down at her lupine knight. "Serry," Rian said, "I might have lost my best friend. I don't want to make a habit of losing people. I don't want to lose you."

"Oh, hon," she said, smiling at him. Then, she wrapped her arms around him. "Marry me," she blurted out.

"What?" said the little wolf, releasing her at once, and Serry looked surprised to see his ears fall flat.

"You said you were worried about losing furs and feeling lonely," she started.

Rian cut her off sternly, waving a paw through the air five times as he said, "No, no, no, no, no!", and she looked dismayed. Rian smiled softly up at the girly boy who had given him a blow job at their first meeting, the boy he could only think of as a girl, who had gone down on him in soggy diapers countless times, who had practiced for him on who knows how many boys without knowing what she had been practicing for, his partner and his playmate now through so many adventures.

Rian dropped on to his knees and wrapped his arms around her waist, nuzzling her naughty labeled plastic pants through the silk. "You," he said, looking up at his sissy partner, "are a princess, Serry. You're my princess. You're not any of those nasty words I used to hear you use about yourself. And as a princess, and as a girl, you don't ask me to marry you. Someday-not now-when I can come up with a good enough surprise that it might give me a chance, I will surprise you, and drop on my knees like this, and ask you then, and-"

"I'll say-" the sissy fox started to answer him, trembling, but Rian reached up with one paw to grab at her nose and hush her.

"And for goodness' sake," he insisted, "let me be terrified about whether or not you'll say yes."

Serry shivered, then dropped to her knees and pulled the wolfy who had just bowled her over with his non-proposal down on to the ground. She was getting yiffed by the little diaperwolf right here, right now; they would roll into the river and finish in the shallows, and she didn't care if anyone saw.

Her tailhole and her muzzle both quivered. Darn it! Why couldn't she have Rian in both at once? She wanted him in her tailhole but she so wanted to taste his cum undiluted, and not a tiny dribble of it, a real flow. Life was so unfair when it came to things like this, and there were some decisions you shouldn't ever ask sissy foxes to make!

Fortunately, being the considerate fur he was, Rian made the impossible choice for her, tugging down her plastic pants with the top of his foot. His paws staked a claim on her tailhole. He'd mount her there so he could masturbate her at the same time. Of course; wasn't he the sweetest thing? She'd let him; he could think it was about getting her off that way, while she could think it was about getting him off. And that also meant that they could talk, while he stroked her rear with one paw dripping in river water to loosen it up, and squeezed her small shaft with the other.

"What happened to you over there in those hideouts, since the first time I met you?" Serry asked, starry-eyed and weak-kneed after Rian's vow. "You were always special, sweetheart, but you've grown into a real, and a wonderful person. . . in the unlikeliest place to grow up."

"Roger and I," Rian whispered, licking her ear, "have a secret about that."

"You can tell me, surely," she coaxed as her small yiffer straightened between his fingers.

"Sorry, honey, I wish I could," said Rian, as he finished lubing her, and began stroking her shaft in earnest, "but it's top-level classified. You didn't stay on the blue team long enough to find out. Besides," he smiled, "you'd never believe me."

"I should warn you about that surprise you mentioned," warned Serry, as he began to rub her fuzzy ass cheeks with the tip of his half-erect cock. "I have no idea what will happen by the end of this summer-I don't know if Dex and Lin Lin will come back, and how our teams might change, and who will be ahead next school year when the furs who visited both parties then left come back from vacation-but I think Roger and Callie have been talking about the future. Farther out than the end of the summer."

"I'm not scared of the future," Rian reassured her, gently making his entry. "Not a bit. After all, we'll all be going there-together."

Next time: The Future! We have a date with our heroes-two and a half years later.

Episode 8: The Future!

Two and a half years later.

In a cramped crawl space, Twitchy adjusted the goggles snapped over his eyes and stared into the bowels of the air conditioning unit in front of him, scanning its parts one last time.

"And to think, I never wanted to end up fixing air conditioners. All systems go?" he asked.

"Squeak!" answered the small gray mouse standing on top of it, who gave him a tiny thumbs-up.

"All systems go!" Twitchy confirmed. "Three . . . two . . . one . . ." The rabbit and the mouse each turned a knob at the same time, and, with a mighty whir, a blast of cold air shot down the crawl space, hitting the rabbit in his face.

"Squeak!" exclaimed the mouse, hopping up and down, and then on to Twitchy's shoulder. The rabbit, wearing white overalls, slid himself backwards through the tunnel as best he could, picking up his tools and wiping his slightly greasy paws on the front of his dingy white overalls as he dropped back out of the large ventilation duct, which clattered shut behind him, and heard scattered clapping as he turned to face the small audience that had gathered around one of the group's star interns.

The rabbit blushed as he raised his goggles to his forehead and wiped a paw over the NASA logo over the chest of his overalls and looked past the furs in his office through the window at the sprawling workspace below them. Maybe a hundred more furs labored at long rows of computers. Theirs was just a small unit, running mainly simulations and occasionally working with small technical problems and satellite data. Down there was the real thing. He still couldn't believe he was this close to it.

"How did you do that?" marveled a skunk wearing a pair of blue-rimmed glasses who stood there as the crowd began to disperse. "And why did you do that? We could have called somebody."

Twitchy blushed. He recognized the skunk - one of a pawful of remaining Master's level-interns who hadn't been weeded out yet. At the end of this program, they'd all have a nice line for their resumes, but only an undisclosed small number would be getting funding to finish their master's degrees. The skunk carried a small notebook in his paw everywhere he went in the office.

"I think it's embarrassing if a NASA office can't fix its own air conditioning, Samuel," the rabbit said briskly. "I get enough flack - I mean, we get enough flack already about wasting money."

The skunk let out a sigh. "My name's Stephen," he said forlornly as Twitchy brushed by him, exchanging pleasantries with some of the other furs who clapped the intrepid bunny on the shoulder.

The mouse on Twitchy's shoulder turned to watch the skunk with mild curiosity as the rabbit made his way back to his workstation. The fuzzy-headed, bushy-tailed fur was scribbling something in his memo notebook frantically and biting his tongue. As a data analysis person, he was the only fur in the bay at the moment who wasn't wearing white overalls.

Twitchy sat down in his cubicle and opened the e-mail he'd hidden moments ago, biting his lip, and beginning to tap his foot. "Port in this way; it's a back door," he resumed typing, then entered a series of instructions.

The rabbit took a long breath, before he added, "P.S. It's good to be talking to you again too, baby bro. I'm always here for you. Remember not to tuck your shirt into your diapers, okay? It's very bad," and pressed 'Send,' before he had time to rethink including the last remark. Then he closed his connection to the off-site server he'd sent it through and deleted the file from his computer. He looked up at Squeak, who had resumed his usual perch on top of the bunny's computer monitor, and smiled.

"I told you it would happen, Squeak," the bunny said, and the mouse looked down at him a little sorrowfully.

Across the office, the skunk sitting at his own desk fell backwards out of his chair. A stapler thudded to the ground open next to him. The rabbit hopped up. Had the klutz knocked himself over trying to refill his stapler? "Are you okay?" he called, but two other furs were already helping him up, so he shook his head, and turned back to his computer.

"Squeak," said the mouse, pointing at the weekend on Twitchy's wall calendar. "Squeak?" The calendar was empty, except for the scrupulously recorded birthdays of Baby Blue members, and a recent day marked in pink with a doodle of a tall, layered cake - to be remembered in the future as his best friend's wedding anniversary.

"Yes, I'll be coming in on the weekend, Squeak, stop bugging me about doing that," said the rabbit as he resumed typing, "some fur has to keep this place from burning down. Besides," he said, eying the cell phone on his desk, "I can't get myself too busy. I need to be somewhere where I could answer my phone any time. What if he calls again? Who knows where in the world he is and what time it is there! He could call whenever! And he's with crazy activist types. What if he needs help with practical things? What good will those furs be? Do you think he packed enough diapers for his boat trip? Do you think he'll remember to file his taxes? Oohhhh. I bet he'll report everything. Someone has to stop him from doing things like that."

"Squeak squeak," said the mouse, a little sadly, holding up a paw.

"Someone," Twitchy snapped, "who actually cares about him and won't miss anything important. He'll settle down and need a safe place to land eventually. I told him once I'd always keep a safe place for him. I need to be available for that when it happens. Just look. He's in touch again. I told you that would happen and it did. He needs my help. He said so himself. He's going to grow out of this crazy phase about liking girls and remember who he is and everything we went through together. I haven't forgotten. I know he won't forget. Dex was alone years before Baby Blue found him. I can wait years for him to come back."

"Squeak," said the mouse, and held up two fingers and his thumb.

He had a point. Twitchy had been saying that for two and a half years. Well, they were talking again. Not just the postcards or an e-mail here and there, or messages through Rian and Roger, but really talking, one on one. That would do for now. The more Twitchy helped him the more he would remember how things used to be. The rabbit hmphed and started humming to himself and tapped his foot against the floor, then resumed working.

After a moment, he saw a reflection in his monitor and started, whirling around in his chair. "Why are you standing there?" he asked brusquely. "Do you need something? Are you spying on me? You scared me half to death!"

The skunk blushed and raised both paws, a memo-sized notebook gripped by his thumb against the palm of one, and smiled nervously. "Don't freak out, I'm deglanded! I was waiting for you to take a coffee break or something. But you never seem to take coffee breaks. Or even bathroom breaks!"

Had he seen the e-mail Twitch sent? The bunny could get in serious trouble for that. Twitchy narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "I've been cutting back on caffeine," he said vaguely, his ears twitching, sure that the diapers he'd taken to wearing to work recently were inaudible. "It makes me nervous. Well, do you need something?"

The skunk gulped, one of his feet tapping against the floor, and opened his notebook hesitantly, flipping around as though for looking a page. After a moment, he found one, and tore it out, clicking his tongue as he handed it to Twitchy, "The output report you showed some of us Monday," he said hesitantly, "there's a mistake in it. See? You should fix it before you present it at the meeting tomorrow. I see how it happened. It's the sort of mistake someone who didn't know much about complex algebra would make."

"Show off," muttered Twitchy, snatching the paper from him and turning back to his computer, though, after a moment, he furrowed his brow, and turned to see the skunk still standing there.

"I didn't mean it that way," the skunk said, sounding a little nervous. "You're a brilliant engineer. I mean, I'm an Ivy League engineering student too, well, mathematics and engineering student, but I have no idea where you learned to do so much with tools and duct tape. Fixing air conditioners? What kind of classes did you take? Your math is just a little . . . well, very, to be honest . . . .shortcutty. You can't always get away with that."

"Thanks," Twitchy said more politely, then turned around again and resumed typing, opening the file the skunk had mentioned. He could see in his monitor that the skunk was still standing there, raising his glasses to his forehead as he scanned the room while he was standing up.

"Don't you need those over your eyes, smart guy?" Twitchy asked, gesturing to the glasses on the skunk's forehead. "Maybe they would help prevent other, I don't know, stapler accidents."

"I'm farsighted," the fuzzy black fur explained, seeming gratified by this show of interest. "Opposite of most furs! Outside of work I hardly wear them."

Twitchy looked back at his computer screen and squinted at the output report he'd opened. "I think you're right about my report," he said slowly. "You may have just saved my tail. Why did you tell me this? You could have brought it up in the meeting and humiliated me. That's what any of the other interns would have done the way they're weeding furs out from the intern pool around here. It could be you instead of me this week now. There'll only be funding for two or three of us, in the end."

The skunk fidgeted. "Because I don't think you would do something like that," he said after a moment. "And I would be sad if you left. You caught me when I tripped getting off the bus that brought all of us out here and carried me over a mud puddle. You probably don't even remember," he added with a sigh.

The white rabbit twitched his whiskers and tapped his foot, then concluded, after a brief memory search, "You're right. I don't remember that," and turned back around. The mouse seated on the top of Twitchy's computer monitor was lying on his side and moving his nose up and down, eyeing the skunk appraisingly.

"You probably weren't thinking," said the skunk. "Look, maybe I could explain a little complex algebra to you over a drink sometime? Pure mathematics is a hobby of mine, number theory particularly."

The small gray mouse atop Twitchy's computer monitor perked up, looking interested.

"I'm sorry," said Twitchy absently, without looking up from his computer, "I'm not interested in number theory." The rabbit resumed typing.

"Squeak!" exclaimed the mouse in frustration, and flopped over sideways, landing flat on his back with his arms spread out.

"I just don't know how I would use it, you know, for practical things," Twitchy added offhandedly when he still saw the skunk in his monitor, clearly thinking the topic, rather than the invitation, was what he was meant to respond to.

"Orrrr, we could just have a drink sometime," the skunk persisted. "That was an excuse anyway."

"An excuse? Why make an ex- Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh," said Twitchy slowly, turning around in his chair and looking up at the fuzzy black fur who wouldn't leave him alone. "You're gay," he deduced, pointing a finger up at the skunk's nose, and the skunk relaxed a little, raising one paw to flatten what seemed like a perpetual case of bedfur around the white stripe on his head.

"You just said it at the campfire the first night like it was no big deal to say," Stephen gushed. "After your name and major and college and where you were from, and like you weren't ashamed at all to say it was something important furs should know about you. But you're not a flag-waving, rainbow-wearing type. You're a fur like me and you just said in mixed company, to the furs you were going to be working with, 'And I'm gay.'" The skunk's plume-like tail poised nervously in mid-swing, pointing almost straight up behind him. "I was just . . . I don't know. Wow. I always tell myself these things like, 'I'm not scared; it's about privacy; it shouldn't matter anyway; no one needs to know.' The truth is, I wish I could be as cool about the whole thing as you. I've been trying to work up the nerve to ask you out since then."

"Cool?" said Twitchy, perplexed. "Like me? You think I'm cool?" He had a feeling the skunk didn't get out much. Certainly, he'd never had a friend like Rian. He laughed in spite of himself.

"Well, I'm not saying you're perfect," said Stephen, retreating slightly, "it's obvious you're not exactly a psychologist."

"I'm definitely not perfect," said Twitchy, still laughing, "but there aren't a lot of us out here so there's no harm in meeting for a . . ." He paused, and glanced up at his computer screen at the mouse, who was staring at him intently.

The skunk tilted his head, not sure what was wrong, but after a moment Twitchy turned back to the bushy-tailed fur and suggested, "Can we make it coffee?" The rabbit blushed as he added, his own eyes falling to his feet, "I'm underage."

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

"I'm sorry, Mr. Fitzpatrick," said the wolf sitting on his luggage, rolling his eyes and making a circular motion with his fingers indicating that he was trying to wind things up, "you'll have to talk to my brother about those kind of investments. You see I'm strictly to be involved with the non-profit side of things. Furanthropy. Yes, that's what it's called! Planning charity events, press releases, fund-raising, donations, that sort of thing. I could only help you reduce your taxes and improve your image."

Rian raised a plastic pipe to his lips, and blew a series of bubbles out of it as he waited for a response. Behind him, a sissy fox in a close-fitting brown dress adjusted the deerstalker hat on his head that had come askew during his fidgeting. "That's right," he said, "it's not the main company. It's a little foundation named after my mother. No, no, I don't know where Spence is putting the new office building. I'm not involved with that and I don't want to be. You see, my wife and I are . . . well, we're planning a big family. And I'm definitely doing my share of the diaper changing. She couldn't keep me from it if she tried. So it's important to us that we have flexible schedules. Oh, she teaches. Ummmmm, she teaches drama. There's a lot of drama at the place she teaches. Acting too. And she's an actress! Theater mainly. Umm, I dunno how to answer that. Her own method. My favorite play? It's-"

He giggled as he felt a wet nose nuzzle impatiently behind one of his ears. A scrap of paper appear on the bridge of his nose and he squinted at it. "Hedda Gobbler-ow!" he whined as his ear was pinched. "I mean, Gabler. I like that one. It's famous and respectably sounding, right? Also that one with the guy who pretends to have a funny name, and then it turns out that it's really his name. I like that one. Oh, umm, that's kind of you to say. I think you're cute too. What? Well, no, I couldn't be dishonest, you're right. I'm bad at lying. All right, I'll look at the e-mail when I get back from my honeymoon and see what I can do for you in terms of a furanthropic profile. If you're interested in the arts, I already have some fun ideas for you. Why, of course," he concluded with a sigh, "you can call me Adrian."

At last, he hung up, and turned around to lick and playnip at the vulpine nose that had been tickling his ears.

"I still can't believe you decked someone at a funeral," said Serafina for the third time on their trip, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.

"It wasn't at the funeral, dear, stop exaggerating," Rian said. "The funeral was like six months ago, I wasn't going to let you miss a big opening night to come to that. It was just a stupid probate legal thing where they said who gets what. But it stipuma- stipudil- said that I had to be there in the fur to hear about what Dad left in my and mom's name." The wolf bit his lip and squirmed a little; in truth, he'd been surprised by the announcement, and glad that Serry had been there for it. "I'm sorry that we had to squeeze it in before the honeymoon."

"Your own brother," she went on, ignoring him. "Just because of that remark he made, asking if you're still bringing home strays. I've been called far worse, you know. I'm used to it."

"Well get un-used to it, Serry," declared Rian as he returned his attention to the pier they were standing on, and blew another stream of bubbles from his pipe. "You're a princess and it's time furs learned to treat you like one."

"I am now," said Serry, looking at the thin gold ring on her right forepaw, "I'm married to a prince."

Rian blew a stream of bubbles into her face. "I'm sorry the wedding was like not-legal or whatever, but at least it meant the groom's side could go pantless and everyone on your side could go in skirts, and I bet a churchy place wouldn't have liked that, at least not the pantless part," he babbled, eager to direct the conversation to less serious things. "It was really about Roger and Callie and everyone else anyway. It meant a lot to Rog that you let him give you away. And to Twitch that he got to be my best fur. And I'm sorry if it wasn't girl enough that he rented an arcade and a bowling alley for the reception. Even if you did outbowl me. But I told you the super-long super-great honeymoon would make up for it! Using my detective kit to follow Roger's envelope clues has worked out great so far. Have you figured out where I'm taking you yet?"

Serry looked down at her husband rocking on his heels, in a blue tee-shirt and jeans and a deerstalker cap, blowing a bubble pipe, and crinkling audibly, and giggled. "Well, we're in Australia," she said, "we picked up two crates of diapers, we're waiting for a boat, and you clearly don't care if the entire continent hears you crinkling and sees your waistband."

"We're going to Japan!" exclaimed Rian, bouncing up and down, without waiting for her to guess. "Rog arranged the transit again, though. He said it's his wedding gift. Through some new secret network person. A big one, he called him 'the missing link.'" The wolf bent over and unzipped his diaper bag, letting his waistband flash quite a bit as he ruffled around for a pale blue envelope.

"Well I liked the last secret contact," said Serry, trying to restrain herself from pulling the wolf's pants down and shoving him to the ground as his diaper wriggled into view. "That kangaroo lady with our diapers knew a lot about Shakespeare."

"I don't know," said Rian, scrunching his face up. "I liked playing with Cody but his mom told me I should learn Greek so I could read about the secret origin of my something or other."

"The origin of love," said Serry, giggling, "but I don't think you need any lessons." The wolf looked at his watch and bit his lip, tapping the envelope against his knee. "They're late," he pouted. "Someone was supposed to meet us forty minutes ago. I'm gonna ask at one of these booths. Watch the diaper bags. Oh, and the luggage too!"

The little wolf hopped to his feet and padded back along the pier through a crowd of uninterested Australian furs to a booth. He watched an approaching rowboat, manned by a red panda wearing a leather jacket and a cap with a feather in it, with curiosity, then turned his attention to one of the small booths near the head of the pier. "Excuse me," he said, knocking on the window. No one answered. He stood on his tiptoes and peered inside. After five minutes, he tried again.

He gave a start as the red panda he'd seen earlier seemed to appear out of nowhere at his shoulder. "Hullo, mate," the panda said to Rian, and, without ceremony, set his shoulder to the door and shoved it open.

"Hey!" yipped a startled voice from inside. "What do you think you're doing? You can't just-"

"Mind if I look at some manifests?" the red panda asked, as Rian backed away slowly.

The dock foreman, a surly-looking platypus who had clearly had no intention of working today, scrambled to his feet and yanked a pair of headphones out of his ears, closing a laptop computer on his desk. "Get out of here!" he snarled.

"Let me rephrase that as not a question," said the red panda, reaching one of his black paws into his shirt pocket and producing a sheaf of papers, which he extended outward and dropped on the desk for inspection. "We own these boats now, we know what was last on them, and my boss would like to see records pertaining to them. Since those papers say we own the boats, you have to show them to me."

The platypus narrowed his eyes and regarded the red panda suspiciously. "I don't think that's true," he said.

"Okay, well, let's call the cops. I bet they'd like to see your records," the red panda said, and winked at Rian, gesturing for him to come back as the platypus, glowering at him, opened a drawer in his desk and looked over the papers the panda had handed him. "We're not interested in getting you in trouble. We just want to see where some of the stuff on board came from and where it was going."

"We had a longstanding arrangement with the prior owners to let their boats come and go as they pleased," the platypus said, shuffling through some papers, some of which he dropped on the desk next to the panda's, pausing to scratch his head. "I don't know how much specific info I even have. I suppose there's been a little turf scuffle and you're interested in the same sort of thing. The going rate is-"

"Sorry, mate," said the red panda, tipping his feathered hat as he grabbed up all the papers, and twitching his whiskers as he dashed to the door, "it's a new day!"

Rian's ears pricked. "What did you just say?" he asked the red panda as he fell in step with him.

The red panda looked down at the wolf and flicked his bushy white-ringed tail. His black paws and the white fuzzy ring of fur on his face smelled a little salty, as though he were used to splashing his face with seawater. "Why, hullo there," he said, ignoring the platypus who was shouting after him, "thought I lost ya. The name's Rhett. My friends call me Red though. Cuz I am, see, and it sounds like my name, so it's easy to remember, for them, and for me. Are you Ryan perchance? He said you'd probably be wearing a funny costume."

The little wolf squinted up at the raccoon-like creature dressed like an outlaw; he didn't think Red was one to talk. "It's Rian," the little wolf corrected him, holding up a pale blue envelope. "Nice to meet you, Red. Am I supposed to give this to you? Do you know Roger?"

The red panda ignored his question and opened the envelope, scanned what was inside, and nodded, then he pointed to the end of the pier, where a long, white refitted cargo ship was pulling in. A rising sun had been painted on the side, and it looked like extra sets of sails had been added, as well as long reflective panels along the side decks.

"This passage info is out of date," he said, handing the paper back to Rian, "but you'll still be covered. We have a new boss now. Director of Operations for the Pacific Rim." He shook his head. "I can't believe it's only been six months. Feels like he's been with us forever. Weird guy-I don't look too closely into what goes on in his bedroom. Our line of work attracts weird furs, and it's not my dingoes he's hassling, if you get my drift. And yet . . . I'm a believer. I'd follow him anywhere."

"Who are-" Rian started to ask, but he was interrupted by a paw on his shoulder.

"What's going on?" asked the sissy fox. "Are you okay?"

"Red," said Rian, "this is my frie-my girlf-my partn-my fianc-" he puffed himself up and looked up at the panda proudly as he concluded, "my wife."

"Huh," said the panda, tilting his head, a little confused, "he said you'd be wearing a costume too. Looks like a normal dress to me. But, yeah, you're both welcome aboard. We have space in cargo. Let's get to hauling your stuff. Ouf," groaned the panda, lifting a box, "how many clothes does your woman need?"

Serafina whispered to Rian teasingly, "That's yours. He should try lifting your diaper pail. The way you wet, that's heavy."

Rian just kissed her on the nose, not bothering to argue, before he moved on to help with the transport. He'd always wet prodigiously for his size; it was, in fact, a point of pride.

Before long, they were trudging into the ship's cargo hold through a hatch that opened in the back, and Rian was surveying their cozy cabin; it looked like he'd have a hammock to read in, and he and Serafina would be sharing a full-size bed, with a rubber changing mat on the floor. Red was talking to other furs on crew, none of whom Rian recognized, and the wolf was starting to feel a little nervous.

He wandered off down the hall, Serafina trailing after him, but pausing to tilt her head and look curiously into one of the cabins. Rian broke away from her and, hearing the red panda's voice, poked his head into one of the larger rooms, where a large navigational screen was just flickering on.

"Op director's still on the phone," Red was saying to a snow weasel hunched over a navigational station, typing something, "but he said if you followed the instructions in that e-mail we'd . . ." The red panda looked up, and clapped his paws, gleefully, as the viewscreen split into four overhead windows, overlaid on navigational grids, "holy holy! It worked! It really worked! We're leeching off a NASA satellite! What resolution! Golly gee, look at all those boats we can see! Boss needs like ten minutes, then-"

"Actually," said a voice from a bulkhead opening just out of Rian's view, but the sound alone set the wolf's tail wagging, "now's good. And of course it worked. I told you: I know a guy who's good at this sort of thing," the raccoon dressed in a blue ship captain's uniform, without the hat and with the buttons undone and his collar entirely unfastened, but with a clipboard in one paw, remarked as he stepped into view.

His ears pricked and he turned his head sideways, seeing the nosy visitor at the edge of the navigation room-well seeing the two paws that were resting on the corner wall, his deerstalker cap, and the upper half of his face, which was peering around it, anyway.

"Yo," Dex said nonchalantly, saluting the wolf, "Rian. How far are you sailing with us? And how much longer," he added, raising one paw to his own head and eying the wolf's deerstalker detective hat, "are you going to be wearing that hat? Because someone has to tell you: it doesn't make you look smarter."

"Dex!" Rian cried joyfully, bounding around the corner and sending the raccoon tumbling back into a command seat near the center of the room as he wrapped his arms around him. "Oh, Dex, I haven't seen you since Christmas! I was sure when I heard the new day remark, that you would be here . . . but I was afraid to ask . . . in case . . . in case you weren't, and I could think you would be longer, and- I have the biggest news and-"

"Calm down!" said the raccoon, trying vainly to fend off Rian's barrage of licks and nuzzles. "Roger told me, I heard! Congratulations, buddy! I'm sorry I missed it. We've been," he giggled and waved a paw, gesturing at Red and the pawful of crew members, "tracking illegal whaling operations. I was from port to port finding stuff out and pulling a team together. I didn't think I'd be out of touch so long, but one lead just led to another for months, plus I've ended up in charge out here. Bill can't leave D.C. while Congress is in session. I had a sheaf of messages from Rog waiting by the time I got back to Sydney. By the time I connected with him, you were about to head off on your honeymoon and we had to scramble to come up with some kind of fitting wedding gift. Turns out we're going where you're going. Into Japanese waters. We found some of the whalers' less committed middlemen and . . . liberated a few of their boats."

He looked at Red, who tipped his feathered cap, and bowed playfully in Dex's direction. "I prefer repurposed, mate. Salvage isn't theft, it's recycling," said the red panda, then remarked, in irritation, to Rian, "The purist here insisted I refit them to run on wind and solar."

"Now," the coon explained, "the idea is to arrange for authorities to follow us just close enough that we can make sure they're present at the rendezvous. If we give them just what we've got so far nothing would come of it; we have to prove they're moving this stuff internationally. At the right moment we'll fly our real flags and make sure they hear a radio uplink of everything that's going on. Once some stuff has been seized maybe Bill can finally get the Japanese government to start talking about this."

"I picked up the radio frequency of those boys, Dex, we can keep abreast of their headings that way if the satellite fails," said the red panda, pointing up at the ships pictured in the upper right corner, "and Hoshi," he gestured at the navigator, the slight, slant-eyed white stoat sitting next to him, "translates they're still identifying themselves as research vessels."

"Yeah, well," the raccoon said, "we'll see about that. Hoshi, the instant they move out of domestic and into international waters," he said to the navigator, "I want you to page me, and I want you to use Bill's name and your half-Japanese half-Australian all-fuzzy-snow weasel charm to get the nearest Japanese consulate on the phone. Since you have two paws," the raccoon made a typing motion, "I'd like those things to happen at the same time. Then I can ask Bill to get the Washington end of this moving."

"Serry," Rian yipped to his wife, dashing over to her as the sissy fox rounded the corner, and pointed excitedly at the raccoon with one paw, squeezing hers with the other, "where were you? That was like ten whole minutes you were gone! It's Dex! We're riding with Dex! He's here! And he's doing something coool! We're having an adventure! And he made fun of my hat!"

"I figured that out," said Serafina, "when I found Lin-"

"Well you two still make me sick," interrupted the petite panda behind Serafina as she brushed by the clingy couple and onto the bridge. "But for goodness' sake, wolf," Lin Lin offered as an olive branch, when Rian scowled at her, "don't take any fashion criticism seriously if it comes from Mr. 'I couldn't let you ride without a helmet.'"

The raccoon flicked his tail against the chair as he stood up. "You're never going to let me live that down, are you?" he asked, shaking his head at the short black-and-white bear dressed in a pants suit.

"Delivered right after you almost ran me over, landed on top of me in a puddle, and held it out. Worst pick-up line I've ever heard in my life. Which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that you were straight," said the panda.

They stared at each other for a moment, both visibly relaxing, and clearly reliving the moment two years and many months ago when Dex had caught her, on her way out of town, tricked into walking down the road that led from the academy to the city park.

Red and Hoshi, perceiving this might go on for a while, hunched over her console and began discussing transmissions and making launch preparations on their own.

Then, "Should we tell them?" Dex asked his panda. "I don't want to steal anyone's thunder but it seems like we should tell them."

Lin Lin held out her right forepaw to the visiting pair; there was a ring on her finger with a small pink gemstone. "So you don't need to wonder about what this means: We're engaged. I'd ask for the name of your wedding planner except that I'm terrified of hearing something like that you rented a Chuck E. Cheese. Of course he won't get a diamond," she said to Serafina, who was examining her ring, and glared up at Dex, "No, I got to listen to a lecture about cartels and blood feuds." The raccoon shrugged innocently.

"Engaged?" said Serafina, letting go of her teammate's paw. "But I thought you were in China half the year for your transgender outreach stuff until you had some more furs in permanent positions?"

"Four months," said the panda, shrugging, "and four months in New York, that's where all our donors are."

"Where are you for the other six, I mean-" asked Rian, moving his paw in a few circles and biting his tongue, assuming an expression of cubby concentration, then giving up, "for the rest of the year?" Serafina rolled her eyes affectionately.

"In between," said Lin Lin, softening and blushing a little as she looked up at Dex.

"It must be hard," the wolf said sympathetically, "floating between two such different places like that."

"I'm used to it. And Dex has been great," the transsexual panda said, squeezing her fiancée's paw just a little. "Anyway, I'll be getting off with you and heading for the mainland. We're having some money problems. And I'm being told by the furs in the States that I'm better as an advocate than as a fundraiser."

Rian reached into his pocket and produced a slight black wallet, fumbling in it for a moment, before he withdrew a card. "We should talk," he suggested to Lin Lin. "My card."

The panda blinked at it and stared. "You have a business card?" she said, dumbstruck for a moment. "Look at that," she observed as she took it. "It's not even in crayon."

"Well I asked," said the little wolf good-humoredly, shrugging, "but you know, color copies are too expensive. Nonprofit fundraising is what I'm doing, well until my stepbrother finds a way to get rid of me anyway, and I'm told," he smiled up at Serafina, "that I'm hard to say no to."

"Sorry to interrupt, mates," said Red, looking up from the navigation console, "but do these two have reservations to make or anything? Not that I object to stowaways, having been born one, but based on what Hoshi and I are seeing, we're going to have a lot of dead time cruising over still water. Although free, and not without a perhaps appealing element of danger, this may not be the ideal mode of transit for them."

Dex looked at Rian questioningly, and the wolf looked up at Serafina. He and the fox smiled at each other, and she nodded to him. He looked over to Dex, and to Lin Lin.

"The journey is more important than the destination," Rian said. "If there's time to kill, I think between the four of us . . . we can come up with something."

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

An adult wolf in a navy blue blazer talked into his cell phone and listened to a harried assistant at his shoulder whispering advice as he walked down the hall toward the conference room.

"Bargain? That place will end up costing me half a million dollars by the time we get the asbestos out. Or did you think I wouldn't find out about that?" Spence said briskly into his cell phone. "Call me back when you're ready to entertain a real offer."

He switched to another call. "Thanks for holding," the adult wolf said. "No, I've never heard of him. How does this architect fox know the family? You know what, I don't want to know. All sorts of furs have been showing up saying my father owed them something or other. If he's just another . . . What? Adrian sent him? There's no way Adrian knows someone who's designed. . . well, at least it's different. Send me his renderings and I'll take a look."

Then he snapped the phone shut and turned his attention to the erstwhile fur tagging along behind him. He accepted an ice pack from the faithful chipmunk and held it up to the side of his face.

"Stay in control in there, Spence," his swift-speaking assistant was urging. "This is your first time meeting the division heads as President. Remember it's your show now. You're not the boss's son any more. You're the boss and you have to show those furs who that is. You have to develop your own style. Your father knew how to sound sensitive but everyfur knew under that facade he was tough as nails, and nothing was more important to him than the-"

"Got it," said Spence. He didn't wait for his hapless assistant, who was used to being cut off mid-sentence, to finish, as he opened the conference room door, stepped inside and let it swing shut behind him.

The wolf walked confidently to the head of the table and didn't bother to survey the scene until he flopped into the head seat. Then he held the ice compress close to his face as he weighed the fifteen attendees and rehearsed the names in his head.

Two of them near him whispered to each other. "He still has a black eye," the wolf caught one of them saying, and there was murmuring around the table. "Looks even worse today." He heard another mutter, "Public embarrassment."

Spence stood up, pressed the compress close to his face-and laughed. "What's the matter?" he asked the assembled vulpines, rodents, canines, and felines. "Are we still talking about last weekend? You'd think none of you had ever been to a lupine family gathering before! After all, even a wolf runt," he said, his voice betraying something that sounded almost like pride, as he removed the compress and rubbed his temple with the back of one paw, "is still a wolf." He looked down at the binder at his seat and flipped it open. "Quarterly results-"

"Spence," interrupted one of the furs near the head of the table, a rat, and Spence eyed him curiously, "there's been a lot of gossip about your little altercation at the will reading. Getting decked by a fur half your size at a family event. I understand if you don't want to press charges or anything, I do, but-"

"Derek," said Spence, looking up from the rat's name tag to the rat, and clicking a mechanical pencil he had picked up from the table once, "that's a family matter." He laid one paw on the binder in front of him. "Our quarterly results suggest-"

"It's not a family matter," the rat interrupted him, "if it affects how the company's perceived. The stockholders and the employees will want to see strong leadership. That's what they were used to from your father. The perception's taking root that you're a fur who can be pushed around. I think you should do something. Not in retaliation, but to say, look, you can't treat me this way. Now, it may be presumptuous of me to point this out, but your father's will isn't ironclad. You have every right to take that little foundation project of his away. You could be generous in a way that still teaches him a lesson. Cut half his funding and reassign the money to a real profit-making division. With that money I could-"

"Derek," said Spence again, clicking his pencil twice, "I said already it's between me and my brother. I know perfectly well what my father's will says. I'm his executor, not you."

There was murmuring around the table and eyes moved from the rodent to the lupine. There was clearly some kind of internecine power struggle underway.

"Spence," the rat persisted, "I'm only concerned that you not start out with a show of weakness. After that spectacle, you need to do something on your first day as president that proves to the furs who work here that you can't be treated with disrespect. They'll want some sign of what direction your leadership's going to take."

The wolf stared at him for a long, silent moment. Then the rat spoke again, and added, "If it makes you feel better, sir: we all know that kid is only your stepbrother."

The wolf clicked his pencil three times at the last remark, and the lead snapped against the scratchpad under his paw. "Derek," he said at once without raising his voice, "you're fired."

Then he turned his attention back to the binder in front of him, ignoring the murmurs and worried whispers from around the table. "Don't let us keep you from your job search. Quarterly results," he continued, without waiting for a response, "suggest three areas for improvement. One-"

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

"How do you know how to do this anyway?" asked Dex as the wolf helped him raise the rear sails.

"I went to boarding school, sweetheart. Took sailing lessons for my junior high school sports requirement, so I wouldn't get beat up by the rough-and-tumble jocks doing croquet and badminton," the wolf said lightly. "And that's where I discovered sailor suits!"

Dex blinked, then laughed, not sure if his friend had meant anything he just said seriously-with Rian, it was often hard to tell.

"I don't know, Dex," said Rian as the two of them inspected the rigging and began loosing the sails on either side, looking around to make sure no one else working on deck was within earshot, "I just have a hard time believing that Lin Lin doesn't still have an evil side. She's really never tried to sissy you?"

Below decks, Serafina and Lin Lin sat at a small table, where the panda had finished unpacking a compact toiletry case, setting a rubber ring on the table. "And the final item to rule them all: this is for stretching tailholes just to make everything else work easier. Whatever sphincter resistance he tries to apply-and he will be trying so hard to make it work-it will be totally ineffective with that in there, so he'll know just how helpless he is," the panda was saying. "In case he who hops to conclusions does end up visiting. We'll see when he has bladder control, but no bowel control, if he still thinks my dribbly Dexie is anyone's charity case. I'll ask Mr. Ends Justify the Means who the handicapped one is then."

Serafina eyed the rubber tailhole ring and the kit of related supplies Lin Lin had unpacked on the table. "You mean his bowel control would be gone for, like, a day," the sissy fox asked, surveying the collection of laxatives, suppositories, and restraints suspiciously, "right? That is what you mean?"

"Oh," said the coon to Rian above decks, squirming a little, tugging at the edge of a pinkened cloth diaper and pulling his shirt back over it quickly, "Double L mixed up some of our laundry recently. But I think my once a month castor oil day is enough punishment for her. I just wish there were a little more warning than waking up to have a spoonful of the stuff shoved in my muzzle and hearing something like, 'It's that time of the month. Nice to see a relationship where periodic cramping is the boy's problem, isn't it, honey?'" The coon's tail flicked as he was talking. "I mean, if I knew in advance I'd go to bed with a few more layers on, you know? Cuz after a little castor oil I'm sort of gone for a while," he explained, as though the lack of warning were his only possible grounds for complaint.

"Puts me right out. But when I finally grow up enough I just do the cubby eyes and beg and she always lets me screw her after that, she can't resist. I get to play kitten and clean up after myself too, which is practically the best part because it never fails to make her gushy and vulnerable in the afterglow like you wouldn't believe. Don't get confused about who humiliates who those days just because I spend a lot of those mornings in a playpen or a high chair." The coon smiled dreamily. "Sometimes I take her over my lap and spank her after that just to prove I'm big enough to be adult again. I'm thinking it might be time to graduate her from the bare-paw technique. There's not quite enough moaning or squirming recently, and I think I need to change something before we get in a rut."

Rian covered his face with his paws and shook his head. To think he once wondered if Dex might be asexual. Whenever the raccoon brought up sex he always seemed as focused on his partner's experience as it was possible for a straight boy to be. Rian took some fursonal pride in that, but, still, hearing about girl parts even in a roundabout way frightened the gay wolf a little. Sissy boys were as close to real girls as Rian wanted to come, and he considered Serafina a tremendous improvement on the biological model.

"Maybe," Rian said, looking out from between the fingers of paws held over his face, not really believing what he was about to say, "you should mix up the gender stuff a little, so it feels a little less like," the wolf shuddered, "straight porn. You'd never pass as a sissy, Dex, but maybe you could have a, I don't know, castor oil and princess pony day."

"And left with princess dolls and princess ponies and pink silk I'd have to go," said Dex, to Rian's immediate relief, "on a heroic quest as a cub, to recover all my boy toys, and at the same time my boyhood! Some hidden in the bathroom! Could I fake potty-training well enough," the coon asked dramatically, biting his lip, "to gain unsupervised access? It wouldn't be easy. Oh, Rian," he wrapped both arms around the wolf, and hugged him, yet again, "I knew you'd help me come up with something new."

The wolf returned Dex's hug, after a moment. He felt happy. The raccoon had changed, sure, but he was also still the boy's boy Rian remembered.

"Also," Rian added, fidgeting, "I don't know, maybe finger her whenever you spank her, but not at other times? Just cut your nails first and be careful, okay?" He squirmed, feeling awkward. "That's all I've got right now. I don't know much about how straight furs have sex, love. It's all so weird. I can't be much help to you. I'm afraid this will end like when I broke into the academy and didn't do anything except make a mess."

"That's not true," said Dex, tussling his headfur. "I never told you this, Rian, but when Double L and I were locked in together, and it seemed like we were both going to end up unconscious, I remember hearing something that woke me up, something that said, 'Dex-go.' It was you, howling. I thought so and then Jax told me he heard it, too. If you hadn't done whatever you did, if I hadn't rescued her, she wouldn't have let me in, and nothing would have happened that night. You reached out to me and woke me up, bro. I've always needed you for that. We both just had to realize that after that, I had to take the next steps on my own."

Dex hugged the wolf tighter, and felt Rian squeezing him back. "You're making me think of things just being here. Our adventures, old and new, will give me all the ideas I need. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable or put you on the spot about the sex stuff. It's not- I'm not proud of being straight, Rian. It will never be something I want to brag about. If I could have changed it by flicking a switch, I would have. But it's who I am, you know? I'm just lucky I found the right partner to help me deal with it. She makes me feel like I can still be special. She loves me because I accepted her as a girl, and she reminds me that straight furs, we have a big part in the fight, too. Acceptance begins with us."

"I know," the wolf answered, nosing the underside of Dex's muzzle. "Of course you're special, dork. You're a Baby Blue boy forever. And you'll always be my little brother. And fellow traveler. But Dex, I need to talk to you about someone," the wolf lifted one of the taller coon's arms off his shoulder for just a minute and assumed a more serious expression, as he opened the coon's right palm, "what are you holding? Yeah," he concluded, eying the catnip-filled stress ball Dex was squeezing in his right palm, "I thought I smelled catnip. I know who made that stress ball for you."

"I picked it up to throw it away when I was going through some things," Dex said quickly.

"But you didn't," Rian rebutted.

"But I didn't," the raccoon admitted with a sigh. He looked over his shoulder for his crewmates. "It seemed wasteful. I think I'm needed on-"

"I'm worried about Twitchy, Dex," Rian persisted, reaching a paw up and resting it on the taller coon's shoulder, raising himself on his toes slightly to get a better look at his eyes. "You know he hasn't dated anyone for more than two years. It's not a sexual hang-up. I felt so bad after I was so mean to him for a while I've let him be a, ummmmm, third wheel . . . helper, let's say . . . with me and Serafina, and I know he has some privileges with Kyle and Byron, too. He's definitely without a doubt gay. He has all the right instincts, let's leave it at that. There have been a few lays here and there - heck, Jax, Kyle, and I arranged them or they probably wouldn't have happened - but he always makes excuses afterwards - disappears, loses furs' numbers, gets busy. He says things like he doesn't want to get tied down, he doesn't know how long he'll be in school or where he'll end up settling, he wants to keep himself available until he does, he says he just can't think too seriously about a relationship when he might have to relocate two or three more times. That bothers me."

"You're too generous for your own good," Dex said curtly. "Twitch brought his relationship problems on himself. I'm surprised you're even taking an interest."

"Generous has nothing to do with it," said the wolf. "He's been there. He had more reason to run away from us after that night at the academy than you did. But he stuck around. Look at right now; he was my best fur at my wedding because no one had any idea where on the planet you were when we were making plans. There might not be a Baby Blue any more without Twitch, Dex. He and the Scouts rolled up their sleeves and really held things together after you left for China the first time. He helped hold me together then, too."

"Well good," said the raccoon, "But I'm talking about the things that he did before that."

"Everyfur makes the maximal mistakes they're going to make in their first relationship," Rian pointed out, adding a little sadly, "I knew two boys from high school I let drop after my father gave me the evil eye, when they probably could have used a friend. I'm sure they'd never talk to me again if I ran into them now. But I learned from that and he'll learn, too, he's smarter than me."

Dex said nothing for a moment. Then, "Don't put yourself in the same moral category as Twitchy," he said, a little coolly.

"I heard," ventured the wolf cautiously, "that you two have been getting in touch some more. He's been really hoppy about it. Really, really, really hoppy. Since he got those first postcards from you, Dex, and then you started calling him to talk . . . You started calling him a while after I told you where he would be working."

"Twitch is too usefully placed right now for me to ignore," Dex said curtly, and looked over his shoulder, seeing the red panda at the stern waving to him.

He started in that direction, but was arrested by Rian's grip on his forearm, and looked back to see the little wolf looking up at him - with firm, but not angry, brown eyes.

"This is what I was worried about. It sounds to me," said the smaller wolf sternly, "like you're taking advantage of him, Mr. Ethical. And I can't believe that you're really as cold to him as you sound sometimes. I think you like the idea of Twitch giving you coordinates and things. Like the old days. I think you want your friend back. And I can't believe you'd want," the wolf drew Dex's gaze down, with his own, to the cat toy in the coon's right paw, "to lead him on and hurt him."

The coon snorted and looked back up, even as he squeezed the stress ball. "Me, hurt him? Look, Rian, I don't know what you want me to say. I'm not going to tell Twitchy that we can hug and it will be like nothing ever happened. It will never be like nothing ever happened. Whatever else played into everything else he did, I can't see that lying to me-and to you-about his age was anything other than selfish. We're lucky the whole group didn't get in trouble because of it. It could have ended us."

Rian held up two fingers and a thumb on his free paw, and Dex slumped his shoulders a little bit and let some air out of his chest. Rian had a point. Dex had been saying that for two and a half years. Still, he wasn't about to issue a blanket pardon. Especially not if Rian and Roger had granted the bunny one. His interactions with Twitchy were friendly and noncommittal. He refused, in fact, to talk about the past with the rabbit and said very little about either's love life, though there was no avoiding diaper and group-related chatter.

The wolf bit his lip. He wouldn't tell Dex the things he'd promised not to tell-about Twitchy's long run as a bedwetter bunny, a problem he'd finally shook off shortly before starting his internship, or about the story of a late-night confrontation over a newspaper story that Rian had only heard himself when he'd met the collie who'd co-founded the pink and blue teams' northwest affiliate.

"Listen, baby buddy," urged Rian, "I know letting things go has never been a Dex technique. I'm not asking you to say that you forgive him, because it's in his own head that he needs to come to terms with the past anyway. I just think, if you could say sometime, that I'm happy with someone, you're happy with someone, and you'd really like to see him happy with someone, too," the wolf fidgeted, his eyes softening a little, "that it would mean a lot to him. And to me. That's all I'm saying."

Dex blinked. "I . . . can probably manage something like that," he answered hesitantly, and the wolf wagged his tail. Then the coon blinked again. Was it his imagination - or did Rian seem taller? "That was eerie," he said. "I think you just channeled Rog."

Rian blushed. "I'm getting better at it," he said, as he caught sight of Lin Lin and Serry emerging from the bulkhead and turned his attention in that direction, just as Red approached, motioning to Dex.

"Sorry to interrupt, mate," the red panda said to the raccoon, "but she's good to go and I think we shouldn't tarry. I tried the patience of the foreman back there and I'm afraid to try it too much harder. We want the law to follow us eventually, but not too close yet, isn't that the whole idea? There are some manifest forms I just need you to glance at and initial if they look right to you."

Dex half-smiled as he accepted a sheaf of papers from the red panda. "You," he said, wagging a finger at the rusty-furred, raccoon-like bear, "are going to get me banned from every island in between here and Japan. Just tell me you didn't hit anybody or hit on anybody this time. Let's see, this all looks like-"

"What are these? I thought I told you," snapped Lin Lin to the redder panda, swooping in on them to snatch the papers away from Dex, and shaking them at Red accusingly, "never to let him sign anything unless I've read it first. He believes car salesmen, for goodness' sake."

"Well," protested Red, raising both paws and stepping backwards, flinching a little and his small white ears drooping, "you aren't here all the time, so I-"

"Darn right I'm not," interrupted the undersized black-and-white bear, "that's why your group can't get anything done for more than half the year. I have e-mail. Scans and photos of things can always be sent. Don't wriggle out of this, Dex!" she countermanded, seeing the raccoon looking sideways and taking a step backwards, "I expect you to ask me before you go signing things, too. You're big enough to know what you're allowed to do."

"Yes, moooom- I mean, yes, dear," said the raccoon with a sigh, grumbling and scuffing the floor with one footpaw as she leafed through them, then he trudged to the stern with the red panda. Lin Lin didn't paddle him, but he had a feeling she would shove ice down his diapers when they were alone together. "Ya got me in trouble," he pouted to Red. "I thought I said to run any paperwork by me before she came back up."

Red laughed. "You were busy talking. Speaking of, I would follow you to the ends of the earth, mate," he said, "but the furs you know, Dex . . . I just wonder where you've been sometimes." The red panda shook his head. "There are stories about you on the circuit, you know. Hoshi tells me this urban legend about a time you showed up to protest mistreated circus animals, and as soon as he saw you the ringmaster threw his cage keys at your feet and ran right out of there like he'd seen a ghost."

The raccoon chuckled. "I enjoyed that more than I should have," he said.

"You're like Captain Planet. Your fiancée does advocacy work, okay, that makes sense," Dex's first mate continued, "Suddenly there's a bosom buddy who works for NASA, and then, on the other paw, this wolf who you say not to hassle about his, umm, underwear requirements," said Red, eying Rian, who was standing at the prow with Serafina, "he does what exactly?"

Dex looked over at the little wolf who had been counseling him a minute ago, as he knelt to kiss Serafina's paw, and then climbed up onto the railing.

"Oh, make no mistake, out of all of us," said Dex, as he watched his friend pointing off, beyond the horizon, his eyes wide, gesturing excitedly at the vast blue ocean, "Rian's the one with the important job."

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

Twitchy waved a paw in the air and closed his laptop as he caught sight of the skunk wandering around the far end of the coffee shop, his glasses poised on his forehead, appearing in need of navigational assistance. He relaxed and smiled as his eyes lighted on the rabbit, who he hardly recognized at first in a black tee-shirt and cargo pants, his goggles on the table in front of him.

The skunk bit his lip and felt his cheeks redden slightly as he looked at the bunny's face uncovered for the first time. All the proportions were right, he thought, calculating quickly. And he had an adorable round pink nose. His forehead was broad, and the fur there was slightly tussled and marked by an ink or a grease stain where he had wiped his paw when taking them off. Twitchy looked cute with his goggles. Without them, he looked-sexy, actually. They weren't the only things Twitchy had taken off. He'd come in star and planet boxers under his cargo pants, rather than in the diaper he would have preferred to wear, and the chair felt a little harder and less comfortable under him as a result.

"What's with your thermos?" asked the skunk as he took a seat, and pointed at the container Twitchy was sipping from.

"Oh," the bunny said, "I . . . always bring a thermos to these places. It's just something for the environment."

The mood changed slightly. The skunk wondered if he had said something that made Twitchy sad. "I meant," Stephen asked, "what's with the Transformers decals on it?"

Twitchy bit his lip and fidgeted. "It's a . . . I got it at a . . . I found it on a . . . ."

The skunk smiled and redirected quickly, "I meant," he prompted, "Bumblebee? What kind of a choice is that? Optimus Prime is surely the best transformer."

The bunny engineer relaxed-he knew who the Transformers were!-then bristled. "Nuh-uh. Bumblebee's fast," he answered indignantly. "Zoom zoom! He gets things done."

The skunk mathematician shook his head. "Slow and steady wins the race. Someday somewhere some bunny will learn that lesson," he intoned cautiously, removing a folded envelope from his shirt pocket and flattening it on the table in front of him.

"I'll remember that the next time you bring me something a week after I needed it," Twitchy retorted.

"At least it will be riiiiigggghhht," Stephen taunted in a singsong tone as he flattened the paper on the table.

Twitchy snorted, shaking his empty thermos. "What do you want? I'm getting a refill anyway, so I'll be right back with it. Quickly too!"

"Decaf," the skunk said, turning his attention to the envelope in front of him, and producing a pencil from his shirt pocket. He seemed absorbed in whatever he was doing on the scrap paper, and he was still in a few minutes when Twitchy returned with both their drinks.

"I didn't know what you'd want in it," the rabbit said apologetically.

The skunk looked up and half-smiled. "See what happens when you do things fast?" he said jokingly, and picked up the cup, standing up to go across the room to the condiment station and get sugar.

Twitchy opened his computer and looked at his e-mail. Nothing new. He leaned over and squinted at the skunk's scrap paper. He couldn't make heads or tails of the scribbles on it. The skunk approached and set his cup down a little unsteadily; Twitchy caught it in one paw. "Hey!" he said. "Be careful, you almost spilled it!" He eyed the fuzzy-headed black fur curiously, slowly remembering the other times he'd seen him. "And you knocked yourself over opening a stapler at work, and tripped getting off the bus from the welcome party, after spending the whole bus ride scribbling in your little notebook. What's with you? What are you writing on the back of an envelope?"

"You don't recognize it?" said Stephen, sounding disappointed. "It's Fermat's Last Theorem. Well, the first few lines are. Then it's a proof. Well, it's the start of one."

Twitchy raised an eyebrow. He probably wouldn't have recognized it anyway, but the handwriting wasn't exactly easy to read; the skunk had been carrying this envelope around for a while. "Didn't it take someone like twenty years to prove that? I think I read an article about it. He-"

"Don't tell me how," said the skunk sharply, raising a paw. "I'm trying to do it independently!" He let out a sigh. "But I keep getting stuck."

Twitchy blinked. Was he serious? He was trying to solve one of the world's hardest math problems on the back of an envelope? He'd have to be a genius. He hadn't seen any evidence the skunk was that smart. "Do you really think you can do that?" Twitchy asked. "I mean, you nearly killed yourself with a stapler."

The skunk sighed. "Strictly speaking, the math I'm doing at NASA is easy for me. I . . . work a little extra hard on your projects, to be honest, because I like you. If I survive the weeding and am one of the pawful here to get the NASA-funded master's, I can go straight into background support and data crunching, that's a safe choice for me. Otherwise I'd be in a Ph.D. program doing real-sorry I mean, pure-math. My professors wanted me to apply for a fellowship-except . . . well, weird things happen to me sometimes, Twitchy," he confessed. "I have these flashes where I can think, in terms of numbers and figures and codes, abstract things, so much faster than anyfur, than I could explain, but it's like I fall back to earth afterwards, and I can get the numbers down, but I lose track of," he looked at the coffee cup he'd almost spilled, "very basic things. Like a short-circuit or an overload, like there's only so much space in my brain. Like I might run out. Then I have these little accidents because things have been forced out of my head. It frightens me."

The bunny eyed him curiously. "That sounds like the sort of thing there's probably medication for," he suggested, trying to be helpful.

The skunk smiled and waved a paw. "My parents tried to make me take mood stabilizers after a math league tournament that . . . well, I don't want to talk about it. They said I should just try to be normal. I flushed them down the toilet for two weeks and said I took them and they weren't doing anything. I mean, who wants to be normal? Let's not talk about that." He sighed. "I'm sorry I'm telling you this on a first . . . whatever this is. I'm not used to meeting boys-I mean, gay boys-who share any of my interests." The skunk changed the subject, and pointed at Twitchy's computer. "But you tell me something now. What were you doing before I showed up?"

The rabbit had a strange feeling in his stomach. What was it? He had felt it before, but not for a long time. Without being quite sure why, he decided to go out on a limb and make a daring move. "Stephen," he asked, "do you know what ABDL stands for?"

"I don't know much about computers," the skunk said, shrugging. "I'm a theorist at heart. Is ABDL a systems design protocol? Is it what you were working on?"

"No, it's nothing important," said Twitchy. Of course he wasn't one. And he'd felt so close for a minute. So much for that. Those boys his teammates kept throwing at him, none of them had wanted to do anything big, and that's what mattered to Twitchy. As he got to know him he'd learned that Dex was someone with real dreams, ambitions that went well beyond sex and diapers. A shame he couldn't meet a nice diaperboy who was like this skunk. He wouldn't have minded if his first tailhole time had been with someone like that. It might have felt like it mattered more. He wouldn't have cried over a root beer the next day with Ace, of all furs.

Ah well. It's not like he could get too entangled anyway, and he was about to remind himself why. He perked up and opened his laptop, his foot beginning to tap eagerly. "Here, I'll show you what I was looking at. I said at the campfire I was sort of a, umm, mentor in a big brothers and big sisters . . . . sort of . . . group," the bunny reminded him vaguely, unsure of exactly what he had said at the welcome party, but this apparently came close enough, because the skunk nodded. Twitchy opened his Internet browser and pointed, clearly getting excited. "This," he said, gesturing to a newspaper story from an Australian website, "is my little brother. I mean, I tutored him in statistics. And I helped him with papers and stuff, and I got him the job that he still has now."

Stephen narrowed his eyes and read the headline, looking at the picture of the raccoon curiously. He didn't look younger than Twitchy. But then, the rabbit, he gathered, had skipped grades.

"But that one's nothing," the bunny flicked a key, bringing up a series of thumbnails, brimming with pride like a parent showing off a football star or valedictorian's yearbook pictures, "I have a scrapbook of them, I'll show you. This is when Dex got his non-profit service medal," he pointed, "but I'm going out of order, that happened after . . . . okay, here we go, this was the big one and it worried me sick, I couldn't sleep at all for two nights. 'Raccoon activist switches sides at energy summit; peacekeeper saves two police officers when protest spins out of control.' That's such a good photo of him, it's right at that moment when he gets that look in his eye that he gets when he finally stands up, and you think, he can do anything."

Twitch pointed at the picture, of a raccoon in a red windbreaker shouting and holding his arms out to his sides, standing in front of a police fur on his knees whose riot helmet had been knocked off, a cloud of smoke or gas whirling around them and something on fire in the background.

The bunny rushed on, his eyes gleaming, as he brought up another collection of thumbnails, "Well what the headline doesn't say is that Dex went to the hospital. Here's the next day, see there's a whole cloud of headlines: 'Police union to oil company: you can press charges, but cops won't arrest raccoon;' 'With raccoon in recovery, oil company, besieged by letters, vows to 'reconsider' alternative energy stance; ferret activist renews pressure as calls for government investigation loom.'"

The bunny used his fingers to slide several others quickly over the screen without comment. "Well, that was a big turning point for Dex, as you might imagine. Here," he tapped twice, and the screen of newspaper thumbnails faded into a map, covered with red dots, "this is a map of the world, I've plotted a dotted line between all the places he's been! And the dots on each place pull up the gallery of stories that happened there. I'm going to show it to him around his birthday as a present cuz I think it could go up on his group's website. And to show him that his friends back home have been keeping up. You see, after that, my little brother...."

The skunk, whose eyes were glazing over, tried to cut Twitchy off. "Became the first raccoon president?" he asked, a slight sarcastic edge in his voice.

The bunny blushed. "I guess I got a bit carried away," he admitted. "Sorry. We've known each other since-We're practically family. When we say someone's your little brother in that, ummm, mentoring group, we mean it," the bunny fidgeted. "It feels like I've known him since he's been in diapers. But, he's not perfect. I mean, his taste in women is mind-boggling. He is with someone who does not deserve him."

The skunk smiled a little. He looked confused, but also felt relieved, after this encomium, to hear that Dex wasn't gay. His first thought had, of course, been the disconcerting one that Twitchy was already taken. How could he have been so stupid as not to ask about that? 'Let's go out for some ambiguous half-date sort of thing.' Arrgh, he was such an idiot. But he seemed to have dodged that bullet, and in spite of himself, he found Twitchy's attachment to this other fur sweet. It showed him the kind of devotion the rabbit was capable of. "Well," the skunk joked, relaxing again, "then he is like family, right? Who likes their in-laws?"

Twitchy blinked, taken aback-and laughed. "Who likes their in-laws?" he repeated with a chortle. "You sure do have a funny way of looking at things!" He thought of himself and Lin Lin, and the quieter discomfort between Dex and Serafina. "Who likes their in-laws?" he repeated, shaking his head and slapping a paw against his knee. Could it be the boys really had become so much like a family? The skunk raised an eyebrow. He didn't think he'd been that funny. Twitchy scanned him curiously, his eyes falling back to the envelope he'd been scribbling on. "You remind me of him a little," the rabbit said. "If you have a dream, you shouldn't give up on it without a fight. What do you want to do? Where do you want to go?"

"The math is too hard, Twitch," the skunk said shading his eyes and sipping his coffee. "I've tried to work on things that could be breakthroughs, and I just- I told you, I can do it, but right afterwards, it's like falling into a void for a day or two. I lose track of very basic things."

The bunny's eyes narrowed. "You said that before. How basic? And how hard is the math you were trying to do?" he asked. Harder than trying to prove Fermat's Last Theorem? Twitchy didn't even know what that could be.

Stephen fidgeted. "Let's forget I mentioned all that," the skunk said.

Unbidden, a long-ago conversation with someone he'd become good friends with over the last few years bubbled up from deep in the rabbit's unconscious. For a moment he felt as though Jax had just walked in and pulled a chair over, putting a paw on his shoulder as he often did during difficult conversations with boys in their small youth group. 'Twitch,' he could hear the hound dog's patient voice saying as though he were right there with him in the woods again, 'you could meet a lot of furs who liked some of the geeky things you do, and I bet they're smart enough to be, well, open-minded, once they got to know you. You have a lot more options than you think. For friends, or for whatever.'

He had blown it off at the time. He had felt alone then, even though he hadn't been. But, even though he was alone right now, he didn't feel that way. He didn't know if he had gotten any smarter, but he felt as though Squeak, Rian, Jax, Roger, and sometimes even Kyle were with him half the time; he could see himself through their eyes and hear what they would say. Is that what growing up was about? Learning that you were alone - and then unlearning it?

Twitchy opened his muzzle to say something, but, as he did, the phone in his pocket began vibrating. Annoyed, he fished it out, but his eyes widened as he saw whose number it displayed. "It's Dex!" he said, any note of peevishness falling away. He looked from his phone to the skunk across from him. It was obvious even to the skunk how happy Twitchy was.

Stephen rolled his eyes and gestured permissively with one paw, hunching over his envelope. "See what your derring-doer friend is up to," the skunk said as he turned his eyes downward and reached for a pencil. "I'll be here."

The rabbit looked undecided for a moment. His thumb slid along the edge of the phone casing, just starting to apply the pressure needed to flip it open. Then he halted, and chewed his lip uncertainly. There was something familiar about Stephen's expression. Is that what he had looked like, when Dex used to go on about Rian?

With a mighty effort of will, the rabbit pressed the volume button to silence his phone and set it down on the table. Then he said four of the hardest words he had ever uttered.

"I'll call him back," Twitchy spoke with a cautious smile, and the skunk looked up at him, a little surprised. "Things were just getting interesting here. I've been thinking about your problem." The wheels were turning in the rabbit's head. Overload? Lost track of basic things while doing advanced math?

If the sweet-sounding skunk's brain worked like a computer, Twitch had a feeling he knew a way to buy him a lot of extra RAM. He bet the skunk didn't even know how much clutter upstairs he could turn off if he really needed to concentrate. He could start with a big chunk that took up tons of background processing power. All those potty-training subroutines - totally unnecessary. Who needs them? Not him. He'd be twice as cute and twice as innocent and maybe twice as smart without them.

He could imagine the shy boy sitting across from him fiddling with his glasses and wriggling around experimentally in a diaper puffy with oatmeal, so distracted by the strange feeling that he wouldn't even notice until after Twitchy did that he'd wet himself. And the rabbit would chide him and tap his muzzle and push the embarrassed skunky down on to his back. He was a bottom, he was totally a bottom, Twitch was 99 percent sure. He needed someone bigger to take care of him right down to wiping his rear so he could really concentrate on his silly scribbles.

And as for spilling drinks, well - he could see a couple faded stains on the skunk's pale blue shirt. What else did you expect from a baby? What was the goof doing feeding himself all the time? He probably lived alone and didn't have anybody to help him. All that stuff about using silverware, those subroutines were a drain on his processing power, too - No, he had to be fed, and cradled and burped afterwards.

Poor skunky. There was so much nonsense he didn't have to know at all getting in the way of his baby Einstein activities, now that Twitchy was thinking about it. What would happen if he had a safe place he could fall back into to concentrate where he could totally forget everything he knew about potty training and silverware and dressing himself? Yeah, why did he have to know how to dress himself? It's not like he was good at it, the rabbit noted, looking again at the skunk's stained blue shirt. And he forgot to brush his headfur half the time. He could look way cuter. And Twitchy was only beginning to come up with things a baby math genius didn't actually need to know. He had a great nursery plan that had been sitting on his shelf for years. Maybe he should look at it again.

Someone who diapers could make smarter. That would be different. Twitchy would work extra hard to make him comfortable with it; like, he'd use so much powder the skunk's bottom would be as white as the stripe on his tail. And Stephen didn't seem to have any doubts about being gay. He was obviously shy about it, but had he had boys under his tail? Twitch had a feeling things had happened involving squirmy skunky's tailhole. He had a feeling at any rate that things should happen involving squirmy skunky's tailhole. Things that involved bunny cock. And bunny fingers. And suppositories. And baby bottom beads. And since they were both science students, he didn't think the skunk would quibble when Twitchy reminded him that the muzzle was never the best place to get an accurate reading of a fur's temperature and make sure he was staying healthy.

If skunky hadn't done anything yet, they could make up for lost time and loosen the stripy little guy up fast. Twitchy had had a lot of paws-free practice trying to make himself ready for Dex's tight tailhole, and there weren't many furs who could hump continuously for as long as he could; Rian had joked that his buddy must be part jackrabbit after the last night the lonely bunny had been allowed to sneak into bed with the wolf and his mate before moving out here; he had started pumping from the minute he started tickling and nuzzling Rian and licking and massaging his girlfriend's feet and ankles and, as the only one in the bed required to keep his bulky overnight diaper on and snugly fastened all night, Twitch had kept right on dry-humping until well after Rian and Serry had slipped their diapers to climax and collapse in each other's arms.

Serry had rubbed his head with her footpaw and told the lonely, pent-up bunny, who was biting his tongue and still humping Rian's leg frantically through his diaper, that he was an adorable and talented-for-his-age little helper, so much so that they'd let him have ice cream and peanut butter on his breakfast waffles the next morning. "Isn't bunny baby just even cuter than a plushie?" Rian had asked her later, without addressing Twitch directly, but making sure he spoke loudly and clearly enough for his buddy to hear. "Peter Powdertail here's just like one of those battery-powered ones," he'd concluded just at the moment the rabbit, who had been too absorbed in his little helper duties and the bulk of his diaper to say a word himself since they'd gotten into bed, finally released into his bulky padding as his gracious hosts were dozing off. And they hadn't gotten his best grown-up efforts, no, Twitch reminded himself proudly, he was saving his best for someone special.

"Twitch?" the skunk asked. "Mission control to Twitch? Are you okay? You said something about my problem and then it's like you just tuned out?"

The bunny chewed on his lip and twitched his whiskers. How would the skunk ever believe Twitchy had his best interests at heart, though? How could he get past the initial shock to see that the rabbit's fetish was about caretaking and affection, not just the diapers? Suppose something dramatic happened. They both worked on the weekends sometimes, he'd noticed, although they'd hardly talked to each other before. Suppose he had a certain kind of accident and only Twitchy was around to see it. No, two certain kinds of accidents. In rapid succession, the second like five minutes after the first, just as soon as he'd had time to grapple with his initial embarrassment and feel like he had control back. That combo wasn't too hard to induce. Then, he'd open up to the surprisingly sympathetic rabbit who just happened to be on the scene about his past; Twitchy had a hunch he wasn't hearing the whole story about that.

It would only be for his own good, so he could see that Twitchy could take care of him like no one else could, and to get around any initial freak-out he might have about the diaper thing. If it was well intentioned, that's all that really mattered, surely. Just like giving him a demo so he could make an informed decision. A demo, that's just what it would be. It could be the start of a whole new life for him. And Twitchy was sure he could time it so the clueless skunk wouldn't be in danger of getting caught by anyone else. This could definitely work. Twitch knew how to make things happen. If you left it up to furs to figure things out on their own they might make the wrong decisions and just languish . . .

The bunny caught himself; he could almost picture a short wolf sitting at the table behind the skunk shaking his head at him in warning. Then Twitchy said the second hardest thing he had said that night.

"We'll talk about it when we know each other better," the rabbit said. "Maybe you're right - I shouldn't take shortcuts and try to make things happen too fast."

He looked down at the envelope on the table, and back up at the skunk, then leaned forward, and the front of one of his large feet rested atop one of the skunk's under the table. "I just have a feeling that you haven't even begun to tap into your full potential yet, Stevie."

"My name's Stephen," the skunk said, but made no move to withdraw his foot, in fact rubbing it against Twitchy's just a little.

"Of course it is," said the rabbit innocently, sipping at his coffee, "my mistake."

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

"This is like the most hours of public television I've watched in my life. Are they going to talk about the play for as long as the play was?" Roger complained, shifting uncomfortably on his sister's floor. On the TV, a sissy fox, an orange tabby cat, and a beaver wearing a beret were seated in folding chairs on a black stage discoursing energetically with a pair of interviewers.

Roger was sitting, cross-legged, in front of the coffee table, shifting in a diaper filled with warm oatmeal, his paw down the front of it. Calliope didn't seem to mind. Not far from them, a sissy Newfoundland sat in a rocking chair, knitting a purple sweater.

"I thought you were a fan of the morning programming," snapped Calliope, flicking an oriental silk fan shut and setting it down on her coffee table. She was wearing an uncharacteristically short dress, one that didn't conceal the rhumba panties she had on underneath, over a diaper of her own.

"PBS Kids is different," Roger pouted. "That's way cooler than grown-up PBS. Just make sure we change the channel in time."

"It will be the same clip that showed on the 9 o'clock news, and the 6 o'clock news," answered the leopardess.

"Maybe they'll show more this time," Roger whined, then returned his attention to the screen. "You tricked me! I thought A Doll's House would be a kiddy thing or I would never have let you dominate the play list like this. This theater stuff still baffles me; it came out of nowhere. When did Serafina become all like . . ." the Labrador, who was starting to dry-hump a little in his diaper, waved his free paw in a circle, searching for a name.

"Sarah Bernhardt?" Calliope suggested, at the same time that the dog proposed, "Mary Jane Parker."

The two siblings looked at each other suspiciously out of the corners of their eyes. "I don't know who that is," each said to the other at the same time.

Calliope rolled her eyes. "You never appreciated Serafina's taste when she was on your team," she said in a schoolmarmy tone of reproach. "That was a wonderful reading of Ibsen. My favorite playwright. I'm certain he was a woman at heart. I can't believe Serry's old director asked her to go on tour as Nora. The woman too caught up in a man's world for either men or women to understand her, who has to learn to stand up for herself. What a perfect sissy part! But just because Serry wears it lightly and doesn't show off how sophisticated her reading is. . . . The fact that she said in her entrance interview that she was rereading The Tale of Genji should have told you something. About both that and her . . . pinkishness."

"Why should that have bothered me? I have nothing against manga," said Roger defensively, wriggling harder against the floor, so some oatmeal would get in under his tail. Ahh, that felt good. What a perfect breakfast food that would be to wake up to a fresh, warm serving of in his diaper every morning, he thought. Maybe he should start doing that and go into work that way sometimes. He owned his place of business, after all.

"The Tale of Genji," said Calliope despairingly, "is a book. An actual book that consists of words. About royal consorts and love affairs and court intrigues and- oh, never mind," she concluded in frustration, throwing a pillow at Roger.

He let it fall off him to the floor and laid down to rest his head on it, now engaging both paws to make his diaper more comfortable. Calliope didn't mind - boys in diapers, probably because she had grown up with Roger as a brother, were the only kind of boys she considered sweet and innocent; they understood at least that girls matured way faster. So seeing her brother harmlessly enjoying his diaper didn't bother her, so long as he kept his fun and any mess inside it.

"I'd be glad to host an event for one of your books at the store sometime, sis, I keep telling you," Roger offered. "I could guarantee a decent Baby Blue turnout. Even if the subject matter makes us kind of uncomfortable and we'd let your team sit in front. Umm, hmm, I guess your sissies might have to worry about having paper airplanes thrown at them and a lot of back-row whispers about who looks girliest and whose padding is showing. Still, I don't know why you won't let me tell the boys that-"

"I write under a pen name for a reason, thank you," said Calliope briskly. "My girls should not feel obligated to read my romance novels. And my regular readers don't need to know about all," she gestured vaguely, "this."

"Suit yourself," said Rog. "I still read everything. You at least ought to let me bring Rian and Serry to a reading together sometime. Admit it or not, I know you love Rian like he's one of yours, I could tell at the wedding. I saw you tear up when he read his vows. He wrote them all by himself, you know. I just helped him rehearse them. 'To live and love and learn and play; Until the end of every day; To be only a little naughty, and not cut hugs short for the potty; To be a knight, forever true; to be a boy, forever blue; and always to come home to you.'"

Calliope fiddled with the floral decorations on her skirt. "You could bring Rian and Serry to one," she said. "That would be fine."

Cassandra's rocking chair creaked, and the sissy Newfoundland said nothing, watching them both with affection as she continued to knit.

"Here," said the leopardess, raising the remote and clicking it when she observed the time, "we'll watch this same exact news story for the third time and then you'll have no right to complain about what I want to watch."

Roger's ears perked up and his tail wagged. "Hi, boys!" he called from the floor, waving up at the television screen, as soon as the familiar footage came on, of a lynx and a black-and-brown tracking hound standing on the steps of a state courthouse. Placards expressing various sentiments were visible in the foreground at the foot of the stairs.

The dog had a Boy Scout sash on over his suit. He turned away from the camera and hugged the lynx wordlessly, too overcome to say anything right away. The feline, also in a suit, was holding up his fingers in a V-shape.

"Under appeal," Ace was shouting, "is just a fancy way of saying that until further notice, my partner is the first openly gay scoutmaster in the state of-"

"There," said Calliope, muting the television as the picture of Ace and Jax shrunk into the upper right corner of the screen, "I told you it would be the same clip. They always play the same clips."

"They still cut Jax," complained Roger as the picture changed and the next local news story began. "Well, the boys said they'd put the whole thing up online. I'll see what he said there. Can we watch Kyle and Byron's next videojournal now? That Ibsen thing," the dog complained, "was not helpful for me." He withdrew his paws from the front of his diaper-just right-he didn't need to cum now, just to be erect. He'd like to stay poised for as long as he could so he could enjoy the oatmeal more.

"Fine," said Calliope, clicking the remote, and the dog perked up as a malamute and a Dalmatian appeared on the screen, in an apartment kitchen, both wearing tee-shirts and diapers. The Dalmatian with a white apron on over his, and the malamute let an open leather jacket hang loosely over his shoulders.

"How did one of yours end up going to culinary school?" the leopardess complained.

"Hey, Kyle wants to open a barbecue place," said Roger defensively. "There's nothing girly about that!"

The Dalmatian was demonstrating making something, while the malamute read instructions to him from a card. "Are you sure it said three eggs?" asked Kyle critically at one point, sounding frustrated as he looked down at the unresponsive mixture

The burly black dog counted on his fingers once- and then again- and then a third time. "I think so," he concluded.

"Puppy," whined Kyle.

"Well, you could have read the recipe yourself," the malamute answered defensively, sticking his tongue out. "Coooooouldn't you?"

Kyle whined and looked up at the camera nervously, then back at Byron. "None of that," the Dalmatian retorted. "Don't puppy me, puppy. You said I could be on top in the next video. Cooking so much for Rian and Serry's wedding was a lot of work for me."

"Gosh," the malamute answered innocently, wagging his tail, "you should have written that down. If you could have. Spell Kyle gets to be on top. K . . ."

"Stop it!" yipped the Dalmatian, covering his ears. Not his name! That was a hard word. There was at least one silent letter in it. Maybe bunches. They were silent so who knew? He was lucky he was in a school now with no written tests that he had to write it on. And that sneaky malamute got him the dog tag he was wearing on his collar now, that he couldn't use to cheat because it only said K on it. That tease usually said K himself like he just did, the one easy letter, Kyle totally could have gotten that far. Ohhh, if he wanted to come across as the man of the house he had to head this off before he thought about it any more. "I'm supposed to teach you how to count to five," the Dalmatian protested.

Byron dropped the card he was holding and looked down at his forepaw. "Five?" he asked, counting to three on his forepaw again. He could use his diapers . . . one, two, three ways. How many more things could happen to him after that? One more thing? Two more things? Three more things? How many more thingies was five than three? He had to get some information without showing he was at a loss. "How are you going to get up to . . . that high?" he asked.

The Dalmatian dropped his eggbeater, grinned and clapped his paws. "When you get up to the brink of number three," he suggested, "I'll show you. Oh wait, before I forget, we still have to say hi to the boys like usual. Hi, Twitchy!"

"Hi Twitch!" Byron echoed. "Hi Rian!" "Mr. Newly-wet!" improvised the malamute, and the Dalmatian gave him a thumbs-up as they continued, "Hi Rog! Hi Dex! Hi . . ." the two diaperdogs continued the Baby Blue roll call in stereo for some time, before Byron explained, "We're hosting Kit who's working on his A/V badge. Don't worry, he took the train here! And we have a tricycle for him like you said, Rian. Since he can't ride a bicycle yet. No training wheels before training pants-" the camera wavered unsteadily. "Kit Raccoon!" Byron snapped. "Hold that steady if you want a ride to the toy store later!"

Kyle looked into the camera and winked as he gestured at the malamute, saying in a stage whisper, "You better do it or you'll have one angry malamute on you because Byron wants an excuse to go to the toy store."

Oh, goodie. Roger had a feeling this, like most of Kyle and Byron's uploads, would end in a blissfully regressed threesome.

Calliope rolled her eyes. "The plot of this video leaves something to be desired," she remarked. "Which of those two dogs is the subby one again?"

Roger shrugged. "Beats me!" he answered. He looked up over his shoulder at his sister. "You're a writer, sis. Did you ever imagine anything like this? I mean, way back in the beginning, from when Mom and Dad said that our rivalries and our little contests would keep each other from ever getting potty-trained, did you ever think, that there'd be all these others someday? And that our little groups would become this big? Or that any of our kids would go on to do any of the things they've done?"

"Not once," Calliope admitted. "You're sounding awfully nostalgic."

Roger sniffled. "I'm just worried about leaving other furs in charge for so long, and during the school year when there's so much going on. Who knows what could happen to the kids when we're away for two whole weeks?"

"It's just two weeks," said Calliope. "Only one week longer than usual. As a sort of dry run. Umm, with those two dry run is just a figure of speech, of course. A trial period to see how well they cope without us. And it's still not happening until they get back from their honeymoon, Rog. Besides, Cassandra," she smiled at the silent Newfoundland, "will be there to help out Serafina and keep at least my side under control. Keeping your boys from getting unruly is a lost cause anyway. Why worry?"

The dog shrugged. "Why not?" he said. "It still feels weird to have announced successors. Makes me feel old. I agree it's important every fur knows what we've started won't end with us. But, I don't plan on packing in as leader of Baby Blue for a long time yet. Well, I guess you're right, a vacation will be nice. It seems like forever since we've been on a trip together."

"It's been a year," snapped Calliope. "That's always how long it is."

"And my recruit numbers happen to be ahead this time," said Roger. "Which means, a certain little girl is going to be dependent for two weeks on the . . . come on, say it . . ."

Calliope groaned and sunk into the sofa. She muttered something inaudible.

"I can't hear you," Roger taunted.

"Bestest big brother ever," she said poutily.

"Bestest and . . ." he prompted.

"Bestest bravest big brother ever," she said, sounding disgusted.

"You forgot dashingest!" crowed Roger triumphantly. "I think the Western theme will work well for that. Why mess with the classics? After I had to spend a week in a frightfully pink, frightfully domestic bed and breakfast last year that somehow 'lost' my one suitcase of clothes, I'm looking forward to roughing it some. Makes you appreciate the comfort padding has to offer."

"Enjoy this year's because you won't be setting the itinerary again for a while," said Calliope smugly. "I'm not putting my eggs in one basket like with the Open House. We've been testing ideas since then and we've been gauging successes and failures; we're finally ready for a year full of maximally girly," she smirked, "'parent-teacher' events for our students. We'll see if you can keep up."

"That's what I think of your parent-teacher events," said the Labrador, looking up to stick his tongue out at her. "The only part of school cubby boys ought to relive is recess." After a pause, he added, more seriously, "I don't know why I'm so worried about leaving things in other paws for a couple weeks. It's just," Roger fidgeted, "I'm having second thoughts. I mean, Rian and Serafina are learning the ropes pretty well, but now they've gone and gotten hitched in front of everybody. Do you think the Pink and Blue teams are ready to have leaders who, you know . . . love each other?"

"Rog, you idiot," snapped Calliope, picking up her silk fan from the table and leaning forward to flick at his ears with it.

She paused there for a moment to ask, "Don't they already?"

The Labrador looked up at her over his shoulder.

Roger smiled.

Then he wagged his tail-with a crinkle.

The End . . .

_ Of the Pink and Blue Diaperfur Adventures series_.

This story series is dedicated to the babyfur/littlefur/diaperfur community. Thanks so much, those coming to the end, for sailing with me! The trip wouldn't have been the same if we weren't making it together. Watch my journal for possible extras or any word on future plans.

Comments welcome, on the submission page, [profile page](%5C), via PM, or e-mail to [mailto:[email protected]](%5C)