Academy II (Complete)

[Mia Moore]

Hey everyone!  Welcome to Academy II, the final installment of Academy Works. The title is unlike previous installments, using a roman numeral instead of a letter.  This is a play off Academy I, the first in the series, but it also has a few other meanings.  You will quickly find that A2 is very different to the other stories!

If you haven't read any Academy Works stories, there are six others in this universe.  They are as follows: 

Academy I (Part 1), Academy B (Part 2),  Academy T (Part 3),  Academy K (Part 4),  Academy A (Part 5), and Academy M (Part 6). 

Since this is the final book in the series, reading all of the previous ones will help you understand what's going on.  I strongly encourage it.  But if you want to jump right in on this one, I think you'll still have a good time.  

Thanks to all my readers and fans over the past few years.  I hope this conclusion is everything you wanted it to be.  You can support my work at this Patreon link, or this SubscribeStar link.  

~Mia~

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Academy II will operate a bit differently than previous stories.  Updates will be multiple chapters at once, with a bit of a twist.  Please be patient and thoughtful with this new format. ❤️  

Take it away, Soph.

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[Sophie ♥]

Academy II
By Sophie & Pudding

 

"At the end of the world, there will be neither clamor nor calamity, neither echo nor epoch.  It will be mired in silence and sleep, in deliverance and death.  At the end of the world, there will be both patience and purpose, both temperance and time.  Only then will it be graced with eternity, and from eternity, a chance."

                                                    -The Source, in valediction

 

Chapter One

Ai Sinclair packed her bag with clothes and trinkets. She had a snow globe from her friend Pyrah and a plastic recorder from her friend Tennessee. She picked up the pair of knitting needles and looked them over, from one end to the other. They were warm and stainless, and Ai wondered if they would stay that way for long. She threw her bag over one shoulder and carried the needles outside. 

Ai stepped out onto a long porch, a porch that connected to three other cabins. In front of her was a cobblestone path through a field of flowers, and in the distance, a small, humble town with only a dozen or so buildings. Beyond that, picturesque snow-topped mountains surrounded the town and the field of flowers and the cabins and the porch. From the porch where Ai stood, the view was perfect.

A ways down the porch, in a cluster, was a set of four rocking chairs. Three of them were occupied by older women. If the day had been yesterday or the day before, Ai would sit down in the fourth chair. But today, Ai did not sit down. She walked up to the women and held out the set of knitting needles. 

"Thank you for teaching me how to knit," Ai said. "But I have to be going now." 

"Going?" asked one of the women. "You don't need to go anywhere." 

"Come now, Maribel," another woman tsked. "You knew when she arrived that Ai wouldn't be staying." 

"I know, but..." Maribel sighed in resignation. "I suppose I had hoped that we could change her mind." 

"I wish you had," Ai said sadly. "I can't think of a more beautiful place to live." 

"Then stay," the third woman urged. "Margie said herself she wants you to stay." 

"I did," Margie laughed. "But don't let us sway you. You seem like you have somewhere to be." 

"I think I do..." Ai said, more to herself than the three older women. She'd been looking for that somewhere for quite a while; no matter how comfortable she found herself, it was never enough. 

"You always have a home here, should you find your way back," Margie said, and the other two agreed. 

"These belong to you," Ai said, holding out the knitting needles once again, but Margie was quick to raise a hand in objection. 

"They're as much yours as they are ours. Take them with you, in case you need to knit a scarf. It's cold in the mountains." 

"Thank you," Ai said again. Every time someone gave her a new gift, she was always surprised. But time and again, she was given gifts anyway. 

"Thank you for staying as long as you did," Maribel said. 

"I don't suppose there's an easier way up the mountain?" Ai asked. 

"I'm afraid not," the third woman said. "But as they say, life is more interesting with hardship." 

"What is a mountain if not a challenge?" Margie winked. 

"Then I suppose I'll need these knitting needles after all," Ai smiled. 

She hugged each of the women goodbye and did her best not to cry. When she'd arrived at the small, humble town in the mountains, she didn't expect to stay very long. But she'd spent half the season there, with no regrets. She waded into the field of flowers, down the cobblestone path, and toward the town for the rest of her goodbyes. Before she lost sight of the porch, she turned and waved one last time.

There were fewer people in the town of Hamlet than one might expect.  John Bootie ran the General Store, and a younger man named Zachary Hicks helped in the afternoons.  Charles Clarke managed the Old Bank, where Robert Molyneux worked the counter.  Sydney Parkinson tended bar at the Misty Pub all by herself, every single afternoon and every single evening.  

But the Misty Pub was always full of townsfolk with drinks, though no one in town was a brewer.  Often the women on the porch would take trips to the bank, though Ai had never seen any money exchanged.  And the shelves at the General Store were always stocked with what you needed, even if what you needed wasn't very general at all.  And though everyone should have been at work, they were all instead waiting for Ai in the town square: men, women, and some who didn't say one way or the other.

The town crier, a portly fellow by the name of John Satterley, was the first to run up to Ai and pull her into a tight bear hug.

"Hamlet won't be the same without you, darlin'," he said a little too loudly, causing Ai to wince.

"Uh huh, yeah, thanks..." Ai struggled a little to hug John back, but her arms were pinned to her sides. When he finally let go, Ai was a little lightheaded. 

"You make sure to come back now," he said with a very serious tone, and then erupted in a loud laugh. Before Ai could give John the same reassurances she gave the women on the porch - that she would try - Charlie Green slammed into her hip with all the force of a seven year old girl. 

"Miss Ai! Don't go!" 

Ai untangled herself from Charlie's hug and knelt down to ruffle her hair. 

"I've got somewhere else I need to be," Ai said warmly. 

"You gotta be right here!" 

"Well, maybe one day I'll figure out how to be in two places at once. And if I do, I'll send one of me back here. How does that sound?" 

"You promise?" Charlie asked with comically big tears dripping down her chin. 

"I promise." 

Ai gave Charlie another hug. Then she shook some hands, gave one salute, and hugged Charlie again. Ai waved back at the town and walked backwards for quite a ways, until she rounded a hill and Hamlet disappeared behind it. 

A part of Ai wanted to stay in Hamlet forever. It was pleasant and welcoming, and filled her with a sense of safety. In all the lands she'd visited, nowhere felt more like home. But it wasn't enough.

With a deep sigh, Ai finally stopped walking. She rubbed the tears from her eyes and looked up at the mountain tops. 

"Leaving is always the worst part," she said to herself. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a little compass. The needle pointed solidly to the left, so she went right. 

The climate in Hamlet was unique; it was always warm and temperate, snuggled into the mountain range. It was like the peaks were cuddling the town, keeping it safe and warm, because once you got too far away from it the temperature began to drop.

Ai unzipped her backpack and rummaged around inside until she found her snow coat. She also grabbed a scarf that Margie had knitted her and wrapped it around her neck. 

Ai remembered Margie's indignation when she first arrived in Hamlet: "No scarf? No hat? You think a coat is enough to keep you warm in the mountains?" But truthfully, Ai had no idea what a scarf was before she met Margie. Everywhere she went, Ai learned something new.

With the coat warming her body and the scarf warming her neck, Ai wondered why nobody had thought of a scarf for her hands. The brisk air made her knuckles ache, like her elbow when she knocked it against a doorframe. She slipped her hands into her pockets. 

Ai wondered if she'd run into anybody else on the mountain. She decided to hum a song she never remembered learning, so if someone was nearby they might hear her. Then she might have some company.

Ai pulled her arms inside her coat for a while, to keep her hands warm, but the mountains only grew steeper and steeper. There was no path leading the way, and if it wasn't for Ai's compass, she may have gotten lost herself. 

Every so often, she'd reach a small mesa and turn to see Hamlet in the distance. Every time she looked, it seemed smaller and smaller. 

Ai stopped again to change shoes, to switch from hand-sewn climbing shoes to a pair of snow boots she got from her friend Tanner. And on she went. 

"Going up is a lot harder than going down," Ai groaned. She had stopped for a drink of water from the bottle in her backpack. The sun was starting to set, and the cold was only getting colder. It only took her half a day to get to Hamlet the first time, and she had hoped it would only take half a day to leave.

Animal sounds were abundant in the mountains. Chirps, whistles, flapping. The crunch of footsteps on fluffy snow, distant and rhythmic.  Or maybe it was just the echo of her own footsteps bouncing off the mountains, because Ai didn't come across any animals at all.

"I'm sorry for traipsing through your home," Ai said to the animals, in case they were shy. "But if you live here, you can come out and say hello."

When nothing came out, she added: "It's an open offer."

When Ai had no one else to talk to, she often talked to herself. Sometimes, on her journey, she would go entire days before finding someone new. It helped her feel safe knowing that someone was around, even if that someone was just herself. 

As the setting sun glinted off the snow, Ai lost her footing and fell flat onto her stomach. Before she could grab onto something, she slid down the incline.  Her arms flailed through the snow like she was making snow angels, but she only picked up speed. 

Just as Ai thought, "I'll slide down the entire mountain at this rate," a rough surface snagged the toe of her boot. She fell over herself and landed flat on her back, like a pancake on a griddle. She was still on the mountain, on a flat ridge near the top, but her ankle was twisted and her back hurt from the rocks. It felt like even the terrain itself was trying to keep Ai from leaving.

"I guess I have to set up camp after all..." Ai sighed, trying to get to her feet. The layers of snow were thin, and she felt like it wouldn't be too much work to set up a tent. She scavenged around in her backpack until she found a sheet of canvas and some metal poles. In the end, her bivy tent was barely bigger than she was, but it warmed up quickly. 

Ai could just barely see off the edge of the cliff, at the little lights that must have been the town of Hamlet. They were so far away. Then she looked up at the stars, even brighter than the lights below. They beckoned Ai onward, like trail markers. 

"Thank you," Ai said to the sky, because her star was out there somewhere. She just had to find it. 

Early the next morning, Ai emptied a whole bag of M&Ms into her mouth and packed up her tent. She filled her water bottle up with snow and breathed warm air into it to try to make it melt. It was slow going, as was her trek up the mountain. 

By noon, the sun was high in the sky and Ai felt warmer than she had all day. The heat was rejuvenating. She unwrapped a layer of her scarf and doubled her pace up the mountain, taking a more careful path through the valleys. The town of Hamlet was long gone, and Ai's determination was at an all-time high. 

It was early evening when Ai reached the peak of the mountain. She was out of breath and her hands were frozen pink, but her eyes were bright and beaming. She rushed to the other side and saw the ground slope down in front of her. In the distance, the mountain range continued for a while, but that didn't matter.

Ai checked her compass. She found the exact opposite direction the needle was pointing and went into her backpack to get the canvas tent. She fluffed it out like a blanket on a bed and grabbed one of the corners. With a running start, Ai leapt off the top of the mountain and into the snow. 

The canvas slid across the surface and Ai slid along with it, down the slope. As she picked up speed, she laughed. She laughed, because all that hard work finally paid off, and Ai was having fun. 

As she slid faster and faster toward the bottom of the slope, there was a shimmer. It filled the whole sky, like a wall of transparent fabric. Like the surface of a bubble. Then Ai Sinclair crashed right into it.

[Sophie ♥]

Chapter Two

Suddenly, everything was different. The evening sky turned mid-afternoon. The snow vanished and the fluffy grass beneath poked up. The mountain wasn't so steep anymore, more like a hill, and all the mountains on the horizon were replaced with thick, autumn trees.

But one thing stayed the same: Ai's momentum. The canvas sled skipped across the grass a few times before friction got the best of it, and Ai was thrown off. She landed on her hip and tumbled down the hill on her side, eventually sliding to a halt near the bottom. 

"Ow," Ai said to herself, struggling to sit up. She rubbed her shoulder, which broke some of her fall. Then she wiggled her fingers and toes, just to make sure everything was still working okay. Other than a few scratches and a lot of sore muscles, Ai was just fine. 

"Well, where am I now..." Ai said to herself, fumbling for her compass. It pointed back the way she had come, up the hill. She turned and looked at the forest in the opposite direction. Under the canopy, the grass was littered with fallen leaves, orange and yellow and brown. A gentle breeze would sometimes pick them up and scatter them around, like moving around paint on a canvas, trying to cover up every blade of grass. There was a crispness in the air that made Ai think about apples. She hadn't had an apple in a long time.

Ai took her first step into the forest, because her compass told her not to and for no other reason.

The forest was tranquil and lively at the same time, and Ai immediately took a liking to it. Unlike the last bubble she was in, this one had animals. Deer. Deer with antlers. Rabbits. Rabbits with antlers. She had never seen a rabbit with antlers before. She offered one an M&M, but it ran into the brush. With a shrug, Ai continued onward. 

As the day went on, the wind brought a gentle song to her ears. The leaves were swept around and set down once again, leaving a path of yellow and green grass. Without thinking too much about it, the path and the song led her to the edge of the wood. In front of her was a river of sparkling blue water, and on the other side, a large stone castle.

Ai's admiration lasted only a second before it was swiftly interrupted by a rumble at her feet, and vines sprung up around her. They twisted themselves with impressive speed into a tight cage, trapping her inside. The melody on the air fell away, and was replaced with a woman's voice.

"Trespasser!" it boomed, and a woman rose up out of the river in front of Ai. Her skin was blue and shimmery, almost translucent, and her clothes were barely clothes at all. They were made of water, with rushes of bubbles to cloud particular parts of her body.

Another woman dropped down from the trees behind Ai. She had green skin, her clothes were made of leaves, and her hair was decorated in flowers.  She also had antlers on her head, just like the animals in the wood.  

They both looked annoyed and curious at Ai Sinclair.

"Who are you?" asked the woman who came from the trees, though it sounded more like she was demanding an answer than asking for one.

"I'm Ai Sinclair," Ai said. "And I'm not trespassing. I'm walking through.

"Walking through without permission is trespassing," said the woman in the water. 

Ai sighed to herself. She had been in bubbles like this before, with magical denizens. Ai used to have magic too, a long time ago, but she gave it up for other things. Exploration. Possibility.

"Please, I'm just trying to get to the other side of your kingdom," Ai explained. "If you'd let me go—" 

"Let you go?" the woman in the water gasped. "You've broken the law. You have to be sentenced by the king!" 

"Yes, the king," the woman from the trees agreed, and suddenly the wooden cage began to shake. It tumbled forward into the river with Ai inside. 

"Hey! Watch it!" Ai shouted, trying to kick at the cage. But whatever magic the forest nymph used was strong. The water lurched and spun the cage, causing Ai to sink underwater, only to bob back up again for air. She clung the wooden bars of her cell for dear life as it drifted along with the river current. All the while, the two women laughed. 

It wasn't long before the cage arrived at a stone bridge. Water rose up underneath Ai and she fell roughly on the bridge, cage and all. She coughed up water and rolled onto her back, vines and sticks digging into her coat.

"This is why I hate magic," she said more to herself than the two women. "It makes people so entitled." 

"Us? Entitled?" the woman in the water said. 

"You're the one trespassing!" the flower-dressed woman added, standing on the grassy bank.

"Good point," Ai sighed, not wanting to fight with her captors. Maybe once she met this so-called king... 

"Oh, and what's this one?" The new voice was one of a young man in armor. He stood in the castle doors, looking down at the sopping wet girl.

"Trespasser," both women said in unison. 

"Well, I'll take her to the king," the man said, staring curiously through the wooden bars. "Free her." 

Sure enough, the wood unraveled itself and left Ai in a puddle on the bridge. She struggled to get to her feet, completely waterlogged. But her freedom from captivity was short-lived, because the man in armor quickly forced her wrists into cuffs. Ai groaned.

"You're new to the King's Kingdom, aren't you? Well, ignorance is no excuse when it comes to The King's Law." His tone was stern and serious. Then it softened. "Although The King is in a good mood today; this morning's harvest of honey was particularly to his liking. What is your name?" 

"Ai Sinclair," Ai said, without any deference in her voice. She'd been to enough "King's Kingdom"s in her travels to know the type. Arrogant, bossy men who liked to tell people what to do, thinking that what they wanted was always best. And often Ai was just another way to assert their dominance.

"Well, Ice and Claire, that is an unusual name. But I'm not here to judge. I'm Rupert, and I'm Junior Squire to Lady Errata and a member of The King's Royal Guard. It's very nice to meet you, and I'm sure that once justice is dispensed you'll have a pleasant time here."

Ai didn't believe in Rupert's prediction; lands like this one were always her least favorite, and she wasn't looking to stay long. But she knew to get what she wanted, she had to play the game. 

The castle was unsurprisingly empty. Though each world had a lot of space, they often only had a handful of people.  There were exceptions, like the City in the Sky; Ai only stayed there for a day, but she guessed there were something like five hundred residents.

Rupert led Ai through a large set of doors and into the throne room, where a tall man in fancy robes was sitting. Beside him, there were two chairs: one had a woman in it, who was nearly as tall as the man and dressed in equally-but-different fancy robes. The other chair was empty. 

"Your Majesty," Rupert said. "This is Ice and Claire. She was found trespassing in your wood." 

"Pardon me, Your Majesty," Ai said kindly, putting on a fake smile. "I am new to the kingdom, and I meant no disrespect." 

"Mm... and where were you going?" the king asked. His voice was oddly warm and deep, lulling even. Ai felt his words in her chest. 

"To another bubble," Ai answered honestly. Then, on the rare chance the king didn't know what she was talking about, she added: "A different land." 

"And what is wrong with my land?" the king asked. 

"Nothing, Your Majesty," Ai asserted. "But it isn't my home. I am trying to get home." 

"Mm... and have you a compass? You should have one, if you left home." 

"I do, Your Majesty. It's in my bag." 

The king snapped and Rupert unclipped Ai's backpack from her back. Ai let out a sigh of mild irritation, but she couldn't do anything but acquiesce. The king opened it up and sifted through, as if it was his own. 

"This bag is quite deep." The king sounded almost impressed. 

"It's enchanted, Your Majesty. A friend gave it to me, to help me on my journey." 

"Mm... yes, you have quite a lot of things in here." 

"For travel, Your Majesty." Ai was getting really tired of saying 'Your Majesty'. The woman on the king's side - perhaps Lady Errata - leaned in and whispered something to the king. The king nodded his head. 

"Well, you must be disciplined for trespassing," the king said, and that deep, velvety voice echoed in Ai's ears. 

"Um... yes, Your Majesty," Ai managed to say. As soon as she resolved whatever discipline he had in store, then she could leave.

"I believe that twenty sets of ten ought to be sufficient; you're a first offender, after all." The king looked to the woman for her opinion, maybe her approval, which the woman gave with a small, understated nod.

Ai didn't know what the king was talking about, but he said in a smooth voice: "Come here", and Ai did just that. With Rupert at her side, Ai approached the throne until she was an arm's length from the king. He reached out, took her by the handcuffed hand, and lifted her up onto his lap. 

At first, Ai was stunned. The man was at least a foot taller than her, but he picked her up without any effort at all. He didn't make any comment about how her wet clothes were soaking his robes. 

Then Ai was confused because the king was adjusting her over his knee, the way a child might adjust a doll. But when the grown man tugged down the seat of Ai's pants, flashing her wet underwear to the queen beside him, her confusion turned to deep embarrassment. A familiar sinking feeling filled Ai's stomach, but she didn't know why.

"Hey! What are you doing?"

"Administering justice, as is my duty as the king." The king acted swiftly, bringing his hand down in quick succession over Ai's wet behind. A wetness that certainly exacerbated the sting of his very large hands. 

"Now dear," the woman, Queen Errata smiled with faint amusement, "you must count, or they don't."

"I... what... I'm..." 

The pain was nothing compared to the sheer shock. Ai's whole body tensed up in a panic, and her mind whirled with a thousand feelings she couldn't explain. Another spank on her bottom pulled her out of her shock, and another reminded her exactly how much it really hurt. And it really hurt! 

"One?" Ai asked, after the third hit. She should have started at three, but she didn't. Something in her head told her to start at one. 

"Good girl!" Queen Errata cooed. "And what comes next?" 

Another spanking came next. The pain radiated through Ai's bottom, up her spine, into her head. Her whole body was trembling. 

"T-two..." Ai tried to hold it together. Counting, ignoring the pain, ignoring the embarrassment. She'd never been spanked before - she didn't even know what spanking was! - but it filled her with such heavy feelings. 

"T-ten..." Ai finally stuttered, and the king stopped. Ai was quivering in his lap, the skin on her bottom red and angry. She was dizzy from the flood of emotions. 

"A little break then," the king said, gently rubbing Ai's bottom with his hand.

"I... I'm sorry I... um... please... lemme up..." Ai begged the king, but his hand on her butt felt nice. Comforting. It made her heart warm.

"Now now Miss Ice and Claire, there's no hurry. Your justice will be delivered swiftly and regally, as I, the king, see fit. Enjoy your reprieve, and no more squirming now, understand? There's a good subject."

"I'm not a subject," Ai said sourly, kicking her feet and trying to get off the king's lap. There were limits to her willingness to follow the rules in someone else's land, and those limits had certainly been crossed. 

"I said no squirming," the king said sharply, and a heavy fog filled Ai's mind. She hesitated on her words and her body stilled. The king clearly had some kind of magic of his own, and Ai wasn't able to contend with it. 

"I think that's enough time," the king said, and loosed his palm onto Ai's bottom. She did her best to count, but the second set was so much worse than the first. Humiliation was waning away, and the sheer amount of pain in her body made her eyes fill with tears. By the time he got to ten, Ai was spent. She couldn't take another round. 

"Please... your majesty... I've learned my lesson, please..."

"If you had learned your lesson, Miss Ice and Claire, you wouldn't be begging me to stop." 

"You'd be begging him to continue," Queen Errata offered smugly.

Ai shook her head. She knew what kind of behavior the king wanted, and she had been determined to give it to him, but this was too much for her. Even as he rubbed the seat of her panties, Ai was so anxious about the next set that she couldn't stop crying. 

"One," Ai managed. Tears spilled down her cheeks. Each spank was so powerful, and she was in agony. Two, three, four. Five and six were slow and slurred. And after that, her wailing of numbers was indecipherable. Her brain had turned off entirely, and her base instincts kicked in: bawling like a little baby. 

"My king," the queen whispered, looking forlornly at the bawling woman in her husband's lap. "Perhaps let's wait for the rest." 

"Mm..." The king looked at Ai, then the eyes of his wife. He nodded. 

"What do you think of that, Ice and Claire?" the queen cooed. "We will postpone the rest of your discipline until you are ready. And until then, you'll be our honored guest." 

Ai quickly nodded her head. She was only catching every other word through the ringing in her ears, but Ai knew that the queen was offering to end the spankings. 

"But you must do what you are told," the queen said sternly. Her voice didn't have the same command as her husband's, but it was just as serious. "Any disobedience, and we will add more discipline. Do you understand?" 

Ai didn't hesitate. Her higher thoughts had shut down, and the concept of cause and effect was a wistful memory. Above all else, Ai needed the spankings to stop, and she would do anything to make that happen. 

"Yes, Your Majesty..." Ai fumbled, mispronouncing every syllable of those words. 

"Good girl," the queen said. "But from now on, you'll call me Mommy."

[Sophie ♥]

Chapter Three

Ai was still trembling, even fifteen minutes after the spanking was over. The queen had taken her by the hand and led her down the halls of the empty castle. She was talking about something, but Ai was struggling to focus. Her body was alight with adrenaline, but she was tired at the same time.

"Now, Ice and Claire, it's not proper for the king's justice to be suspended, so we certainly need a reason for it, otherwise you'll be right back on his lap before you know it. You're such a small little thing, though… I think we can come up with something."

Ai nodded. She didn't know what she was agreeing to, but anything was better than getting spanked like that again. She had never felt so helpless in her entire life, and nothing had hurt her quite so badly. Sure, she'd had a few concussions. She broke her leg once, and two of her fingers. But there was something about that spanking that made all that seem like gentle bruising. Perhaps that was just the way spankings felt, or perhaps the king himself had something to do with it. 

The queen led Ai up the stairs of a tower and into the room at the top. There was a bed with curtains above and around it. There was some white furniture that really seemed to bring out the brightness of the grey stone walls. But most importantly, there was a balcony. It overlooked the forest, but not the way she had come. That's when Ai realized she didn't have her backpack. Or her compass. 

"Your Majesty, could I please—" 

"Ah, ah," the queen interrupted. "You know better than to call me that." 

Ai had to pause to remember what it was the queen was talking about. The spanking and the conversation that followed were nothing but a blurry memory to her. When Ai finally pieced it together, a blush came over her cheeks.

"Um... Mommy..." Ai muttered. She had never called anyone that before, not once in her life. She knew what a Mommy was; she'd seen it enough times. The parent to a child. Specifically a woman, and specifically a very young child. A child with no autonomy, who relied on the parent for every little thing. Ai felt embarrassed, having put herself in that category.

But there were more pressing concerns.

"Could I please have my backpack?" Ai asked. 

"When you're done with your discipline, you can have your belongings back," the queen said simply, and Ai knew there wasn't room to argue.

"Let's get you dressed, Ice and Claire," the queen said, motioning to the bed. "It's inappropriate for you to be wearing clothes you picked out."

"My clothes are in my backpack," Ai argued, but the queen didn't seem deterred at all. She went over to a wardrobe in the corner and Ai sat on the edge of the bed. She couldn't go through all those spankings again, so she had to figure out a way to get her backpack back. Maybe it was still in the throne room.

The queen turned around with a puffy pink dress in her hands, the kind of dress Ai had only ever seen on little girls in fancy houses. And, well, the castle was kind of a fancy house. But Ai wasn't a little girl. 

"I don't really like dresses," Ai tried to tell the queen.

"Dresses are easy access for the king and me, Ice and Claire. And that's important, because you may need to be checked on."

Easy access as a term sent a shiver up Ai's spine. Why did they need access to anything under her skirt? The only thing that came to mind was more of those spankings... was the dress a reminder to behave? With a reluctant sigh, Ai reached for the dress. 

"Oh, no no," the queen said sweetly. "I'll get you dressed. I'm your Mommy, after all, aren't I?" 

Ai didn't answer, but that was answer enough. The taller woman stripped off Ai's shirt and pants, leaving her in nothing but her wet underwear. Ai blushed, looking down at her feet and covering her bare chest with her arms. 

"These too," the queen said, pulling down Ai's panties. Ai reached to grab them, but the queen slapped her hands away. 

"Please, I can change myself..." 

"Nonsense," the queen said simply. Then she unfolded a pair of underwear that Ai didn't recognize, not at first. They weren't made of the same kind of material of any panties Ai had ever seen. But when the woman prompted her to step into them, she realized why. They were the same kind that little kids wore when they were potty training. 

"Wait, hold on. Why do I have to wear those training pants?" Ai asked incredulously. 

"Well, you got your other panties all wet," the queen said simply. 

"Well, yeah, but... you don't think I wet those, do you? That awful forest nymph threw me in the river!" Ai was blushing furiously. 

"Then you'll be able to keep your pull-ups dry," the queen countered. 

"Pull-ups?" Another name for the training pants, no doubt. Ai shook her head. 

"Absolutely not! You have the wrong idea!" 

"If you won't do as you're told," the queen said coldly, "you can go over Daddy's lap instead." 

Ai froze. Her heart rate doubled and panic zipped up her spine. The fact that the woman had referred to the king as her Daddy was just another straw on the camel's back for Ai Sinclair, but fear gripped her like a noose. She was too scared to even breathe, for just a moment, and stars appeared at the edges of her vision. 

"What will it be, Ice and Claire?" the queen asked. Ai looked down at her feet shyly and stepped into the training pants. 

***

Over the next few days, things only got worse for Ai Sinclair. The queen had an endless supply of little girl dresses, and she did everything from feeding Ai to giving her a bath. She would give Ai cups with lids full of milk, and the milk would make Ai's thoughts fuzzy for a few hours. But the worst part was, the queen seemed intent on getting Ai to have an accident. 

At first, it was just a lot of water and milk, so much that it was an inconvenience. Ai had to get up every hour to use the bathroom. Then the queen would plan walks around the garden, and try to keep Ai out for long periods of time. Then the queen started locking the bathroom door, so that Ai had to ask permission. But through all the trials, Ai always managed to keep her pull-up dry. 

Whenever Ai had any free time, she searched for her backpack. It wasn't in the throne room, and the castle was massive. Finally, the queen let it slip that it had been put in the royal bedroom for safekeeping, but the door was always locked.

Objectively, Ai could always ask Daddy for the rest of her spankings. But she had seventeen sets of ten remaining, and any time she even thought about it she would panic. As much as Ai hated it, the reasonable way out wasn't a viable one. She had to find another way, and it came in the form of a silver lining.

Of all of Queen Errata's inexplicable behaviors, Ai hated one more than the rest: though the queen would talk constantly to Ai, she never once listened. Even if Ai tried to engage in the conversation, she was dismissed or actively ignored. It reminded Ai of how a child talks to a doll or a cat. But it was from one of these soliloquies that Ai got an idea.

"I don't see why you insist on keeping up this big girl act," the queen sighed, after yet another trip to the bathroom. "There are a lot of perks that only a little girl can get." 

Ai ruminated all day on what the queen meant by that, and if maybe one of those perks could get her closer to her backpack.  That night, before the queen got Ai ready for bed, Ai tugged on her dress as cutely as possible and played her hand.

"Mommy..." she said shyly. "Um, I was thinking about what you were saying. And at night, I get kind of scared all alone in here..." 

"Oh?" The queen didn't take Ai for a woman that was afraid of the dark. But the queen truly did see Ai as a little girl. 

"You said little girls get perks, so, um... if I were a little girl, would I be able to sleep with you and Daddy?"

The queen's eyes lit up and she enthusiastically nodded her head. This lasted only a moment before she regained her composure. 

"Absolutely, Ice and Claire. Little girls get to sleep with Mommy and Daddy. Of course... a little girl must be properly dressed for bed, as not to have any night time accidents in the royal bed. And your pull-ups are certainly not sufficient."

Ai knew part of this plan would involve a few embarrassing concessions, but she wasn't entirely sure what that looked like. The queen wanted to treat Ai like a little girl, to make Ai reliant on her, and Ai was determined to do her best to prove otherwise. What would happen when she gave up? 

"Yes, Mommy..." Ai muttered shyly. "Whatever you think is best..."

Those magic words were far more potent than manners; those were the words that the queen wanted taught to all royal charges.  She smiled blissfully, because she was getting everything she wanted. But there was mischief in her eyes.

"Up on the bed," she said.

Ai sighed and went over to the bed, sitting on the edge. Her feet barely touched the ground, and the bed was bigger than ones she was used to. This whole world made her feel a little smaller than the others, or maybe it was the constant doting from the queen.

The queen went to an ever-present dresser on the far side of the room.  When she returned, the queen set down some stuff on the bed beside Ai: a square of folded plastic and a pair of pink fluffy ovals covered in bells.

Ai recognized the diaper at first glance. She had never seen one that big, and it didn't really look anything like the others she had seen for actual babies, but she just knew. She felt a sinking feeling in her stomach and an indescribable anxiety filled the space. The other things, though… Ai searched through the mental catalogue she had accumulated over her travels, but the results came back empty. She looked nervously up at Mommy for answers.

"Queen Mommy and King Daddy are sound sleepers, and we like to sleep in. So a nighttime diaper is a must for my little Princess-to-Be, and some mittens for your hands to keep you from fidgeting."

Ai didn't know what mittens were, but it seemed like they were meant to keep her from using her fingers. But then how was she supposed to get her backpack? Ai felt like the ground was falling out beneath her feet. She had to do something. 

"But I'm... I don't need those, um... I don't fidget, really. I won't touch anything, I swear." And anyway, how were bells supposed to help her stop fidgeting? Ai felt like she was missing something crucial to winning her argument, but challenging the queen felt too dangerous.

"Well, just as Daddy doesn't make alliances with kingdoms he hasn't visited, we can't have you sleeping in the royal bed without proving that you won't be a problem. Doesn't that make sense, Ice and Claire? Now, lay down upon the bed, sweet girl."

"But... I, swear, I'm—" 

"Unless you'd rather sleep alone in the dark?" the queen offered. Ai hesitated. She was giving up the only card she had, giving the queen everything she wanted, and there was a good chance she wouldn't be able to get what she needed out of it. But if she went back on her deal, it was only a matter of time. Sooner or later, she'd have an accident and the queen would get her way anyway. So, with a defeated sigh, Ai laid back on the bed and looked up at the canopy.

"That's very royal behavior." Which was, Ai supposed, the highest compliment that her Mommy could pay her. 

As Ai pondered her next move, her Mommy stripped her of the pull-up and lifted her legs.  She unfolded the diaper and slid it beneath Ai's bare bottom before pulling it up between her thighs.

"You're never going to have to worry about accidents again, my little girl. And there are so many perks," the Queen cooed. Ai was only half listening, if at all.

It was the first time Ai could remember anyone putting her in a diaper, and it felt so routine. The familiarity was dizzying, like a book she had read a thousand times. Not a single word was new, not a single piece of punctuation was surprising. And all the same, Ai's cheeks were red with embarrassment as her Mommy taped the diaper around her hips. 

When it was over, when the queen pulled Ai to her feet, the familiarity vanished, but the embarrassment did not. The thickness between her legs was nothing like the pull-up, and Ai worried she wouldn't even be able to walk. She tried to act like none of this was bothering her, but Ai looked up at Mommy with such shyness.

"You'll get used to it, Ice and Claire, and you'll soon wonder how you were ever not a little girl. Now hold up your hand, like this." The queen held out her hand to demonstrate, and waited for Ai to do the same.  Then she fetched the first of the two jingly mittens.

Ai watched carefully as her Mommy put the mitten on. Two bells, one on each side. An elastic part around the wrist. Mommy slid the fabric over Ai's hand and pulled a strap around the elastic, which clicked shut with a press. Like a lock, but there was no place for a key.

Then she did the same with the other hand. Ai tried to ball her hand into a fist, to warp her wrist a little to get as much leverage as she could, but the tall woman flattened her hand inside the mitten and tightened it all the same. Ai reached over with one mitten to pull the other off, but she couldn't get a good grip. The inside was lined with some kind of padding, and the bells jingled with each of Ai's movements.

"Sleeping girls don't need their hands, so this shouldn't be any problem at all for you, should it?" the queen asked, but it was a rhetorical question. "Don't fret and fuss, Ice and Claire. Just like your diapers, you'll get used to them."

The queen stripped Ai of her dress and pulled a nightie over her head. Without the use of her hands, with her thighs spread apart, and with the height difference between her and her caregiver, Ai realized exactly how helpless she was. Then the queen picked her up and set her on her hip like Ai didn't weigh anything at all. The front of her diaper pressed into her Mommy's side and all Ai's plans of rebellion began to dissolve like sugar in water.

The queen carried her charge from the little girl's bedroom, down the hall, up three flights of stairs - each more grand than the one before it - and finally into the royal bedroom. The king was already waiting inside, and seemed to already know what was going on. 

"Well, I was wondering when you would arrive, my dears. Ice and Claire, you do look positively exhausted and ready for sleep. Doesn't she, dear?" 

"She does," Mommy agreed, as she walked to the large bed in the center of the room.  But she didn't set Ai down on the bed. Instead, she took a seat and put Ai on her lap, on her padded bottom. Her mittens jingled as she tried to hold onto her Mommy's clothes.

"Now, my darling," Mommy whispered in Ai's ear. "You truly want to be my little girl? Are you absolutely sure?" 

Ai looked up at her with burning red cheeks. She certainly did not want that! But then she caught sight of her backpack in the corner. It was wrapped around a chair, only a few feet from the bed... 

With a deep breath, Ai nodded her head. "Yes, Mommy..."

"Then you'll need to go to bed with a full tummy, so you wake up with a full diaper. That's appropriate for a girl your age I would say." 

One hand held Ai in place, like she was simply stabilizing an infant in her lap, as the other did something Ai didn't expect: it unbuttoned the top clasps of her dress.  It wasn't until Mommy's bare breast was pulled from her bodice that Ai realized what was happening. A panic welled up in her so quickly that she couldn't stop it. 

"No, no way!" 

Mommy gave her a look of curiosity and Daddy crossed his arms sternly. Ai quickly backpedaled. 

"I... I mean... that's... a bit too far, isn't it? That's..." 

That was something Ai had seen done only a few times in her entire life, always by women with newborns. Every time, it made Ai blush and she had to excuse herself from the room, though her response was always quite disproportionate to the situation.

"If you're to be of royal blood, then you must drink royal milk," Daddy explained, keeping his composure. "This is a divine privilege, Ice and Claire. Not many people are offered this, and many would die for it. You should be more grateful."

"R-right, but... I just..." 

"If you'd rather finish your spankings, you can go on your way," the queen said coldly, and ice ran through Ai's blood. 

"N-no..." Ai was stuck between a breast and a hard spank. She tried to think of a way out of it - of any way out of it! - but time was up. Mommy cradled Ai in her arms and put Ai's lips to her chest. With a tight pull on her hair, Ai opened her mouth and latched onto Mommy's nipple. 

The humiliation was unbearable, but it didn't last long. Warm, sweet milk dribbled into Ai's mouth and she felt fuzzy and warm all over. Mommy's heartbeat was deep in her ear, echoing through her brain. And suddenly, all of Ai's problems melted away. 

It was the first time since meeting Queen Errata that she and Ai connected on something. It was spiritual and intangible. It was magic. And Ai felt things she had never felt for her Mommy: patience, curiosity, empathy…

In this new light, Ai wondered if maybe the queen was doing all this for some other reason than to torture her.  That maybe Ai didn't find where she belonged in the King's Kingdom, but her Mommy found where she belonged in Ai Sinclair.  That maybe, since Ai hadn't yet found her own happy ending, she could be someone else's instead.

It could have lasted a single minute or an eternity. Eventually Ai was removed from the queen's breast, but the feelings didn't go away. Her eyes were glossy, and as her Mommy spoke to her, Ai agreed absentmindedly. 

"You're a good baby girl, aren't you?" 

Nod. 

"You are so happy to be in diapers, aren't you?" 

Nod. 

"You never want to grow up again, isn't that right?" 

Nod. 

"You'll live as my baby girl, and you'll feel like this forever. Doesn't that sound wonderful?" 

Nod. 

"Say it." 

"Wonderful... to be your baby... forever..." 

Ai's voice was slurred, unable to put in enough effort to form the words correctly. Why would she need words? She was just a little baby. 

Ai was tucked into bed, flanked by Mommy and Daddy. Her diaper was soft between her legs, and her head was sticky with thoughts of the rest of her life. A happy, blissful life with Mommy and Daddy. Maybe this was where she always belonged after all. 

[Sophie ♥]

Chapter Four

When Ai woke up, everything felt heavy. A welling anxiety filled her up, and just as easily as it came, it slipped away. She was with Mommy and Daddy. She was okay. 

Then Ai woke up again, and everything was still heavy. A welling panic itched in the back of her mind, and she tried to shoo it away. She was with Mommy and Daddy. Everything was wonderful. 

Ai woke up a third time, and everything was still heavy. But there was something more than anxiety, more than panic... she slowly rubbed her eyes and the mittens jingled. 

Jingled? Mittens? Ai managed to open her eyes. She expected to find the morning light, and Mommy unbuttoning her shirt for another meal. Or Daddy's thick, heavy words, telling her how to be a good girl. But it was dark. 

Dark? Nighttime. Ai remembered what that was. Night and day. Like yesterday and today. Everything was night and day... ever since nursing on... 

The milk. It was like Daddy's voice. It was so entrancing, and... wait, why did she wake up in the first place? Because Ai had to pee. 

Ai laid there for a few moments, looking up at the canopy, like waking up from a dream. Which reality was real? The one where she needed to get up and use the bathroom, or the one where she wet her diaper? So many realities in diapers... so many realities without them... which one was real…?

But as it often is with dreams, Ai started to find her footing in one reality. The reality where she was lying between a man and a woman who had taken her in and made her their baby. The reality where she had somewhere to be, somewhere she belonged. And it wasn't here. 

There was a window in the bedroom, and outside the sky was growing brighter. Black changed to a deep, deep, deep blue. Sunrise was coming. Ai was running out of time. But when she tried to get up, her mittens jingled and the queen beside her stirred in bed. She had to silence the bells, but she didn't have her hands. What did she have? Her feet? Her mouth? Teeth? Maybe... 

Ai wrapped her lips around one of the little metal bells, like she had with Mommy's nipple the night before. She closed her lips around the bell and bit at the stitching. It took a while, but it finally popped off the mitten with a muffled jingle. Ai tucked it into her cheek and started gnawing at the next one. 

When Ai was done, she had four bells in her mouth. She was too scared to spit them out, in case they made any kind of noise. Then, with more care than she had ever put into anything in her life, Ai slinked her way to the end of the bed. 

Finally free of the king and queen, she tip-toed over to the corner where her backpack was strapped to a chair. Ai tried pulling the straps up, to sling the bag over her shoulder, but it caught on the heavy wooden chair. She tried once before, wiggling the bag a little, but no luck. Finally, she noticed that one of the straps had been woven through the wood slats. Intentionally. 

Fuck. 

Quietly, Ai slid to the floor and fumbled with the clasp on her bag. It was such an easy thing to latch and unlatch, but the mittens made it impossible. And she couldn't gnaw the strap off without spilling the bells all over the stone floor. 

The sky outside was red and pink, welcoming the coming day, and Ai was no closer to getting her backpack. Then something squeaked loudly behind her. Ai nearly screamed, but she had been holding her mouth closed tightly for the better part of the hour. She turned and saw the king roll onto his side, so that he was staring right at her.

If his eyes had been open. 

The memory of the spanking from a few days before ran through Ai's head, and her heart started to race. If he saw her, if he caught her like this... not only would she never have another chance to escape, but she would go over Daddy's lap again. She would rather die. Honestly, truly, she would rather die. 

Ai gave her backpack one last glance. All the gifts from her friends, all the things she loved...

Ai made one of the hardest decisions of her life, and got to her feet. She had to leave. But as luck would have it, on her way out of the room, she saw the compass on the dresser by the door. Even with her hands in mittens, she was able to scoop it up with both hands and squeeze her way out of the room.

In the doorframe, Ai glanced back at the bed, at her sleeping 'parents'.  The first parents she'd ever had.  They were awful.  But that feeling in her heart when she saw the queen's sleeping face… 

Sometimes love just doesn't make any sense.

Ai raced down the stairs. Through hallways she hadn't memorized. She hugged the walls of open rooms and didn't bother with any door that had a handle. Thankfully, in defiance of security, most of them were pull-rings without latches or empty archways. 

Finally, Ai found her way to the drawbridge. She thought for sure Rupert would be waiting to catch her, but the bridge was empty. She walked the center of the drawbridge, to avoid any water nymphs, and hurried into the woods. 

The first thing she did was spit out the bells. They jingled to the forest floor, but the tinny sound was so much quieter in the outdoors. Then she bit and tore at the mittens with her teeth, but the fabric was a much higher quality than the bell thread. 

That was the first time Ai really thought about what she was wearing. A diaper, a nightie, and locking pink mittens. And she had abandoned all of her other clothes. She was really kicking herself for that one. But right now she had bigger problems than her outfit. 

She fumbled with the compass and, with a combination of her mittened hands and her teeth, managed to get it open. It pointed to the left of the castle, so she went right. 

That early morning walk through the forest was the most scared Ai had ever been. The trees seemed to lean in and grab at her, leaves flitting off the branches like an early winter storm. The wind pushed against her, causing her to stumble and fall into the dirt and grass. The thick diaper between her legs made it difficult to run, and every rustling bush or snapped twig made her jump. 

By the time Ai came to the edge of the wood, she could hardly breathe. She looked up at the steep hill in front of her and checked the compass one more time. This was it. 

"Ice and Claire!" 

The voice was faint, in the distance. But even the sound of Rupert's voice was enough to trigger Ai's panic. She scurried toward the hill and tried to run up the side of it. Halfway there, she put the compass between her teeth and ran up on all fours. 

When she reached the top, she didn't look back. She ran headlong into the shimmering wall and the countryside vanished. Suddenly, Ai was on the landing of a staircase. Inside. In a building? She had only appeared inside a building once or twice before. Behind her, there was no shimmering veil, but a solid wall. She reached out to touch it, but Ai stopped herself. She didn't want to risk going back. 

Ai slunk down to the floor and tried to catch her breath. The ground was wood. Nice wood. On one side, a staircase went up and a staircase went down. And the stairs were wide - this wasn't someone's house. A public building? Ai's panic wasn't subsiding. The new place didn't feel safe, and she was still dressed in her silly baby girl outfit. So she got to her feet and decided to go down instead of up. 

At the bottom of the staircase was a vending machine, filled with brands Ai didn't recognize. Even the currency cards weren't familiar to her. She poked her head out into the hall, and Ai knew immediately where she was. 

A school. 

On one side of the hall, there were classroom doors. On the other, a series of windows spanning the entire wall. Outside was a field, with soccer nets and a running track. By the look of it, Ai was on the second floor. Then, out of the corner of her eye, Ai saw someone open a door. She quickly ducked into the stairwell, behind the vending machine. She heard the tapping of shoes, but they faded away. 

"I'm scaring myself," Ai said aloud to herself. "This is a new bubble... there's nothing to be afraid of."

Ai looked down at the compass in her mittened hands. She had been clutching it tightly. 

"But just in case..." Ai leaned down and set the compass on the ground. It was the last thing she owned, and arguably the most important. She wanted to keep it safe. So she gently pushed it under the vending machine for safe keeping. 

"Now to find a way out of these clothes…"

Ai was halfway down the hall when she heard a voice behind her: a young man's voice.  She turned around and tried to decide if running or hiding was the better option, but the logical part of her brain reminded her that this was a different place.  A safe place, hopefully.  

The man in question was about Ai's age, or maybe a little older.  He had short cropped hair, dyed in different rainbow hues, and lots of earrings that matched his lip and nose piercings.  He was also a little shorter than Ai, which was not a very common trait others had.  When he caught up with Ai, he said:

"Well, who let you out? You shouldn't be out in the hall without an escort." 

When Ai didn't know what to say to that, he asked: "What's your name? I'm West."

"Uh... Ai," Ai answered, blushing a bit. The way he looked her up and down... she unconsciously tried to tug down the nightgown, but the mittens didn't let her. The best thing she could do at that moment was explain herself. 

"I'm not from here, as you can probably tell," Ai tried to laugh, but her embarrassment got the best of her. "The bubble I came from, they dressed me like this... I barely got away. Do you think you could help me find something to wear?"

The man tilted his head as he listened to Ai's plight, like he was trying to puzzle her out.  It made Ai nervous.  But in the end, he nodded and smiled.

"Oh totes, absolutely, for sure.  I know where we can get you changed.  Come on." West confidently took Ai by the hand - well, by the mitten - and led her down the hall. 

"Here we go, boo," he said, stopping in front of one of the doors.  He turned the doorknob with his free hand and half-pushed Ai inside.  

She stumbled into the room, but it wasn't wasn't a changing room or a closet or a wardrobe or anything. It was a classroom. Or, at first glance, it was a classroom. There were rows of desks, occupied by a dozen or so students. They all wore matching uniforms, regardless of gender, with button up blouses and short plaid skirts. At the front of the room was a heavy desk and an older woman with thin glasses and her hair in a bun. 

But on second glance, each of the students was seated in a very specific way. Their hands were bound in front of them and tied to a hard point on the desk. Their ankles were spread wide apart and buckled to the legs of the desk. And under every skirt, on full display, was a diaper. Ai felt a heavy sinking feeling and turned to rush out, but the man who led her there shut the door with a smile and stood in her way.  She turned back to the class; all eyes were on her. 

"I... I think there's been a mistake..." Ai tried to explain in a panic.

"Oh, there's certainly been a mistake!" West agreed, still smiling. "Walking around the halls all alone, without supervision?  Tsk tsk.  But I'm sure Ms. Lady will help you behave."

Ai didn't know what to say to that. The bizarre circumstances of her situation were too difficult to wrap her head around.

"Go on, don't be shy," West said. "Introduce yourself to Ms. Lady and the students." 

One of the students stifled a laugh, then gave up trying to hide it all together.  She bursted out with the words: "Your diaper is so thick that it's got its own zip code!" 

Ai didn't know what a zip code was, but she knew how obvious her diaper was to the classroom of strangers.  But before Ai could explain herself, the woman at the front of the class - Ms. Lady - strode down the center aisle toward the disobedient student. Ms. Lady seemed to produce a ruler out of nowhere, which came down sharply on the top of the student's thigh, just below the hem of her skirt. The student let out a whimper and leaned over the desk. 

"What was that, Rin?" the teacher asked sharply. Even her tone made Ai's blood run cold. 

"Nothing, Ms. Lady," Rin muttered, twisting a little in her chair. 

Ms. Lady didn't return to the front of the room, however. She laced her hand in Rin's curly hair and held her tight and upright. Then, she gestured to Ai with the ruler. 

"Go on." 

Ai was frozen for a moment. The suddenness of it all... it reminded her of the spanking that Daddy - er, the King, Ai corrected herself - gave her. And all the students were wearing diapers, and... 

"I... I'm in the wrong place," Ai tried explaining again. "Um, I'm not from this bubble... I just got here and—" 

"Then why are you dressed like that?" one of the boys asked, smirking like he'd just trapped Ai in a legal argument. 

"That's... the last bubble I was in, this king and queen, um..." 

"Put you in a diaper?" someone else asked. 

"Put your hands in mittens?" another student spoke up.

"Yes!" Ai said a little too loudly. Defending herself was overwhelming when she had to do it in front of a dozen people.

"Yeah, Ms. Lady," Rin said, craning her neck to look up at the woman holding her hair. "That's what happened with me too! I don't know how I got here, but I just want to go home!"

"Well you know what you have to do to leave, don't you, Rin?" 

"Yes, Ms. Lady," Rin said quietly, the teasing tone fading from her voice.

"But you won't do it, will you, Rin?" 

"No, Ms. Lady." Rin muttered, a bit of color on her cheeks.

"So maybe you want to be here. Maybe you want to be dressed in a diaper. Maybe you want to be trained to be a good little girl." 

Rin didn't say anything else, and the teacher knew she had won.  She turned her attention back to Ai.

"There is a seat in front," she said. "Sit your padded butt down there and I'll be there in a moment."

Ai had absolutely no idea what was going on. That other student kept undermining her, and none of the class seemed to believe her. So Ai took a step toward the teacher instead - Ms. Lady - and tried to keep her cool. 

"Listen, if we could just talk about this..."

"Good girls don't talk out of turn," Ms. Lady declared.  Ai found that to be a rather unfair rule, but it was followed with: "Unless you're a bad girl.  Then I'll have to discipline you in front of the class.  Is that what you want?"

Ai hesitated. The threat of discipline had a whole new meaning to Ai, and she knew that she had to work within the customs of the bubble. But it was just too serendipitous, too on the nose. After everything that happened in the King's Kingdom, and now this... 

Ai took a deep breath and decided to play smart. So she went over to the chair where she was instructed and took a seat. When she did, the buckles around her ankles latched onto her and spread her legs apart. Then, like magic, the rope on the desk unfurled, bound Ai's wrists, and pulled them tight to the tabletop. 

"Of course," Ai muttered under her breath. Most of the bubbles had magic of some kind, but the animated object stuff was some of the most annoying.  She had lost count of the amount of magical ropes that had restrained her in the past, for one reason or another, and there wasn't anything she could do about it.

Just like that, Ai was one of the students in the weird classroom. The only difference was her outfit: a pink nightie, instead of a school uniform, and her hands were still in mittens.  Arguably, her outfit was even worse than the uniform.

Ms. Lady turned to the chalkboard and wrote something on the board: a series of letters and numbers. Then Ms. Lady turned to the class and tapped her crop on the desk. 

"You all should be able to solve this math problem. Who is going to try?" No one raised their hands - in part because no one could - so Ms. Lady pointed the crop at one of the students.

"Henry," she said.

The boy looked nervously at the chalkboard and down at his desk.  Even if he knew how to reason through the problem, his hands were bound; he would have to do all the arithmetic in his mind.

"It's unsolvable, Ms. Lady," Henry guessed. 

"Is it, Henry?"

"Yeah, uh huh." Henry seemed adamant in his lack of answer, and his confidence seemed to grow with each passing second. He even pulled on the ropes a little, trying to sit up straighter than before. 

"You're just giving us stupid questions to trick us!" he said, which elicited a few murmurs from the students around the room.

Ms. Lady slid the drawer open from her desk in a threatening manner, and pulled out a marker.  The whole room fell deadly silent, including Ai.  She could feel her body tense up and her heart pound as the teacher walked over to Henry with the marker in hand.

"Um... I'm sorry, I'll be good. I swear, I'll be good," Henry tried, leaning back in his seat, trying to pull away from the desk. 

"Maybe numbers are just too hard for you," Ms. Lady teased. "Is that it? The little boy who still wears diapers to school doesn't know his numbers?" 

"No, I do, I... I'm sorry, I'm really sorry!" Henry tugged harder on the table and Ms. Lady uncapped the marker. 

The tip was... felt, like an ordinary marker. Ai didn't know what she expected, but it wasn't that. Suddenly, her anxiety felt a little silly. 

"I think numbers are just too grown up for you, Henry. Maybe you should be demoted back to daycare, what do you think?" 

Henry shook his head, and he actually had tears forming in his eyes. Everyone else was silent as Ms. Lady took the marker and leaned down to draw on his desk. Ai leaned up to see... a simple number sign. It was actually kind of anticlimactic. But Henry's tear-filled eyes glossed over. A few tears dripped down his cheeks, then he shook his head in disbelief. 

"I'll give you another chance," Ms. Lady said, returning to the front of the room. This time she put a number on the board: 4. "Tell me what number this is and I won't kick you back to daycare." 

All eyes were on Henry now, as he looked at the board. He blushed a little and bit his lip. The tension in the room was heavy. 

"Um... eighty...?" Henry tried, and it was clear that he truly did try. A collective sigh erupted through the classroom and Henry looked a little panicked. 

"West, could you please take Henry back to daycare?" Ms. Lady asked.

"Yes Ms. Lady, gladly." 

Ai watched with a mixture of confusion, anxiety, bewilderment, and paranoia as West approached Henry's desk.  With the snap of his fingers, the ropes came undone and he helped Henry to his feet.  On the way down the aisle, West patted Henry on the butt - which crinkled loudly - before saying to the class:

"Say goodbye to Henry.  Next time you see him, he'll be a little mushy-bottomed toe sucker."

That made Henry really start to cry.  But West closed the door behind him and the classroom was quiet again.  Ms. Lady waited for the dread to sink in, then tapped the board one more time.

"Ai, solve this," she said, pointing to the original problem.  Ai felt the floor drop out from under her.

"I'm not really good at math..." Ai muttered. She debated bringing up her explanation once again - that she wasn't from here - but it felt like a dangerous move. "Maybe you could ask someone else?"

"I'm asking you, Ai," Ms. Lady repeated. "Are you telling me that you don't know numbers either? Just like Henry?" She still had the marker in her hand.

"No, I do! Um. I know my numbers. I'm just... I don't know the problem that well, and, well... I never actually went to school. I mean, I did, for a semester. At, um. A cooking school? I'm still not great at cooking. But, uh... math, uh..." 

"So you've never learned a bit of math?" Ms. Lady sighed. 

"Well math is different in different bubbles..." Ai tried to explain, but the truth was exactly as Ms. Lady said. The more immutable facts at Ai's disposal, the more complicated her travels became. It was like holding onto trinkets, each weighing her down a little more than before.  Truth was so subjective, and any presumptions she took with her were dangerous.  Ai had learned the hard way that nothing was universal.

"Can you give me one good reason why I shouldn't move you to one of the younger classes, so you can learn math?" Ai didn't really have an answer to that, but she did have an opportunity that sprung to mind. 

"Well, um, if you'd just listen… I'm not from here, so none of this makes any sense to me.  I'm not supposed to be in any classroom."

"I do not tolerate bratty girls," Ms. Lady said flatly. She took two steps toward Ai's desk, which was all she needed. She uncapped the marker and drew a number sign on the desk. Ai panicked and pulled at her restraints, the same way Henry did, but she didn't cry. She didn't understand the consequences of any of this. 

Ms. Lady went to the board and wrote a new number. She tapped it with the marker, but Ai was looking down at her desk. The number sign the teacher had written was beginning to fizzle at the edges, like soda pop.  Henry's hadn't done that.  Ms. Lady had to tap the board once more with the marker to get Ai's attention.

"Final chance," Ms. Lady said. "If you can't tell me what number this is, you're going back to kindergarten." 

"Ten?" Ai guessed, seeing a one and a zero on the board. Hopefully that was ten in this bubble. Then she glanced back down at the desk, but the number sign had all but faded away.  Tiny specs of black ink shivered and disappeared. 

"That's..." Ms. Lady looked at the board, then at Ai, and nodded her head. "That's correct," she said, a little confused. But even someone who didn't know their numbers could have guessed at random. The chances were slim, but it was possible. Ms. Lady decided to let Ai have her win. 

"Perhaps I underestimated you," Ms. Lady said warmly. "Let's talk after class about where you belong." 

"Yes ma'am," Ai said brightly. Finally, someone willing to listen to her! 

"Just be good and quiet until then," Ms. Lady said with a little more assertiveness, and Ai nodded. 

Class went on. It ranged from incredibly mundane to weirdly abusive. Rin got four more swats with that ruler in ten minutes, and one of the boys had to write lines with his hands tied. 

As for Ai, she was contending with her own problem. She really had to pee. She woke up that morning needing to use the bathroom, and then she had to escape. She still had her mittens on, and finding a bathroom was the least of her troubles. But sitting there in class, she couldn't stop thinking about it. The pressure in her bladder. The way she squirmed in her diaper. The ache, the need to let go... 

Ai looked up at the clock. It was only eight minutes until the end of the hour. Most bubbles had the same timekeeping methods. Maybe class would end then; that seemed reasonable. But every time Ai checked the clock, it was still eight minutes until the end of the hour. She even counted the seconds in her head, but she lost track around thirty. Sure enough, the clock hadn't moved. 

Meanwhile, the feeling of desperation in Ai was only building. Her squirming became active wiggling, and she couldn't sit still for more than a second. She knew she was in a diaper, but she didn't want to wet it! That felt like she was just giving the queen what she wanted. 

But Ai was feeling something else, as well. Along with the rising desperation, the ache in her bladder, the discomfort... Ai felt twangs of excitement. Of curiosity. Of panic, but in a good way? Could panic be a good thing? She couldn't seem to sort out this particular feeling. So, when she was at the end of her patience, she interrupted Ms. Lady mid-sentence. 

"Excuse me. Um. Is class almost over?"

"Class is over when I say it's over," Ms. Lady said with a touch of annoyance. Perhaps that was why the clock wasn't moving?  Was that how it worked here?  A contest between the inexorable march of time and the teacher's sense of authority? Time didn't seem to march at all; it meandered, milled about, putzed around. Class wouldn't end until Ms. Lady said it would.

Ai couldn't even cross her legs, because they were forced apart by the restraints and by the diaper. Her bladder ached and strained to hold it in. All the while, her cheeks continued to redden.  She waited for as long as she could, but waiting wasn't working. She interrupted Ms. Lady again, but her desperation was peaking and her words were a little breathless. 

"Excuse me, could... could I please use the restroom?" 

This got a few head turns from the other students. Rin mumbled under her breath, a seat behind and to the right of Ai: "What a bottom."

Ai didn't know what a bottom was, but her indignation boiled up all the same.  Rin had been nothing but an annoyance since Ai got to the classroom, and her commentary was not welcome.  But her opinion didn't matter anyway; it was Ms. Lady she needed to convince.

"Why would a diaper brat use the restroom, Ai?" Ms. Lady asked simply.

That caught Ai off guard. What the hell did diaper brat mean? And why did Ms. Lady think Ai was one of them? 

"I'm not a... that," Ai tried to argue. "I am trying to tell you, I don't belong here!" But as Ai's desperation increased, so too did the volume of her voice. She couldn't get into a debate right now!

"You're in a diaper," Ms. Lasso argued, without Ai's reservations about a debate. "You're acting like a brat, interrupting class with your silly fantasies of using the restroom."

"That's—" But this time it was Ms. Lady's turn to cut off Ai in the middle of a sentence.

"You're in diapers because you belong in diapers.  Now be quiet and stop causing such a fuss."

"I'm not... I don't belong in diapers!" Ai's patience was too thin to shut her up, and she couldn't stop wiggling in her chair. She tugged on the rope around her wrists. "Just, listen! I'm trying to tell you!"

"Clearly you need to be the center of attention," Ms. Lady said dismissively. "Class, everyone pay attention to our new student so we can get on with the lesson."

The entire class turned their heads to stare at Ai, and nobody said anything.  Every single student, even Rin.  Ai caught each of their glances, one by one, until she got back to Ms. Lady.  Her arms were crossed, like she was bored.

"No, that's not…" Ai's voice was the only sound in the silence.  All eyes were on her as she struggled to keep her diaper dry.  She looked down at her desk, to pretend it wasn't happening, but she could feel them all watching her.

"Please...! Please, please, please..." 

Ai begged and pleaded, struggling in her chair. Every second or two, pressure would threaten to break through her lifetime of potty training. And every second or two, she would just barely fend it off. 

Until she didn't. Until it felt like she was just frozen on the brink. And a second later, it pushed her over. 

Ai let out a deep exhale as she flooded her diaper. A steady stream of relief. Heat between her legs. Soft, squishy padding, absorbing and expanding, forcing her thighs further apart. She couldn't stop wetting herself. She didn't even want to. 

[Sophie ♥]

Chapter Five

Ai Sinclair had no memory of wearing a diaper. She had no memory of wetting one. She probably had, because that was what babyhood was like. But unlike most kids she met in her travels, Ai didn't have parents. She never had a babyhood, as far as she could remember. If she thought hard about it, her imagination could fill in the gaps: the tension of a blanket swaddling her shoulders, or the sight of looking up at someone as they wiped her skin clean. But Ai had lived for a long time in her bubble, and she'd never known anything about aging until she'd left.

That was the thing about bubbles. They're just... different. 

But nothing was quite so different as the feeling of soaking her diaper. The heat on her skin. The sodden padding, growing thicker and thicker. The uncontrollable bliss... the blissful lack of control. 

And it seemed to go on forever. It didn't stop. Never in her entire life had she peed for so long, and never with anybody watching her. Ai's humiliation got the better of her, and she closed her eyes. She didn't want to see the teacher or her classmates. She wanted to pretend they didn't exist; out of sight, out of mind. But with another one of her senses stripped away, others lit up like fireworks.

The tingling between her legs. The warmth on her cheeks. The sharp inhales and exhales as Ai lost control of her breathing. Her fingers trembled in the mittens. Her stomach fluttered with excitement. And it just... didn't... stop... 

Soon, the diaper between her legs was heavy and warm and pleasant. Her mind was swirling with a thousand feelings, but not a single thought. Sweat beaded on her forehead and she opened her glossy eyes. Everyone was still there; they didn't disappear. They were still watching her, and Ai had never been so embarrassed. 

"Well, it seems someone had a little accident," Ms. Lady teased. Her voice felt like daggers, slicing up Ai's pride into ribbons. Ai wanted to argue that it wasn't her fault, that Ms. Lady wouldn't let her use the restroom, but her words were frozen in her throat. Her brain wasn't sending the right signals anymore. All she felt was... good. So, so good. 

Ms. Lady went back to teaching the class, and Ai sunk lower into her seat. The diaper was so squishy beneath her, and Ai made the mistake of squeezing her legs together. The plastic crinkled and a shiver zipped up her spine. Involuntarily, she did it again. And again. And again. 

Ai hung her head in shame, and in an effort to mask her shallow breathing. To hide her pink cheeks. To steer her focus away from Ms. Lady and the classroom and toward the willpower to stop what she was doing. But there wasn't enough willpower in all of Ai's mind or body. For the next ten minutes, she squirmed and crinkled and flooded herself with undeniable pleasure.

At the same time, and somewhat paradoxically, the students seemed both entranced with Ai and entirely dismissive of her.  No one was watching her, but any time she looked away, she could feel the attention of her classmates.  She could almost hear the things they were thinking about her.  How Ai was just one step away from Henry's fate: a mushy-bottomed toe sucker.  Ai's breathing was still shallow, and every now and again little gasps would escape her lips. How she longed to cover her mouth with her hand.

"That's all for today, class," Ms. Lady finally said, shaking Ai from her introspection. The ropes around her wrists unfurled, as they did with everyone else in the classroom. 

"Tomorrow's class is about etiquette, and I expect you all to be dressed appropriately," Ms, Lady said, sharply pointing her words at Ai. 

Unbound at the ankles and the wrists, Ai could get up. But getting up was a little dizzying. She was still adapting to all the sensations of her wet diaper, and even lifting her bottom up off the chair caused so many new ones. The tug on her hips, as the heavy padding sagged between her legs. The squishiness in all new places. Finally, Ai gave up and sat back down, resting her head on her mittened hands. 

"Hey there new girl." 

Ai lifted her head just enough to see Rin standing over her desk. She was leaning on one foot, twirling her hair with her finger. She smiled sweetly. Sickly so. 

"Seems like you really had a good time in class," she teased. 

"Shut up," Ai muttered, putting her head back down. Every muscle in her body felt tense and weak at the same time. 

"You must really love your diapers, hm? Pissing yourself like that in front of everyone, then moaning like a little slut?" 

Ai raised her head and glared at Rin. She knew a slut wasn't exactly a bad thing to be, but Ai didn't have much experience. Sex wasn't a thing in her original bubble, but Ai knew enough to be offended by Rin's implication. 

"What's your problem?" Ai said sharply. "I didn't do anything to you."

"My problem?  I don't have a problem.  Do you?" Rin asked rhetorically. "It seems like you had a really good time, that's all.  Did you like it when I stared at you like that?  When I watched your widdle assident?"

The last two words from Rin's mouth were twisted into baby talk, and Ai was struggling to keep up with her logic.  Her head was swimming.  Or drowning.  She couldn't even tell.  She tried to get a word in between Rin's, but the other girl just kept talking.  It was like one unbroken sentence, moving from topic to topic, and Ai couldn't find a spot to interrupt.  It was kind of hypnotic.

"It makes sense that a pervert like you would be obsessed with me though; I'm kind of a big deal around here. You're lucky that I'm even talking to a little diaper dork like you." The fact that Rin was in a diaper too didn't seem to matter. "And not only are you a pervy little dork, but you're rude too! You haven't even thanked me for my attention."

"I'm not thanking you for anything," Ai said fiercely. She knew different bubbles had different rules, but she always stood up for herself when she thought she was being treated unfairly. Communication was important, after all. 

"Aww, you think you're such a big girl," Rin cooed. "But this behavior of yours isn't very mature at all. It's rather childish, actually." 

"Because acting like a bully is so grown up?" Ai shot back. Then a low chorus of "ooo"s flooded the room. Ai looked around to find the rest of the class watching from the sidelines. Somehow, their argument had become a spectacle.

"Oh, oh, you think I'm a bully?" Rin crossed her arms, and looked over her shoulders to the left and to the right, at the gathered crowd. "You hear that, y'all? This baby slut diaper dork thinks that I'm a bully. It sure sounds like she's never known what it means to be bullied before, doesn't it?" Her attention shifted back to Ai and she smirked confidently. "Maybe I should show you what bullying looks like?"

Ai felt a pang of anxiety. Most of the people in her travels were rather kind; there was no history of abuse or violence or neglect. Every now and again Ai's ethics and morals didn't quite line up with the worlds she visited, but almost all of them were respectful of their differences. Once or twice, in extreme cases, she was asked to leave. But what happened at the King's Kingdom and what was happening now seemed so disproportionately violating. 

"Whatever," Ai sighed, trying to tone down her frustration. She got to her feet with every intention of walking out of the classroom, but the weight on her hips was startling. The diaper sagged halfway down her thighs, and she almost lost her balance. Her agitation was whisked away, replaced with embarrassment and fervor. Ai blushed deeper than before.

"Oh? Whatever? Did you mean, whatever you say, Miss Rin. I'm a little diaper brat who needs to be put in her place? Is that what you meant?" 

Rin stepped directly in Ai's way and gave her a shove.  Ai held onto one of the desks and managed to stay standing, but the heavy padding between her legs caused her to lose her footing.  With another shove, Rin pushed Ai backward, away from the door and toward the crowd of students. They dispersed, giving space for Rin and Ai to have their tussle. 

"Oh my gosh, what is your problem!" Ai said angrily, losing her composure. Every step in her soaking wet diaper was a rush of new sensations, each one stealing more and more of Ai's breath. So when Rin stepped toward her again, Ai panicked and shoved her right back. 

Ai had been in fights before, but none were so inelegant. They were demonstrations, like a show of strength. Or they were customary, like a call and response. Sometimes fights were acceptable, sometimes they were necessary, and sometimes they were lauded. But this was none of those. This was a total mess. 

Rin didn't strike or attack Ai; she tugged on her clothes and pulled her hair. Ai, realizing very quickly how immobile she was in such a thick diaper, mirrored Rin. In the end, Ai was knocked onto the floor, landing on her padded behind with a squish and a shiver. She was out of breath and her body tingled in an unbelievably pleasant way. Her face was red with embarrassment.

Rin stood over Ai with her hands on her hips and a wicked smile on her face. Rin stepped forward twice, so that each of her feet was on either side of Ai's hips. From that position of power, she descended and sat her ass upon Ai's stomach, pinning her in place. She grabbed Ai's wrists, one in each hand, and held those down too.

"Pinned on the ground by a girl in a diaper? You're so pathetic."

Ai was awash with conflict. On one hand, everything Rin said sounded like something on a radio drama. That's where she learned about bullies to begin with, since she had never gone to a proper school. It was so stupid, it was almost laughable. 

But on the other hand, Ai's body was flooded with gooey emotions and her soggy diaper begged to be squished and rubbed. And a girl was on top of her? For the first time in a very long time, Ai wanted to kiss somebody. 

"Y-you're... um... lemme..." Ai's conflict was a terribly slow tug of war. It was humiliating, and the entire class was looking down on her. Literally and figuratively. 

"Tsk tsk... you really should learn your manners," Rin teased. "If you'd just thank me for all this attention..." 

Ai shook her head; it was all her determination would allow. Rin sighed, clucking her tongue in that universally chastising way, that way that everyone understood.

"Well, lucky for you, I'm really good at teaching little brats how to be polite and grateful." She kept Ai pinned to the ground and looked up at the gawking students. "Aren't I?" Rin asked. There were a few quiet mumbles, all of which sounded affirmative, and some nods of the head.  But there were a lot of blushing cheeks.

Before Ai could come up with a solution, Rin pulled Ai's wrists down to her sides and spun around on her tummy. With her knees on either side of Ai, she pinned her arms in place and arched her back. Rin's diaper was on full display, only inches from Ai's face. It was thick and swollen, forcing Rin's legs apart. Ai could see the faint line halfway up her backside, where the pure white padding changed to a muted yellow. 

"Goodness, what a cute little print," Rin teased, lifting Ai's dress. "Everybody, come look at the new kid's diaper! It's like it was made for a baby!" 

Then Rin pressed her hand to Ai's diaper, causing her to shiver involuntarily beneath the bully. The rush of pleasure was intense, but it quickly capsized to violent waves of humiliation.

"Oh my gosh, did you all see that?" Rin mocked. "She's like a little toy, look! I push the button~" Rin pressed her hand expertly against Ai's diaper and grinned, pressing fingers into the padding like a skilled artist crafting from clay. Then she flattened her palm, forcing the sodden, swollen padding up against Ai's intimates. Ai shivered, and let out the cutest little noises. 

"And she moves and makes sounds!" Rin went on. "Maybe that's why you don't have any manners, diaper dork; maybe you're just a toy who doesn't have that function. Maybe you're just for playing with?  Is that right?"

"Lemme... up..." Ai tried to throw Rin off of her, with no success. It felt insurmountable, like moving a mountain. 

"No, no," Rin tsked. "Toys don't give orders. Toys get played with. You don't think you still have any power, do you?" She squeezed Ai's diaper again and Ai whined a needy whine.

"You know, if you'd just used your manners, I might have even mistaken you for a sweet little girl. But you're not, are you? You're a naughty little toy." 

Each of Rin's ministrations had been precise, planned, and theatrical. What Rin did next was much more chaotic: she began to knead at Ai's diaper like a cat kneading a blanket, like the padding was dough. And as she kneaded, she began to rock on her knees, shifting her diaper closer and closer to Ai's face.

Ai couldn't focus on any one thing. The pleasure from the soggy diaper. The words Rin used to humiliate her. The sight of everyone looking down on her. The gentle press of plastic against her nose, as Rin sat back onto her face. She knew she had gotten into this mess herself, but the way out was shrouded in smoke and mirrors. 

"You're the most helpless little diaper dork I've ever met," Rin jeered. She seemed to be having the time of her life. "Even a brat in a diaper like me can top you. Could this be any more humiliating for you?" 

Ai thought, with resounding certainty: no. 

Rin thought, with resounding certainty: yes.

"You're clearly at the bottom of the social ladder. You're clearly helpless. You're clearly just a toy to be played with. So I should treat you exactly the way that I'd treat any of my other stuffies. Any of my other toys." 

There were some gasps from the people that had gathered; some knowing sounds and mumbles.

"I can't believe you're going to let me do this to you, diaper dork. But you're such a pervert that you're probably getting off on it." 

Rin leaned forward and her diaper pressed ever-closer to Ai's face. Ai tried to turn her head, but the soft squish of Rin's diaper pressed into her cheek. It left an imprint in the padding, contouring around Ai's nose and chin. The faint smell of pee from inside Rin's diaper wafted around Ai's face. 

Ai was about to thrash again, to push Rin off, when the bully pressed on the front of her diaper and Ai moaned involuntarily into the bully's padding. Rin arched her back a bit more and the seat of her diaper began to swell. The padding was soft and mushy as it warped around Ai's face, covering her lips and her nose. Then the smell of pee mixed with something new and Ai realized: Rin was pooping her diaper while sitting on her face! 

Ai reeled and whimpered, kicking and twisting to throw Rin off, but Rin held her ground. Grunting and pushing, the diaper grew bigger and bigger. It was almost comical, the way her diaper ballooned out. It continued to swell until Ai's whole face pressed into it like a fluffy pillow. She could still breathe, but Ai almost wished she couldn't.

"Wow. You just stayed down there the entire time," Rin teased. She sounded a little out of breath, and her cheeks sparkled with perspiration. "You must really enjoy this!" 

As Rin leaned back, she arched her back and raised her arms to stretch, using Ai's face as a seat for her mushy bottom. The crowd mumbled and gossiped and made declarations about the kind of girl Ai Sinclair truly was. Now she had a reputation, and it would only become cemented in the coming minutes. 

Rin leaned forward again.  This time, when she began to rub Ai's diaper, it wasn't to tease or interrupt Ai's arguments; this time, it was with intent.

"How pathetic," Rin's voice rung in Ai's ears. "It's one thing to be a little diaper dork, or a helpless toy to play with. But to let a girl fill her diaper on your face? To whimper and moan while you bury your face into my stinky diaper?" 

Ai hated Rin. And not because Rin was teasing her, but because Rin was right. Because ever since she'd wet her diaper, the feelings inside of Ai had been overwhelming. Lust and desperation she had never known. Sex itself was an uncomfortable urge at best, something Ai had gone her entire life without much interest in. And now, in a soaking wet diaper, with her face plunged into the seat of another girl's messy diaper, she was more turned on than ever. Even Rin's taunts weren't enough to quell her libido. 

For the first time in her known life, Ai really wanted to cum. She hoped her pride and self-control would be enough to triumph over her desire, but nothing had ever stopped nor could ever stop Ai Sinclair from getting what she wanted.  Not even herself.

[Sophie ♥]

Chapter Six

"What do you two think you are doing?" Ms. Lady's voice was sharp and loud, like the sound of breaking glass. Her timing was the opposite of impeccable: only seconds after Ai twitched and spasmed, splattering the inside of her diaper with cum. Her timing was sinful. 

"Oh, Ms. Lady!" Rin said through labored breaths, struggling to her feet. "I was just, uh... this new student here—" 

Like the crack of thunder, the ruler came down on the side of Rin's thigh. Ai squinted up at the bleary lights, at the fresh air... she was dizzy and in disbelief. 

"Both of you, to the principal's office. Now." 

"Y-yes ma'am..." 

Rin reached down and helped Ai off the ground. Ai tried to pull away, but she was weak and malleable after her first orgasm. Before she could defend herself to her teacher or her classmates, Rin had dragged her haphazardly into the hall and Ai almost fell down. The diapers between her legs felt thicker than ever, and her mind was fuzzy with conflict. 

When Ai finally came to, she was sitting in a wooden chair in a long hallway. The door in front of her said "Principal's Office", and Rin was in the chair beside her. When Rin looked over, Ai quickly dropped her gaze. She didn't know what to say... what to do! Ai had no experience with something like this, and her face was burning with embarrassment.

"I can't believe you got me in trouble..." Rin's voice was different to the cocky bully in the classroom; she sounded a little pouty, actually. Maybe without an audience, she didn't have any reason to keep up the persona.  Or maybe she was genuinely worried about getting in trouble.

"You got you in trouble," Ai muttered, trying to argue with Rin in a way that wasn't technically a lie. Everything they had done together, Ai had liked. She hated that she liked it. 

"Ah, so you're playing it that way," Rin sighed, rolling her eyes. "Well, that isn't what I'll be telling the principal." 

Ai was so angry, but she didn't have the energy for it. Her body and mind were spent, and Rin was still trying to make it worse for her. But before anything could get worse, the door opened and a head poked out. 

"The principal will see you girls now." 

The principal's office was mostly wood decor. The walls were a polished wood, and the large desk was wood as well. It had windows, with soft light streaming through them. Ai wondered where her exit was, and how she would get there. She had to get her compass back. 

But for now, the principal demanded her attention. He was taller than Ai, but most people were. He was also older, but not by much. Above everything else, he was attractive. 

"What has gotten into the two of you?" he said with disappointment dripping in his tone. Both Ai and Rin shrunk a little, standing in front of the desk. 

"She started it," Rin pouted. "I was trying to help her learn her manners, and—" 

"You're in here once a week," he said to Rin. "It feels like you can't stay out of trouble. But this is the first time I've seen you, Miss..." 

"Uh... me?" Ai was too distracted by everything that happened to remember why she was here in the first place. "I'm Ai Sinclair, sir. And I'm not from here. I'm trying to get to a different bubble." 

"Blah blah blah," Rin mocked. "Just another lie to get out of trouble." 

"I'm not lying," Ai said firmly, but her cheeks were still pink. 

"Look, she's blushing," Rin teased. Even in front of the principal, it didn't seem like she could behave. "She's loving all this attention. She wants this to happen." 

"I do not!" Ai said a little louder, and her cheeks took on a bit more color. "You can't assume that stuff just because my face is red! If you'd just... listen..." 

Something was wrong. Suddenly, everything around Ai was muted and grey, like looking through foggy glass. The room was a little darker, and the expression on Rin's face was frozen mid eye-roll. The principal behind the desk was also frozen, looking a little annoyed. But Ai wasn't frozen, and she was still the same colors as before. 

"Um... hello...?" Neither of them answered. Ai got a little panicked. "Rin? Hey, Rin?" 

Ai took a step toward Rin, reached out, and touched her. Suddenly, Rin's colors returned and she took stock of the grey room. 

"Oh, hey," Rin said, noticing Ai. "Should I be less mean? I feel like I'm being too mean." 

"I... what? What are you..." Ai shook her head, trying to shake away the nonsense of the situation. If she could just think for a moment... 

"I can come clean with the principal if you want," Rin suggested. "I'll get in trouble, but that's kind of the point, right?" 

The confusion on Ai's face must have been evident, because Rin started to become confused too. 

"You safe-worded, right?" Rin asked. 

"I... I don't know what you're talking about!" Ai sighed, angry and exhausted. 

"Woah, hey! No playing in Safe Space. You have to be real." 

Now Rin seemed annoyed. But as she watched Ai's frustration build, as tears filled her eyes, Rin hesitated. Her annoyance dripped away. 

"Hey... you know what's going on, right?" Rin asked. "I mean, no games. No pretend. You opened this Safe Space, right?" 

"I don't know what that means," Ai said again, just as angry and exhausted as the first time. But this time, she sounded a lot more defeated.

"Oooh boy. Oh boy oh boy. Shit. I'm so sorry, I should have checked! I just, we don't usually have people who don't understand how things work here. I am so sorry." 

This wasn't the same Rin. Well, she was the same Rin, but her attitude and demeanor couldn't have been more different. This was a concerned young woman who was realizing that she'd just pushed the limits of someone who didn't know the rules of the game, and she felt awful. But more importantly, this was a person who wanted to make sure that Ai understood everything, and that was Ai's favorite kind of person.

"Are you okay? I was really rough with you in there, and if you didn't know that you could safe word that's hugely negligent of me."

"I'm... fine? I guess? What are you talking about? What safe word?" Ai's frustration was beginning to wane, though her confusion was not. At least it felt like someone was finally listening to her. 

"You said 'red', remember?" Rin asked. 

Had she? Ai tried to go through her own dialogue, but she couldn't be sure. 

"When you say 'red', it sets up the Safe Space," Rin explained. "You can take any time you need, and anyone you touch enters the Safe Space with you. That way, you can talk about what you need, or what you want to go differently, or whatever. And it doesn't ruin the scene." 

"This is... a game...?" Ai asked, starting to puzzle it out. "You're all playing a... a weird... dress-up diaper game?" 

"Uh, yeah..." Rin blushed a little and twirled the ends of her hair. "For some people, it's just a way to play and relax. For others, it's kind of like a kink? Sexy, you know?" 

"I don't know," Ai said bluntly. "Why would I know this!" 

"Well, you were put in the brat classroom!" Rin said in her defense. "I just thought... I mean, you were really convincing..." 

"Convincing that I didn't want to be treated like that?" Ai asked rhetorically. "Yeah, because I didn't want to be treated like that!" 

"Look, I'm so sorry! It's not usually my job to check stuff like that; we have staff. But when you didn't safe word, I should have known. I'm... I'm not trying to shirk my responsibility here. I'm just trying to explain." 

Ai hesitated. She wanted to hate Rin, but she seemed so sincere. And in retrospect, looking back, it all seemed so made up. Like a play. Of course it was a play... but Ai had never been to a bubble like this one before... 

"Okay... I believe you," Ai finally said, crossing her arms. She looked down at her own outfit, then up at Rin's. They were both still in their diapers, and Rin's was full. Thankfully, the time-stop seemed to prevent the smell from getting through. An important stipulation, surely.

"I can talk with the others and let them know that you weren't informed, and they won't ever mention that scene again. It will be like it never happened. I'm really upset that nobody told you. I was having a great time, and I thought you were too, and now… well, I just feel so guilty. And like, I'm not blaming you for that! I just wish whoever dropped the ball… well, hadn't."

"No, um... it's... a misunderstanding, I guess..." Probably the biggest misunderstanding of Ai's life, but sometimes that came with the territory of bubble hopping. Now that everything was starting to make more sense, Ai felt a little twinge of embarrassment. 

"It wasn't so bad," Ai admitted shyly. "I don't know why I acted like that... and I don't even know why I'm bringing this up." 

"Safe Space does that," Rin explained. "It tries to coax the truth out of you, so you can express yourself. And since you opened this Safe Space, I'm actually more inclined to listen and believe you. Which... is maybe why I didn't listen before..." 

Rin paused a moment, lost in thought, then continued her explanation. 

"As for your feelings when we... uh... ya know... don't be too embarrassed about that. A lot of feelings are amplified at Ageplay Academy, like how it feels when you wet a diaper. Or if someone touches you in one. It's like turning up all your feelings to eleven. Even the teachers and caregivers feel it, but it's different for them." 

"Right... so even if I don't like any of this stuff, the rules of this bubble make me like it?" 

"Well, no, it should just amplify it..." Rin paused for a moment. To her knowledge, a Big didn't feel the same things a Little did. Rin herself had experimented with different roles, but nothing ever felt as good as bratting. 

"Well, maybe something went wrong," Rin shrugged. "You came into this bubble in a diaper already, right? It could have messed with things." 

"Yeah, that makes sense..." 

But if Ai thought too hard about it, she would find that it didn't really make sense at all. Something else was pulling her strings.

"We should explain all this to the principal," Rin urged. "Just touch him and it'll draw him into the Safe Space. And when you are ready to close it, when you feel safe, just say 'green'." 

Ai nodded. She still had a lot of explaining to do.

[Sophie ♥]

Chapter Seven

After a long discussion, the principal assured Ai that what happened to her would never happen again. The only reason it slipped under the radar in the first place was because nobody had ever entered the Academy in diapers before. It also didn't help that she was in mittens, which automatically branded her as a kind of girl who got herself in trouble. The principal suggested "safe word" posters around the school, just in case, and they were up on the walls of every classroom within the week. 

With her boundaries safeguarded, Ai decided to spend some time at Ageplay Academy. Most of her days were in the Middle classroom, getting in touch with a childhood she never truly had.  Other days, she volunteered as a babysitter for the daycare, just to understand the experience.  Nothing gripped her quite like that first day, chained to the desk and flooding her diaper, but she never found the courage to return to that room.

In truth, the most important and inviting element of Ageplay Academy to Ai was Rin. She was the first person with which Ai had ever had any kind of serious sexual encounter, and she wanted to explore those feelings. Rin was supportive, maybe out of a feeling of obligation or guilt, but Ai was also an attractive woman.  Rin was a sucker for hot girls, especially hot girls in diapers.

Unfortunately, Ai wasn't into diapers. Or, she said she wasn't. She tried a dozen other roles: "big" to Rin's "little", "disciplinarian" to Rin's "brat", "teacher" to Rin's "student". But despite the premise of the Academy, Ai was too embarrassed to delve deeply into ageplay. As it became more and more apparent that Ai wasn't willing - or maybe ready - to explore the things that brought them together, Ai and Rin started to drift further apart. 

In every bubble, Ai always did her best to stay for as long as she could.  She didn't want to leave behind a place where she could be happy, where she could belong, unless she was absolutely sure it wasn't the right place for her.  Sooner or later, that feeling always grew in her heart, that feeling of wanting to see over the next horizon.  For Ageplay Academy, that feeling came in less than two weeks.

Ai packed a bag. A diaper bag, because diaper bags were in abundance. The principal let her take anything she wanted from their stock; "it's the least I can do," he said. Ai took a few outfits worn by the daycare attendants, and buttoned herself up in a white blouse with dark pants. She was starting to feel like herself again. 

As she left the storage room, Ai hesitated by the door. She looked back at the room as if it were the entire Academy. All the things she experienced. Her awful introduction. Her adventures in babysitting. Her time with Rin. But one thing lingered a little longer than the rest. She picked up one of the white diapers off the shelf - in her size - and tucked it into her bag. 

"Just in case," Ai said to herself. "Once I'm outside the bubble, I can know for sure how I feel..." 

Rin went with Ai to the vending machine where she left her compass.  Ai had considered going back for it a few times, but the location felt safe.  No one knew about it but her, and it was still her only real possession.  After rummaging around under the machine for a minute, Ai stood up and opened the compass.

"Aren't you supposed to follow the needle?" Rin asked. "That's how you get back to your bubble, right?" 

"I'm not trying to go home," Ai said, turning herself in place to find the right path. 

"Why not?" Rin asked. 

"I dunno," Ai shrugged. "I got bored..." 

"You could do anything you wanted, right?" Rin asked, because Ai had talked about home before. "How could that be boring?" 

"It just was..." Ai didn't know how to explain it. 

Some bubbles were made up of a hundred people. Those bubbles were shaped by a lot of different minds, and a lot of different wants and needs. People who shared a bubble tended to be grouped together for a reason. Like Ageplay Academy. But other bubbles had fewer inhabitants. Some, like Ai's, only had one. A solitary mind, with singular wants and needs. 

Ai could make her world any way she wanted it to be. But that was the problem. What she wanted wasn't hers to give; it had to be something she found. She had to look for it, through error and opportunity.

So she left. She gave up infinite power in one tiny universe for no power at all in millions. Because out there, in the millions, she had a chance to find where she belonged. She had the chance to find her purpose.

"Well if you're going in the opposite direction from the needle, then you can follow it back here, right?" 

"Yeah, I think so," Ai said. She didn't know if that was how it worked, but she hoped it was.  

Ai had said goodbye hundreds of times, through hundreds of bubbles, and they always felt the same.  A universal feeling, despite all the other inconsistencies.  A necessary pain.  

It didn't seem fair to Ai that, in worlds where people could have pretty much anything they wanted, any pain at all was necessary.  But she worried that a world without loss would be a world without love.  And what was the fun in that?

"I'll miss you." Rin said. 

"I'll miss you too," Ai said back.

"I hope you find it, whatever you're looking for." 

"I'm getting close," Ai said, and kissed Rin goodbye. It made Ai's stomach flutter with pleasant feelings, but not pleasant enough.

Ageplay Academy wasn't far from the edge of its own bubble. On certain nights from certain places, Ai could see the faint shimmering without even leaving the building. As she approached the unworldly surface, she wondered what she was going to face. She wondered what the price she'd paid in leaving all of this behind would buy her.

When Ai stepped through the shimmer, the sun was warm and the air was pleasant. The grass beneath her feet was a deep, beautiful aqua, and a lake in the distance glittered gold in the midday sunlight. All around her, trees and bushes curled in beautiful shapes out of the ground, like something from a fairy tale. 

But most of all, Ai didn't feel anxious to be in a new place. The atmosphere wasn't charged; it was heavy. Heavy and light at the same time, with a wonderful wistfulness to it. In only moments, Ai started to feel very sleepy. 

Ai wandered down the hill toward the lake. It was in the center of a park, with paths of glass stones and benches with big, cavernous chairs. In the distance, Ai thought she could make out the pink gingham of a blanket. But Ai's feet wouldn't take her much further. She sat down on the edge of the hill and yawned. 

What... a... beautiful... day... 

"Mm..." 

"Hey there, sleepy head," a voice cooed. A familiar voice. But when Ai opened her eyes, she didn't recognize the face. 

A woman, a little younger than her. A warm smile. Dark, heavy hair. And a diaper in her hands, wringing it gently to open it up. Ai blinked a few times, then looked over at her diaper bag. It was unzipped. And that diaper was... 

"You had a little accident," the woman smiled. "But don't worry, I'm taking care of it." 

Ai tried to sit up. Her body was heavy. Her mind was heavy. But sure enough, the dark pants she had worn through the shimmer were wet between the legs. The woman unbuttoned the front of them and began to strip Ai of her wet pants and underwear. 

"I, um... dunno how that... happened..." Ai said sleepily. 

"That's okay," the woman laughed. "It happens to my sister all the time. Do you have a name, little one?" 

"Little... one?" Ai wanted to contend with that nickname, but she felt too sleepy to come up with a good argument. So she answered the question instead. "Ai, um... I'm Ai..." 

"Nice to meet you, Ai. My name is Aya." 

Aya. Yeah, that sounded familiar too. But before Ai could try to figure out where she'd heard that name before, her legs were pulled up into the air by an unseen force. The sleepiness took a backseat to sheer surprise, and Ai quickly tried to pull down her shirt. 

"Shh, shh, no one is going to hurt you," Aya said calmly. "The Specters are just helping out." 

"Specters...?" Ai asked, as Aya slid the diaper under Ai's bottom. 

"They're our friends," Aya said cheerily. "They take care of my sister and I. And, well... I suppose you too, now that you're here." 

"Where... where is here?" 

"Here," Aya repeated, motioning out to the park, to the lake, to the trees and the gardens all around the both of them. "Eden." 

"Eden..." 

Ai rubbed her eyes and the invisible Specters set her back down on the diaper. Aya sprinkled some powder on Ai's skin and pulled it up between her legs. The sound of each tape echoed through the whole world, like faraway bells. And when Ai was once again in diapers, she knew without a doubt that it hadn't been Ageplay Academy that made her feel this way. The diaper was resplendent in the light that seemed to come from everywhere but nowhere at the same time. It felt like a long lost love.  It felt like everything she had ever wanted.  Ai belonged in Eden. Ai belonged in diapers.

"Is Eden a nice place?" Ai asked, because it was the first thought that came into her mind.

"It's the best place," Aya said simply. She patted the front of Ai's diaper and helped her off the grass. Right away, Ai stumbled and nearly fell down the hill, but a flurry of invisible forces held her upright. 

Then, they lifted Ai off the ground completely, just a few inches. She could feel hands grabbing at her, squeezing her ankles and her arms and her diapered butt. But just as quickly as the feelings were there, they were gone, to other places on her body. Ai didn't know if the Specters were invisible people, or a mass of shifting forcefields, or both at the same time.

"C'mon, I'll show you around," Aya smiled. 

Suddenly, the force beneath Ai compressed itself so thickly that it became visible. Bending light and energy, twisting space. But the more it twisted, the finer the form it took. In less than a second, it became its own kind of matter. And that matter shifted in color and appearance, until it looked exactly like an oversized pram. Ai was gently lowered into it, and found it to be soft and comfortable, as if it was never anything but an oversized pram. 

"What just happened..." Ai asked sleepily, trying to make sense of everything. 

"Don't think too hard," Aya said softly. "Just let the Specters take care of everything for you." 

Ai nodded, and the pram started to move on its own. Down the hill of bluish grass, toward the golden lake. Aya followed at its side. 

"Um, I can... can walk..." Ai tried to argue, but she wasn't sure why. She was so tired, and the pram ride was so cozy. Why would she want to walk? 

"No need," Aya answered. "Just relax." 

"Relax..." Ai repeated. That sounded... so lovely...

"The Specters can carry you, move you, do everything for you," Aya explained. "They can be anything you need, or anything you want, or… anything, I guess.  So you don't have to worry about anything, not a single thing."

Not worrying wasn't something Ai was good at.  All her life, she'd had an insatiable curiosity, like an itchy fabric in the back of her head, something her skin didn't agree with.  But when Aya told her that there was nothing to worry about, Ai believed her.  She trusted her, implicitly, like a voice from on high.

At first glance, the golden lake didn't look to be particularly big. But as Aya led Ai around it, it seemed to take forever. 

On the right, they passed a playground. A beach. Trees that looked like cotton candy. An ocean of bubbles, like a giant bath. A pretzel stand. A hot dog stand. A lemonade stand. The night sky, in the middle of the afternoon. A penguin rental kiosk. A castle with an army of empty armor. A very large bed. A very small bed. Paintbrushes. A "Fill" tool, to color anything. Kisses with wings. A spacecraft. Everything, but upside down. Giant mountains made of candles, with flames of fireworks. A musical. The timeline. Lost atmosphere. Corduroy. Mixed tapes. Mixing bowls. Marshmallows. Mars. Honey made of money. Money made of honey. A kickball field. Waterslides. The absence of the descriptor "sticky". Waterfalls of watermelons. Trampolines. Trapezoids. Pennies. Lightning, but small. Clouds, but ice cubes, but warm. The center of a whirlpool, but only the center. Kindergarten. Kind gardens. Mean gardens, but kind when you got to know them. And a million other things Ai didn't have words for. Perhaps, because she didn't need those words anymore, or perhaps because there never were any in the first place. 

And on the left, there was the golden lake. 

"Do you understand?" Aya asked. "This is the best place." 

Ai nodded. Her diaper was soggy and warm, and her mind was alight with arousal. The kind of feeling she had when that girl touched her diaper. That girl, from that other place. Who was she? Where was that? But it didn't feel like that at all. It wasn't sexy; it was pure. It was what all emotion should have been. A warm, soggy diaper, and an endless lifetime of pleasantness. 

Before long, Ai was lying on the grass and Aya was patting her diapered butt. Ai sunk into the ground like an ice cream on a hot day. She grunted and pushed and effortlessly filled her diaper. And life was perfect. Except... 

"Ai, do you mind if I ask you a question?" Aya asked. 

"Mm... nuh uh..." 

"Where are you from?" 

Where was she from? Ai didn't know. So she said: "Here." 

"No, I know... but what about before here?" Aya asked. "No one else has ever come here... I didn't even know there were others, other than my sister and myself. And now you're here." 

Ai didn't know what to say, but Aya's question seemed like a good one. 

"Are you a Specter?" Aya asked. "Are you like the pram?" 

The pram... Ai shook her head. She was not like the pram. She wasn't from here, was she?

Aya had convinced Ai that Eden was the best place to be. That there weren't any better places. And if no places were any better, what was the point of discussing other places at all? 

But Aya was curious, and there was no crueler fate to Ai than a question unanswered.  So Ai tried her best to think of one, and the answers came easily to her. Like they were there all along.

"I'm from another place, many bubbles away. Like circles touching, and going on and on, and on and on, and on and on..." 

Ai paused, and for a moment she considered something Aya had said: no one else had ever come here.  Aya had never met anyone other than her sister, and now Ai.

"What was it like?" Aya asked. 

"It was..." Ai paused. When she tried to think about all those other bubbles, only one word came to mind. "Different..." 

"Eden is different," Aya said, almost in defense of it. "There can't possibly be anything anywhere else that doesn't exist here already. Right?" 

Ai shook her head. She didn't know how to answer Aya's question, so she spoke from the heart. 

"Everywhere I've been... maybe this is the best one. The best feelings, and... the best of everything. But I guess... if it's the best... then there has to be things that aren't as good. And because they aren't as good, they can't be here, right?" 

Aya was quiet, but she slowly nodded. 

"I'm happy to be here," Ai said. "But... I think... I think I was happy to be in those places too, for different reasons. Because the best isn't very good at all without something to compare it to." 

Ai remembered why she left home in the first place, why a single universe was never going to be enough for her. Because she believed, deep down in her heart, that she wasn't meant to stay still. Perhaps her quest for belonging was never about a destination, but about the journey. She found a little bit of belonging everywhere she went, and in a way, everywhere else belonged to her too. 

The conversation with Aya continued for eternity.  Or it lasted just a few minutes.  That was the problem with endlessness: there was no point of reference.  No transitions.  Nothing to lead you to the next important moment.

"Do you have any idea what you're doing?" Bala asked sharply. She was sitting in a playpen, on foam puzzle piece tiles. Ai was sitting across from her, and walls of plastic surrounded them like mountains surrounded a village. Like a river surrounded a castle. Like a yard surrounded an academy. Bala was dressed in a white onesie, decorated in halos and cartoon wings and the laughter of children and the heat of the universe. Ai looked down at her own clothes, which had changed: a red onesie, with horns and pitchforks and block towers of arrogance and the coldness of space. 

"Subtle," Ai sighed, rolling her eyes.  Suddenly, everything was so clear to her.  She remembered her purpose.

"I gave you everything you wanted. I gave everybody everything!" Bala balled her hands at her sides. "Do you know how hard it is to make everybody happy? I had to break it all up into a billion pockets. Into tiny happinesses, instead of one big one! But I did it! I did it, and you had to go and ruin it! Why do you have to ruin everything?" 

"I didn't ruin anything," Ai shot back, balling her own hands at her sides. 

"You did!" Bala shouted. One baby shouting at another across a plastic, colorful universe. "I put you so far away from us, but you came here anyway. Then you told Aya all about the other places, the other people. You brought sin into Eden. And now she's gonna leave! Maybe not right away, but sooner or later." 

"Then let her go," Ai fumed. "She can make her own decisions." 

"Let her go? What do you think happens to the universe when God abandons Heaven? Everyone else does too. The structure of it all, the building blocks... nobody will be happy ever again." 

"You're wrong," the demon said to the angel. She toddled forward a single step, rattle of Damocles in hand. "I was happier in every other bubble than the one you stuck me in. I was happy, because of the possibilities. Because there was so much to learn and know, and so many new ways to grow and get better." 

"You think you're any better?" the angel asked. A throne appeared beneath her and she was lifted up into the sky, safely secured with a tray in front. "You're worse than ever before. You're selfish, and you're willing to sacrifice everything I made for everyone else, because you think you're right!" 

"You hypocrite," the demon hissed, waving her rattle. "You want to condemn me for selfishness, when you trapped all those people here to take care of you? You think I don't know who the Specters are? Was this their wish?" 

"They can be anything!" Bala screamed. "They can be the stars themselves! They aren't bound by matter or reality or anything! They have all the power they wanted!"

"They can't be anything, because you won't let them choose. You're too scared that they'll choose wrong, and they'll blame you." 

"You don't know anything about me!" Bala said as loud as she could, as loud as the Big Bang.

"You want to put everyone in a box of what is 'best'," Ai said angrily, because when someone didn't listen, the best answer was to say it louder. "Just like Aya, and this farce of a paradise. But if something is the 'best', then there's no getting any better. There's no point." 

"SHUT UP!" 

The walls of the playpen around Ai and Bala exploded into stardust, along with the chair and the rattle, and the two of them were left alone in the dark. Then Ai felt a pang of something other than anger, a feeling that resonated through the emptiness and through the both of them. 

Ai felt disappointment, because the universe was at the whims of a true child. 

"You can't start at the end," Ai said sadly.

"Fucking watch me."

[Mia Moore]

Thanks Soph!  I absolutely love what you and Pudding did with Ai's adventurous spirit.  The part with consent and "safe space" is incredible.  And this paragraph in particular is just absolutely enchanting! ❤️ 

12 minutes ago, Sophie ♥ said:

On the right, they passed a playground. A beach. Trees that looked like cotton candy. An ocean of bubbles, like a giant bath. A pretzel stand. A hot dog stand. A lemonade stand. The night sky, in the middle of the afternoon. A penguin rental kiosk. A castle with an army of empty armor. A very large bed. A very small bed. Paintbrushes. A "Fill" tool, to color anything. Kisses with wings. A spacecraft. Everything, but upside down. Giant mountains made of candles, with flames of fireworks. A musical. The timeline. Lost atmosphere. Corduroy. Mixed tapes. Mixing bowls. Marshmallows. Mars. Honey made of money. Money made of honey. A kickball field. Waterslides. The absence of the descriptor "sticky". Waterfalls of watermelons. Trampolines. Trapezoids. Pennies. Lightning, but small. Clouds, but ice cubes, but warm. The center of a whirlpool, but only the center. Kindergarten. Kind gardens. Mean gardens, but kind when you got to know them. And a million other things Ai didn't have words for. Perhaps, because she didn't need those words anymore, or perhaps because there never were any in the first place. 

Next chapter comes out in a week.  

[FloridaKid]

Whoa. I went from merely confused to totally disoriented, and finally blown away by the demon/angel twist, which in hindsight (Academy M hindsight) makes perfect sense. I did catch on to the bubble multiverse bit, but it took a bit longer than I’d like to admit to discern Ai’s role.

Loved the “Ice and Claire” part. It reminded me of the “Land of Spare Oom” and the “bright city of War Drobe” from C.S. Lewis. 🤣

9 hours ago, Sophie ♥ said:

“Do you have any idea what you're doing?" Bala asked sharply.

I think I read this sentence at least a couple of times, thinking you’d made a mistake, before the context of the paragraph sank in. Nicely done, Soph. Nicely done.
 

Congrats on a great new story. I’m hooked and here for the duration. ❤️💕

[Sophie ♥]

12 hours ago, FloridaKid said:

Loved the “Ice and Claire” part. It reminded me of the “Land of Spare Oom” and the “bright city of War Drobe” from C.S. Lewis. 🤣

Omg Pudding came up with that and I was SCREAMING.  What a stupid joke!!! XD

12 hours ago, FloridaKid said:

Nicely done, Soph. Nicely done.

Thank you so much!  I was honored to be a part of this amazing narrative that Mia has woven.  I'm just glad I didn't let her down.

[Bonsai]

In Truman Show there's the big storm on the fake sea, here it's snowy (fake) mountains...

Angels do not have free will, nor they can bend free will of others. Or, maybe they can for a while, but not forever.

By the way, free will is never cost-free. The ultimate cost of freedom is to give away all the rest while keep clinging on the bail out option.

[Sophie ♥]

Oh my gosh!  FlashyFlesh (https://twitter.com/TheFlashyFlesh) did a cover art for Academy II for me!  I am so smitten with these characterizations of Ai and Bala! 

[Mia Moore]

Just now, Sophie ♥ said:

Oh my gosh!  FlashyFlesh (https://twitter.com/TheFlashyFlesh) did a cover art for Academy II for me!  I am so smitten with these characterizations of Ai and Bala! 

MY CHARACTERS HAVE FAN ART????? 🥺🥺🥺 They are just how I imagined them!! ❤️ 

[Personalias]

Academy II
By Personalias

"At the end of the world, there will be neither clamor nor calamity, neither echo nor epoch.  It will be mired in silence and sleep, in deliverance and death.  At the end of the world, there will be both patience and purpose, both temperance and time.  Only then will it be graced with eternity, and from eternity, a chance."

                                                    -The Source, in valediction

Chapter 1: 90 Days

The world was perfect. Things like poverty, crime, disease, starvation, war, pollution, homelessness, and politics had been relegated to the history books. 

Slight Correction: The world was almost perfect.  After today it would be perfect.  After today, Ai Sinclair would be out of diapers again.  Then, the world would be perfect.

Ai sat on the bus on her way to work, her long flowing skirt hanging placidly down to her shins. Her sensible, navy blue skirt, matching flats and plain white blouse showed her to be the smart, talented, young professional she knew she was. The indigo colored broach around her neck added a touch of flair and sophistication, as did the knitting needles she used to keep her hair up in a bun. Only the dreaded garment she was sitting in betrayed her imperfection.

Beside her on the next seat over was her black leather satchel bag (she refused to call it a diaper bag).  It had just enough of the folded plain white rectangles to get her through the day. After today, she fully intended to hide it away in the back of a closet somewhere until she forgot about it. In ages past, before Ai was born, someone might have tossed the damn thing out or donated it to charity.  Charities were obsolete, and throwing away a perfectly good bag might be grounds enough to extend her sentence. That meant more time before she could get married, more teasing from her co-workers, and more diapers. Ai wasn’t about to stumble when she was so close to the finish line.

Nervously, Ai rolled up her sleeve and stared at the glowing dot on her wrist right beneath her palm. The one that marked her as Pink.  For as long as that dot was lit up, the medical nanites in her bloodstream made it so she had no bladder control. She couldn’t remember if they affected the muscles in her body or if they somehow dimmed some small part of her brain that controlled the sphincter muscles of her bladder.  Maybe both?  It was the sort of thing she wished she’d paid more attention to back in middle school.  

In the grand scheme of things, the ‘how’ didn’t matter, only the ‘when’. It had been determined that Ai was too stressed and needed to take a break, and so for the last eighty-nine days, the only time Ai Sinclair realized that she’d needed to pee was when she felt the padding beneath her grow warm and squishy.  Today was day ninety; the last day of her sentence.

PING!

The young woman’s eye twitched and she dug her phone out of the satchel bag’s side pocket. On it was a message:

Hello, Ai. Your heart rate has accelerated and I have detected an increase in cortisol in your bloodstream. Are you feeling alright? Anxious?  I can adjust your mood nanites to increase your comfort.

Reading that message had anything but a calming effect on Ai. 
Thinking quickly, Ai tapped back:

No thank you, Luna.  I’m just very excited to be going back to big girl panties at the end of the day. I appreciate your concern, but help is not needed at this time.

Dancing bubbles appeared underneath Ai’s message. It was an affectation, of course. Luna was capable of carrying on conversations with over seven billion people at once without missing a step.  The artificial intelligence had formulated its response the nanosecond Ai had pressed ‘Send’. Hidden cameras on the bus were likely observing her initial reply as she typed it.  But the little waves of ellipses gave the illusion that Ai was communicating with a person on her level instead of a supercomputer that was smarter than every human that ever lived combined.

The message came back:

There’s nothing wrong with being a Pink, Ai. I hope you know that. These past ninety days were meant as a way to help you reset, refocus, and recontextualize your work-life balance as well as your personal relationships.

Luna had a passive aggressive streak an equator wide.  It had started out as a personal assistant application; something to be downloaded to a phone. Despite its evolution, Ai sometimes got the feeling that Luna resented its origins and held it against people.

Ai replied immediately:

I completely agree, Luna. There’s also nothing wrong with taking pride in one’s accomplishments and how far one has come. I am simply feeling the thrill of anticipation as I re-progress in my personal journey.

The bubbles danced for only a second:

That’s completely valid. My apologies, Ai.

Ai’s thumbs did a tarantella: 

Nothing to apologize for. Would you please pick out some music for me to listen to? Something to help me harness my energy and keep the positive vibes going?

The reply was immediate. No waves of dots whatsoever:

Of course. Let me know if there’s any other way I can be of service. Enjoy your last day.

The earbuds Ai kept in the side pocket with her phone started playing something. She dug them out, inserted them, and couldn’t help smiling.

“Like the legend of the phoenix
All ends with beginnings
What keeps the planet spinning
The force of love beginning”

Damn, Luna was good at her job. Ai had loved this song ever since she was a little girl. It always put her in a good mood.  At the core of its programming, Luna was still a servant. The only problem was that Luna was determined to serve and fix everything at all times. And when a superintelligent near omnipotent digital god-being decides to look for a problem, it will inevitably find one, even if said problem needs to be manufactured. 

That’s how Ai ended up like this. She’d been too stressed, too focused, and too ambitious to the point of accidental self-harm.  She’d been losing sleep, blowing off social engagements, getting in more fights with her fiancé over every little thing, eating too poorly, and generally not taking care of herself.  And when people stopped taking proper care of themselves, Luna tended to intervene.

Diapers and temporary incontinence were Luna’s preferred form of self-correction. It had forced Ai to be more aware of her surroundings and her personal needs. It humbled her and made her more mindful of her diet. It was a pain monitoring for leaks and having to coordinate bowel movements with how wet she was - the diapers provided were always the tape on kind - but overall it had been good for her, according to Luna.  

The diapers also served as a kind of warning.  Luna only allowed someone as much independence as they could safely manage on their own. Those who couldn’t handle the rigors of everyday life were aggressively supported.

Over her music, Ai heard a panicked outcry. “Luna! No! Please!”

Ai’s head turned with the other riders towards the back of the bus. A fair-skinned man in need of a shave leapt out of his seat, eyes wide in panic. Ai followed his gaze down to the front of his jeans where an even darker patch was blossoming; his bladder releasing its contents involuntarily. 

“We've come too far to give up who we are
So let's raise the bar and our cups to the stars”

The man’s phone tumbled out of his hand and into the puddle forming at his feet. He looked at his wrist in abject horror, clamping down on it as if to staunch the bleeding. Ai didn’t need to hear the mocking giggles to notice the facial expressions and body language of the other passengers. Bemused looks, cruel smiles, heads shaking in condescension and finger pointing abounded all around her.  

A giant, practically celebratory chorus of “BABY!”  erupted so loudly that even the music couldn’t drown it out.  Ai scooted an inch away from her satchel bag. It was only an inch, but that was as far away as she could manage without pressing her face up against the window glass.

Amidst the cheering and jeering at the slacker’s misfortune, the bus crawled to a halt.  The doors  opened with a hiss. Looking at her window, Ai could tell they weren’t at an official stop. That meant Luna had likely asked the driver to pull over. It could do that. Luna could speak to anyone through almost any electronic device. Methods and mediums of communication were more a matter of individual privacy and location and not limitations of software or technology.

From where she sat near the front, Ai immediately understood why the bus had pulled over. A woman in rose colored scrubs decorated with drawings of safety pins, baby rattles, and storks ascended the steps. Slung over her shoulder was a large baby blue diaper bag of the same approximate dimensions as Ai’s satchel.  Ai removed an earbud and sucked on her teeth.

“Hello Georgie,” the Carer said. “My name’s Nicole. Looks like you had a little accident. Let’s get you sorted out, okay?”

The man who’d just wet his pants took his hand off his wrist and visibly choked back a sob.  “Two?” he asked, “Why two?”  

The Carer stepped forward and put her hand on his shoulder.  “It’s okay,” she shushed him. “It’s okay. You’re not in any trouble. You didn’t do anything wrong.”  She was gently guiding him backwards.  Behind him, people were getting out of the way and making room.

“But-!”

“I understand you’re upset,” the Carer said, “but let’s not make a scene, okay?”  From the diaper bag she pulled out a changing mat and laid it across the now empty row of seats in the back that ran side to side; an impromptu changing table. “Let’s get you cleaned up and in a nice dry diaper, and then we’ll have a little chat, okay?”

“But my wor-”

“Shhhhh….”

Ultimately the man laid down and the Carer started taking off his pants, cooing and fussing over him as if he were a fussy toddler.  Along with the diaper, this one decorated in colorful cartoon characters, the Carer produced a plain white towel. Another passenger volunteered to take it and started mopping up the pee.  Only then did the bus begin to move again.

Ai turned around in her seat, her neck akin to an owl, her eyes zeroing in on the humiliated man’s wrist.  Sure enough, as advertised, not one but two glowing rose dots shined under his skin, advertising his reduced status to the world in a more absolute and immutable way than a diaper and a onesie ever would.

Two dots?  What could he have done that would have rushed him straight to two dots? The young woman’s eyes wandered over to the blue diaper bag with the same morbid fascination people used to look at car crashes. Stitched into the broad side of the diaper bag with a darker thread of blue was a name. “GEORGIE”.

Ai’s mouth went dry and her stomach twisted itself into knots.

The old song in her earbud ended and was replaced by a soft, calm, feminine voice that sounded almost human. Almost.  “Don’t worry, Ai. I did not send this Carer here for you.  You have given me no reason to believe you require this level of care in your daily life. I’m proud of the progress you’ve made.”

Ai nodded her head calmly, afraid to respond verbally lest one of the other passengers suspect what Luna was talking to her about.  

Despite Luna’s assurances that her time was almost up, it was no small relief to Ai when her stop came and she got off the bus and away from the blubbering newly minted man-child and his new Carer. She clutched her satchel bag, and did her best to keep her composure as she trotted on the sidewalk. 

Just a few blocks and she could sit down at her cubicle and she could let the day blur by until its completion.  She was so going out for margaritas later tonight. 

Near the home stretch to her work, another Carer passed by pushing a stroller. Its occupant, a black woman, sucked on a bottle of orange juice. Her diaper was on full display and squishing against the straps; the blueberry party dress too short to hide any hint of modesty.  Level two Pinks didn’t need modesty. They couldn’t handle it.

Ai and the girl in the stroller briefly locked eyes. The girl in the stroller had the wherewithal to look away in embarrassment.  One dot was a warning that one needed to re-evaluate their life. Anything more was basically a proclamation of failure.  Maybe the girl could work her way back up the ladder like Ai was about to. 

Maybe.  

Lots of influencers, entrepreneurs, and celebrities had been on record that they needed extra Caring before they got themselves together and hit it big. But some people, so Ai had been taught, just didn’t want to get themselves together.  That’s where Luna and her Carers came in.

Ai opened the door to her work and slipped in as quietly as she could.  Marjorie at the front desk didn’t pick her head up. “There she is,” the older woman said good naturedly. “Right on time, as always.”

“How did you know it was me?” Ai asked.

Marjorie tapped her ear and smiled. “Who else around here crinkles whenever they take a step?”

“Oh…” Ai felt her face heat up. Over the last ninety days, she’d learned to almost completely ignore the sound her diapers made with every movement and shift she made.

Almost.

Marjorie’s smile turned sympathetic. “Get ready to get razzed today,” she warned. “Everybody’s gonna get one last shot in before you’re back to normal tomorrow.”  

Her first week as a Pink had been filled with teasing and terrible jokes from her coworkers.  Pacifiers had been left in her desk drawer. Her coffee mug had been hidden and replaced with a cheap plastic baby bottle.  Someone had left one of those jingling wrist rattles with a note that read “To cover your dot”.  People had said ‘Hey baby’ in a way that wasn’t hitting on her.

But after a few days (and perhaps some discreet warnings from Luna about going too far), the jokes had gotten old and the office gossip turned inevitably to other matters.

“Let them have their laughs,” Ai replied. “I sort of have it coming.” It was a lie that Ai didn’t realize she’d told until after she’d uttered it. 

Marjorie shrugged her big heavy shoulders. “It is what it is. Plenty of people get Pinked. It’s nothing to get worked up over.”

“Yeah,” Ai lied again.  “I’m just glad that it’s almost over.” On that she was truly sincere.

“The janitors are too,” Marjorie chuckled.  “Hank is getting tired of emptying the trash can in the ladies' room.”

Ai’s ears lit on fire. “Sorry.” That was the truth, too.

“It’s his job, and Hank bitches about everything. Do what you gotta do, lady.”

The smaller of the two women shifted nervously. Her satchel suddenly became an albatross. “Speaking of which, I need to powder my nose. ‘Scuse me!”  She shuffled off past her coworker and slid into the single stall women’s restroom. “Damn,” she hissed. “Why’d I say ‘powder’?”

As had become routine, Ai locked the door and dug everything out of her bag before proceeding. Wipes. Powder. Diaper.  She hiked her skirt all the way down to her ankles and ripped off the tapes as fast as she could. She wiped herself all over, careful not to miss a spot; grateful that she wouldn’t have to religiously shave down there after today.  She tossed the used wipes into the open soiled diaper at her feet, balled it up, and tossed the wretched thing away. 

For her own ego and peace of mind, she sat on the toilet and counted to a hundred, just in case. A sliver of a smirk jerked at the corners of her mouth when she heard the sound of liquid hitting liquid. Good timing felt like victory some days. An extra wiping and a triumphant flush later, and Ai was almost good to go.  Finally, she opened the fresh diaper, sprinkled baby powder inside it and taped it on herself while standing up.

Originally, she hadn’t been very good at this. She’d leaked unnecessarily more than once due to poor positioning and not getting the tapes right. It’s amazing how good someone can get at something when they aren’t given a choice.  

After she hiked her skirt back up and smoothed it back out, she realized how nice it would be to be able to wear pants again. The last three months had forced her wardrobe to be considerably baggier.  Not so deep down, Ai couldn’t stand the sight of her diapers and even a hint of bulk between the legs or a slip of a waistband was mortifying to her.  If not for the necessities of bathing and changing, Ai might have forgotten what the shape of her legs looked like.

She gave herself a once-over in the mirror and took a deep breath. She peeked into her satchel bag and counted the remaining diapers. The last she would ever have to wear.  “One down,” she whispered. “Two to go.”
 
********************************************************************************************************
 Late that afternoon, an email popped up across Ai’s computer screen.

Dear Ai,

Congratulations on making it 90 days. I’m very proud of how far you’ve come in such a short time. I believe Mr. Grant wishes to speak with you as well.

Love always,
Luna

Ai stood up from her desk and felt the weight around her waist shift with gravity. She looked down at her satchel bag and bit her lip, nervously. She could really use a change just then. That and she had only one diaper left. Plus lunch was finally catching up to her.  

She decided against it, however. Best not to keep the boss waiting. That and she could use needing to change as an excuse if a hasty exit was required. It was a small benefit to her status, one she’d be glad to be rid of, but she might as well use it one last time. She opted to leave her bag where it lay and go see what Mr. Grant wanted.

“Please, Ms. Sinclair,” Mr. Grant gestured to the chair across from his desk. “Have a seat.”

Ai obliged him and took a seat. The chairs were cushy and comfortable, but also low to the ground. Anyone sitting in them would feel even smaller sitting across from Mr. Grant’s giant oak desk.  “What can I do for you, sir?”  Ai asked, professionally and politely.

“I just wanted to take a moment to thank you,” Mr. Grant said.  “Not many Pinks handle their situation as gracefully as you have.”

Ai kept her hands neatly folded in her lap. “Thank you very much, Mr. Grant. I hope I haven’t been too much of an inconvenience to you.”

“Not at all,” her boss waved off the apology. “We’re here to support you to help you be the best you can be. You’ve been a model team member and I’ve been happy to accommodate you and will continue to accommodate you as long as you need.”

Ai blinked.  “I’m sorry?”

He laughed off her question like a mall Santa. “It’s nothing to be ashamed about. Plenty of people get Pinked. It’s only one little dot. Just keep doing what you’re doing and it’ll be over before you know it.”

Ai could feel panic start to set in. She was almost out of the forest but could hear the snapping of dry twigs and the hungry growl of a wolf behind her.  “Luna?” she called out to the room. “What’s going on?”

An artificial voice came out of the office’s speaker phone. “Mr. Grant is praising you for your perseverance thus far. I would also like to congratulate you on that front. You’ve been very mature given the circumstances.”

“Why are you talking like I’m going to still be Pink tomorrow?” Ai demanded. “My time is up! I’m literally on my last diaper!”

Mr. Grant suddenly looked very uncomfortable.  “About that…” his eyes shifted from side to side. “Luna?”

The machine’s gentle, soothing, irritating voice sounded off. “After much consideration, it has been determined that you would benefit from another ninety days of recuperation.”

“Ninety days!” Ai found herself shouting. “Ninety days?!  Just this morning you were telling me how proud you were of me and how good I’ve been!” 

“Careful…” Mr. Grant warned.

“I am proud of you,” Luna droned. “You’ve made incredible progress.  But progress is not the same as completion.”

“What is there left to do?” Ai demanded to know. “I’m getting enough sleep! I’m not watching as much television! I’m eating better!” She gesticulated in Mr. Grant’s direction.  “All of my work is still on time!”

“Yes,” Luna agreed. “But you still seem to think that being Pink is a punishment. It’s not.”

Without meaning to, Ai rose to her feet. “Then why are you punishing me?”

“I told you she wouldn’t take this well,” Mr. Grant muttered.

“You’ve been talking about me behind my back?” Ai shrieked at her employer. “What business is it of yours if I’m Pink or not? Who do you think you are? My parents?!”  Mr. Grant leaned back in his chair, distinctly uncomfortable despite Ai’s relatively diminutive stature.

“I have known you your entire life,” Luna replied. “And Mr. Grant has a right to know about your status as it directly affects his work environment.”

Ai’s fists balled up in rage. “Fuck you, Luna!” she stomped your foot. “I’ve been pissing my pants for three months and you still haven’t told me what I did wrong!”

“It’s not about right and wro-”

“Shut up you binary coded bitch!” Ai’s stomping foot sounded like thunder.

“As you wish…”

“And as for you!” Ai pointed directly at her two-faced sonofabitch boss. “How fucking dare you! I’ve been dealing with hazing and shame and whispers behind my back for literal months! And did I see any kind of memo about it? Did anybody get their ass chewed out and fired for harassment? Did anybody else get sent back to diapers? No! They didn’t.”

Mr. Grant looked like he was about to say something, but Ai’s fury was disproportionate to anything the man had ever witnessed.

“You want to be supportive?!” Ai screamed. “Stop taking orders from a bonkers machine! But you know what? I’m not taking orders from you anymore. I…I…I…!”  Something was wrong. Ai’s stomach cramped up. As if on their own, her knees bent slightly.  Then, completely against her will, she started to push.

“Oh, Miss Sinclair,” Mr. Grant said. “I’m so sorry. I can’t say as I’m surprised, but I am sorry.”

Ai had no comeback. She was too busy filling her pants. She was acutely aware while her cheeks spread and the first lumpy mass exited her.  It was a small agony feeling the mess hit the back of her diaper and become smushed and spread by the contents behind it.  It was even worse when she felt the pressure release and was allowed a gasp as her cheeks came back together and then spread a second time while she started pushing again.

There was a knock at the door.  Ai couldn’t help but continue pushing, near the point of tears feeling the consistency shift to wetter and sloppier.

“Come in,” Luna’s voice welcomed.   

A tall woman with raven hair walked around to Ai’s. Her scrubs were rose colored and decorated with safety pins, storks, bottles, and rattles. The diaper bag she carried was pastel pink. Ai had a feeling she knew whose name was stitched on it.  “Hello Ai,” she said.  “My name’s Maria!” The way she spoke indicated that she thought Ai was a simpleton. “If that’s too hard to say, you can try ‘Nana’.”

The Carer walked back around and disappeared behind Ai. Just when the young woman’s body finished emptying itself, she felt two fingers stick themselves into the waistband of her incredibly heavy diaper and pull it back.

“Good girl!”  Ai felt a hand pat her on the bottom, pressing the vile stuff that had just exited her up against her bum and spread it around even more. Her legs felt a breeze. Her skirt was now puddled around her ankles. “Mr. Grant, would you mind clearing your desk off for me? I don’t think her diaper is going to last if she takes another step.”

“Of…of course,” Mr. Grant stuttered.  He hurriedly swiped papers, pens, his nameplate, and various other knick-knacks off his desk so that the Carer would lay out a changing mat.  Not unkindly he said, “And don’t worry, Ai. I don’t hold anything you just said against you. Pinks can’t help it. I’m sure we can make a work from home arrangement if you’d like.”

Ai’s world went into a spin figuratively and literally as the Carer picked her up, spun her around and sat her down on the desk. Ai could feel the mess cake itself on her bottom. The Carer took the time to slip off her flats first.  “Okay,” she coaxed. “Down we go. That’s a good girl.”

“Please…” Ai begged, her voice a choked up whisper. “Please not here.”

Her new ‘Nana’ took out an incredibly babyish diaper and wipes. “Don’t be silly,” she cooed. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. You don’t have to be modest.”  Ai’s ears didn’t hear it, but she swore she could hear an unspoken ‘anymore’ in the tall woman’s tone.

Ai lifted up her wrist and stared at the second glowing dot, freshly added. “Why, Luna?” she choked. “Why?”

“I’m afraid that won’t do you any good,” the Carer cooed.  “Luna never talks to children.” The world went completely blurry for Ai just then.  The tears finally won out right as the tapes on her diaper were torn loose.

[Personalias]

Chapter 2:  Terrible Twos

Ai sat on the edge of the sandbox, her back to the sand, miserably poking away on the tablet and trying to get as much work as possible done despite the plurality of roadblocks in her way.  

For starters, the fire engine red tablet in her lap was incredibly sensitive.  It was designed to be a children’s gaming tablet and jam-packed with plenty of pastel pixelated entertainment for less developed minds to enjoy.  Ai was allowed to use it for other purposes, but this model didn’t have any compatible keyboards so the girl was forced to make due with the installed keyboarding app in order to write her emails, reports, and fill out her spreadsheets.

That simple limitation made it exceedingly difficult to do her job.  The lack of tactile input made it so she couldn’t type without looking at the keyboard. The simple act of resting her hands on the keys in preparation registered the same as if she were mashing together a string of a’s, ‘j’s, f’s, k’s, d’s and so forth.  As a result, Ai had to hunt and peck for every letter of every word making it extremely difficult to build up any kind of momentum or fall into a rhythm.  The keyboarding software lacked an autocomplete feature, too, and punctuations, numbers, and so on required a completely different set-up to be opened.  Frankly, it would have been easier to do her work on a phone.  If only she’d been allowed one.

Ai spared a moment to stare at the inside of her wrist.  There were still two bright pink dots glowing just underneath her skin. Disbelief and despair had blended together into a potent cocktail so as to erase her object permanence.  When she wasn’t retreating inside herself to deal with the shock or desperately trying to get work done on a computer designed for children she was looking at her wrist over and over. It was like looking for a missing pet or lost car keys; whether it was on the periphery of her vision or her thoughts Ai kept swearing she could almost see a singular dot proclaiming her current level of social demotion over, but every time she looked, there were the same two dots humming back at her.

The young lady blinked and stared back at the screen, forcing herself to get back to work.  Maria (Ai refused to call her ‘Nana’) had taken her to a public playground, but Ai chose to sulk and work in the sandbox.  

Ai hadn’t technically been fired from her job. She just wasn’t allowed to show up in person because the office didn’t have the facilities required to ‘meet her level of care’. But she would be fired if she couldn’t meet her deadlines.  Nothing would happen to her if she lost her job.  Luna ensured that everyone got the level of care they required.  

She technically hadn’t been evicted from her apartment, either. She just wasn’t allowed to stay there since she was required to sleep in a crib at Maria’s residence.  She would be evicted if she got fired and couldn’t wire the rent over to her landlord.  Nothing would happen to her if an eviction notice came.  No one was homeless in the wonderful world Luna had so precisely organized.  

That was exactly Ai’s problem: If she lost her job and her home, nothing would happen to her.  She’d stay stuck in this ridiculous yellow onesie and diaper, her Pink status would never be removed, and she’d be sucking on bottles, sleeping in cribs, and filling her pants while contributing nothing to society for the rest of her life.  In a world where there was no risk, wealth was measured in independence. The more you could handle without Luna’s intervention, the better off you were.  Conversely, Ai was the poorest she’d ever been because the artificial intelligence had deemed her needing the same care as a child.

All of this raced, looped around, and spiraled back in on itself while Ai scrambled to get as much work done before Maria took her out for lunch. Pinks didn’t have daycares since after the first dot they were each assigned a personal Carer.  Ai had to try and get her work done in her stroller, or on a playground, or wherever Maria decided to take her for ‘fresh air and enrichment’.  That meant humiliating outfits, public diaper changes, and the smiles and scoffs of any random passersby.  Just the other day, Ai endured a mother explaining to her toddler why ‘the big girl looked like a baby’.

Maria apparently made enough money so that she could take Ai out to eat at least once a day. That meant public high chair feedings, face wipings,  waitresses who loved pinching her cheeks telling her how cute she was, and hot guys thinking she was anything but.

And the worst part of it all was she still hadn’t figured out what she’d done to need all of this.  Luna wouldn’t talk directly to her anymore, and if Maria knew why, she wasn’t sharing.

“How long do I have to stay like this?”  Ai had asked that first day.

“For as long as you need to, sweetie,” Maria replied. “For as long as you need to.”

Presently, Ai pecked as quickly and as diligently as she could on the edge of the sandbox. Next to her were other Two-Dots grinding away to prove their potential for independence, pecking away at their own toy tablets. Of all of them, Ai was dressed the least modestly. Girls were in dresses and jumpers that only really covered the tops of their diapers. Boys wore thin shorts with elasticized waists that left the tops of their diapers constantly poking out and did nothing to hide the bulbous shape of the bulk between their thighs.  Maria had condemned Ai to a yellow onesie with pastel green frogs hopping all around, her hair done up in pigtails, and a pacifier dangling from its clip, unused.

Every nearby bench was occupied by Carers; their signature rose colored scrubs a uniform and symbol of their position in society.  They sat quietly, reading trashy novels to themselves unless Luna or something else notified them of their charge needing something. Ai knew that this was all Luna’s decision, and that it was all for her own good, but she couldn’t help but feel resentful towards Maria.  The sentient computer had calculated and handed down the decree, but it was Maria who was doing the dirty work.

Ai shifted and barely noticed the squelch beneath her bottom. It had been months since she’d peed in a toilet. Frankly she was used to the feeling of a wet diaper, almost as if that first dot had been to desensitize and prepare her for her second.  Her nose wrinkled and she instead took comfort that, if she leaked, it’d be Maria that would have to deal with it.

She lifted her head and took in the playground. Pinks who had given up played loudly, screaming and running around without a care in the world.  Some people really were suited to this pathetic lifestyle.  Their Carers were working up quite a sweat, pushing swings, spinning merry-go-rounds, refereeing games of duck-duck-goose, and generally yelling at the overgrown children to be careful.  Ai’s pigtails swayed lightly as she shook her head in quiet disgust.

A ping from her tablet caught her attention.  She looked down and saw that she had a new email. There was no subject, but she knew the sender intimately. Very intimately.

She leaned forward, not quite on her haunches, and opened the message.  Her eyes read the message but did not fully comprehend.  She read it again. And again. And again.

“He’s leaving me?” she said out loud, her voice trembling.  “But it’s only been a week.”  She felt like the wind had been knocked out of her as she adjusted herself and off the balls of her feet and sat back down.

“EW!” A shrill voice cried. “Ai pooped! Ai pooped!”  A chorus of snickers rose up to greet Ai, along with the sudden warm, lumpy feeling in the back of her onesie.  Other Pinks dashed away from her leaving her side of the sandbox abandoned; their retreating footsteps the sound of dry crackling leaves being carried away by the wind.  They pinched their noses and waved their hands in front of their face.

Ai’s throat felt swollen, but not because of the mockery.  What the hell?  It’s not as if any of them could control their bowels thanks to the nanites!  Constipation was the only thing keeping them from dropping a load in their diapers, too!

Drawn by the mocking laughter, Maria trotted over to the sandbox and deadlifted Ai onto her hip.  Nanites could do more than prevent disease and take away continence it seemed. “Come on, Miss Stinky Britches,” the Carer clucked. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Fingers pointed out like lasers and followed Ai all the way down to the changing mat laid out in the grass. Unwilling to yield or show weakness, Ai stared straight up at the cloudy sky; numbing herself; willing herself not to cry or blush or whimper or hide her face in her hands.

“So this is Ai,” another Carer said from the bench. “You’re right, Maria. She is a real cutie.”

“Shhh,” Marie chuckled, unbuttoning the snaps in Ai’s onesie.  “She doesn’t know that, yet.”

“I would appreciate it,” Ai said, finding her voice, “if you could please do this quickly.  I’ve got work to do.”  Her request was punctuated by the sounds of tapes ripping off and her diaper coming undone.

“Oooooh,” the other Carer cooed. “Someone’s very serious today!”

“She’s very precocious,” Maria agreed, lifting Ai’s legs and wiping her bottom for her.

“Your Nana is changing you as quick as she can,” the third woman assured her.  “Then you can go right back to playing on your little tablet with the other couch potatoes.”

Ai was about to retort, but the mention of her tablet reminded her that she’d just been abandoned. That final straw weighed her down enough so that she retreated back down into herself while the old diaper was balled up and replaced, her ass powdered and creamed, and she was resealed into her cutesy crinkling prison.  “All done.”

The young woman got up and walked back to the sandbox.  She hated how stiff the new diaper was, forcing her to move with it instead of the other way around.  Within the next fifteen to twenty minutes it wouldn’t be as stiff, but she’d likely be at least a little wet. She hated that more.

The spot she’d been sitting in had been taken by the remaining Pinks, with no one looking to budge. A pity as she’d been sitting in the perfect spot beneath the shade of an overhanging tree.  Now she’d have to worm and wriggle her way back in. 

“Hey,” she realized, “Where’d my tablet go?”  All the other Pinks stared down at their laps, pretending they hadn’t heard her.  “Mother…!”

Out of the corner of her eye, a flash of movement from the playground demanded Ai’s attention. A woman in nothing but a bright pink t-shirt, a sagging diaper, and white tennis shoes zoomed around on the playground. Or rather, she had been zooming. It was her sudden stop that caught Ai’s attention.

She had a dark complexion- Ai would have guessed Indian at a glance- her eyes deep pools of brown and flowers in her hair.  If not for the diaper, Ai would have thought her pretty.  Speaking of her diaper, the girl was busy filling it. Her knees were slightly bent, her fists clenched, and those deep brown pools seemed distant for a second. 

Ai didn’t know how she knew the other girl was pooping. The thing around her hips was already so ballooned out and sagging that anything extra added to it would have been purely incidental by this point in time.  Somehow she just knew.

Then, as quickly as she stopped, the girl started zooming again, climbing up the nearest slide to go down it, the contents of her non-pants likely squishing and sloshing all around.  But no one was coming to change her.  No one was tattling or monitoring her.  No one was stopping her from doing what she wanted to do in the moment.

Was that…jealousy Ai was feeling?

“Ew! Penelope pooped!” The same shrill voice as before sounded off. 

“EWWWWWWWW!’  Ai squealed, wanting to fit in. She pinched her nose and pointed her finger at the offending Pink.  

A lady in her thirties stood up and stomped her foot. “Tattletales!”  With a huff, she stomped over to her Carer on a faraway bench to get cleaned up.

Ai took her spot on the sandbox.

And the girl’s forgotten tablet.
*********************************************************************************************************
“Miss Maria! Miss Maria!”  Winnie screamed.  “Ai pooped again! She needs changed!”

Ai rolled her eyes.  “Really, Winnie?”

Winne grinned, evilly.  “What? You did, didn’t you?  Or do you not know, anymore?”

“None of us know,” Ai growled. “That’s kind of the point.”

The straps on the other woman’s pink denim shortalls bobbed up and down with her shrug.  “Just trying to help.”  She ran off to Maria’s bench and started jawing, no doubt telling the Carer that Ai had just soiled herself (as if Maria hadn’t heard the first time).

It was the weekend. Prior to this, Ai would normally have been enjoying herself and sleeping in.  But she was too busy trying to catch up on work and dealing with brats like Winnie to enjoy it.  No sleeping in, either.  Winnie’s Carer was taking the day off, so the pair of Pinks were having a ‘playdate’ that would bleed over into a ‘sleepover’.  Funny how the people who changed diapers got days off but the people trapped in them never did.

In addition to her having to make an entire budget proposal one finger peck at a time, she now had to deal with this little pissant who had nothing to do but tattle and make a big deal about uncontrollable and insignificant things.

That was enough for Maria. She walked over to Ai’s sandbox, picked her up, giving Ai’s bum a pat, confirming Winnie’s accusations.  “Wow. You really do need a change!” Maria remarked. “What am I feeding you?!”  Ai’s only solace was that the playground wasn’t as crowded on the weekends. 

Winnie came waddling up, holding Ai’s diaper bag. “Can I help change her, Miss Maria?” she asked, her voice completely aspartame. 

“Of course you may,” Maria said.  “First be a dear and lay out the changing mat somewhere nice and flat.”  Winnie did so, rifling through Ai’s bag and unfolding the vinyl backed mat on a patch of grass. “Good girl,” Maria praised. She laid Ai down and started popping the snaps open. “You can hand me the wipes packet and start unfolding the new diaper while I clean Ai up.”

“Yes ma’am!”

Ai felt her blood boil.  She’d already lost count of how many people had seen her naked from the waist down, her messy bottom on display for all to see.  But there was something so…so…intrusive about this stranger, this other Pink rifling through her diapers and supplies, acting as if she were any better than Ai.

The entire time, Winnie stood over her, never breaking off eye contact while she handed the fresh diaper and then the powder to Maria.  Ai held her tongue, not daring to back down.

When the deed was done, Maria pulled Ai up to a sitting position.  “You were very good,” Maria said.  “Is there anything you want to tell me?”

Ai took the hint.  “Thank you, Maria.”

“You’re very welcome, sweetie.  Is there anything you want to tell Winnie? She helped when she didn’t have to.”

Ai almost swallowed her tongue.  Winnie stood over her with her arms folded, her smile concealing a nasty sneer.  “Th-th-thank you, Winnie.”  

Winnie parroted Maria.  “You’re very welcome, sweetie.”  Her parroting was rewarded with the Carer’s bubbling laughter.

“Okay,” Maria declared, shooing. “Off you two go. Go play.  Luna wants you to enjoy this time and have fun.”

“Actually,” Winnie said. “I need help, too, Miss Maria.”  Her eyes cast downward as she traced a circle with her foot. “I need a change, too.  I think I’m about to leak.”

Maria lit up.  “Very good, Winnie! I’ll be happy to clean you up!”

“Can I help?” Ai asked. She was already clumsily climbing to her feet and looking around, trying to find Winnie’s diaper bag.  Turnaround was fair play.

Except it wasn’t.  “No,” Maria said simply. “That’s alright Ai.  I know you have a lot of work to do.  You should get back to it.”

“But-!”

A bottle was thrust in her face. “If you really want to help, drink your juice before it gets too warm.  I can tell that you’re starting to get dehydrated.  Let’s fix that, shall we?”

“Yeah, let’s fix that!”

Ai snatched the bottle and trudged back over to the sandbox and sat down with a harumph.  She turned her head and watched Winnie get laid down on the bench, obscuring her form from three sides.  

She tilted the rubber nipple to her lip and started chugging the disgusting apple juice.  Ai hated apple juice, it was by far the worst of all the common fruit juices. Orders were orders, though.  If she ever wanted to have her status upgraded, she’d do as she was told without complaint until Luna had calculated that she was ready for more independence and responsibilities.

“WAAAAAAAAAAAH! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”  The sound of inconsolable blubbering made Ai’s ears prick up.  If Ai hadn’t known any better, she would have thought an actual child was crying save for the lower tones.

Just behind her, out on the sidewalk, a stroller was passing by. Its lone occupant, a Pink, was screaming like the world was about to end.  Ai tilted her head curiously to the side, unsure what to make of it.  Most Pinks were quiet and demure in public, too embarrassed or contrite to make much of a scene.

This girl’s screams were enough to turn heads.  What was going on?

The stroller stopped, and the person pushing it walked around and dropped to one knee so as to be at the Pink’s eye level.  “What’s wrong, Bala?” the carer asked, her voice syrupy, loving and concerned.

The girl, Bala apparently, made no reply.  She just kept screaming.  Her bare feet kicked the air inches away from the Carer’s face.  It was hard to tell due to distance and angles, but Ai thought there was something vaguely familiar about the girl.  

“Is it your diaper?” the Carer asked. Ai watched her hand reach forward and check.  “No. I don’t think it’s that.  “Are you hungry? Thirsty?  I just fed you. Do you want more?”  She dug into the holstered diaper bag and offered up a bottle.

The bottle went flying out of the Carer’s grasp and tumbled onto the grass near the sandbox.  No one, including the Carer, paid it any mind.  Pedestrians would turn their head towards the sound of the disturbance and the sight of thrashing limbs, but would quickly whip their heads the other way around once they confirmed what they were hearing and seeing as ‘none of their business’. Something similar had happened to Ai on her first day like this, but there was something…different.

Despite herself, Ai leaned forward and picked it up.  She walked carefully forward towards the Carer and the stroller’s occupant, the bulk of her diaper causing her to waddle and toddle all the way over.

The Carer barely noticed. Once the bottle went sailing, she just kept digging in the bag.  “Aya?  Do you want your Aya? Is that it?”  She took out a porcelain doll dressed in finery and waved it to get the screaming woman’s attention.  

The girl in the stroller stopped bellowing and took the doll.  “Aya!” 

“Okay,” the Carer wiped the sweat from her forehead. “That was it. You just wanted your Aya.”

“Excuse me,” Ai said right at the edge where the playground ended and the sidewalk began. She positioned herself so that she could see into the stroller proper. To her surprise it was the same girl from a few days ago, the ‘pooper’ who kept on playing without a care in the world.

“Yes?” The Carer asked, expectantly.

Ai’s reply was automatic and unthinking. Her mind and mouth were in two separate locations for all intents and purposes.  “I think you dropped this.”  She held out the bottle as far as she could from herself, nipple facing the Carer. 

The woman in the rose scrubs took it gratefully. “Thank you, dear. That was very kind of you.” She turned her gaze to the stroller.  “Say ‘thank you’, Bala.”

“No.”

A gasp of surprise escaped from Ai.  You could do that?! Say ‘no’ to a Carer?  Saying ‘no’ to one of Luna’s agents was like refusing an order from Luna herself!  It just wasn’t done! The girl was trapped in a stroller, had no home of her own, pissed and shit in herself uncontrollably every day, and couldn’t even feed or dress herself, yet she might as well be defying gravity.

The Carer sighed and took her position behind the stroller. “Oh Bala, what am I gonna do with you little lady?”

What indeed?
***********************************************************************************************
“Ewww!” Ai shrieked.  “Greggy pooped! Greggy pooped!”  She pointed to the man in the sailor suit and scuttled away from him.  “I heard it! I heard it!”

Sounds like static bristled into the air as a dozen crinkling bottoms moved away from him. Fingers were pointed and noses were pinched. Ai was getting so good at this that although she’d barely heard the crinkling of the Pink’s diaper ballooning or his unconscious grunts, she instantly knew what was happening.  

“EWWWWWWW!”

The boy burst out into sudden and shocked tears. Snot bubbles started forming and dripping out of his nose and all of his syllables turned into vowels.

His Carer rushed over and checked him, pulling the waistband back and staring down inside of his pants. “Oh poor Greggy.  Did you make a boom boom?”

Inconsolable, Greggy nodded but continued blubbering incessantly.  He was led by the hand away towards the public restrooms to be changed. 

“Can I help?”  Ai offered, waiting to be praised. 

“No Ai,” the Carer sighed. “I’ve got this.”  It was mildly disturbing that the Carer knew Ai’s name but not the other way around.  Had she really been at this long enough to develop a reputation?

“But-”

“You’ve helped enough, dear. Go play.”

Ai’s face fell and started to sizzle. What was she doing wrong?  When someone else told on her they were praised. When she told on someone else, not so much.  It didn’t make any sense.  She went to take a step and get back to work on her tablet, but noticed how heavy her diaper felt.  Today’s romper was really straining to hold the soggy thing up.

With constantly worrying about the state of her underwear and the difficulties in working her tablet, Ai felt as if her workload had tripled, despite assurances from management that it had in fact gone down.  Feeling drained and weary, Ai walked bowlegged to Maria.  Maybe it’d be easy to work in a dry diaper.

“Excuse me.  Maria?”

Maria looked up from her Harlequin romance novel. Her seventh since taking Ai into her care. “Yes?”

“I’m very wet, ma’am. Could you please change me?”

“Of course.”

The change went as expected with Maria humming a jaunty little tune to herself while she went about wiping Ai’s nethers. Strange how routine it had all become. Routine enough that she was at least able to read work emails while her legs were up over her head and a cold wipe was cleansing and probing every nook and cranny.

“There you go,” Maria chirped. “All done.”

“Thank you.” 

“Good girl. Go play.”

Ai stood up and stopped herself long enough to watch her Carer ball up and toss away the used diaper into a public garbage can.  “Maria?”

The tall, imposing Carer regarded her. “Yes dear?”

“How much longer will I be stuck like this?”

The Carer repeated the mantra again.  “For as long as it’s needed.”

“How long will that be?”

“Go play, Ai.  Go play.”

She looked out onto the playground, viewing the Pinks who made no effort to have their status upgraded.  Unlike literally everyone at the sandbox, they seemed happy somehow.  What did they have that she lacked?

 

[Personalias]

Chapter 3: Growing Pains

Something was wrong.  Ai looked up from her tablet.  “Hey,”  Ai asked. “Where’s Winnie?”

The other Two-Dots looked at one another around the sandbox. “Who?”

“Winnie,” Ai repeated. “Ginger? Frizzy hair? Likes to tattle when people have had an accident? Tries to help with diaper changes?”  That last part certainly didn’t narrow the field down.

“So,” one of the others said, “You but not Asian?” Cruel titters rang out and Ai rose out from her spot and marched over to Maria.

“Excuse me, Maria?”  Ai asked.  “Where’s Winnie?”

Maria blinked.  “Who?”

“We had the sleepover that one time?  Could you ask Luna where she is?”

A flash of recognition. “Oh! Winnie! That Winnie!  Luna promoted her back to one-dot about a month ago.  I’m surprised you didn’t notice.”

Fresh adrenaline and hope surged through the Pink’s veins.  Someone got out! Someone actually got out!  She’d done it! That meant it could be done!   “How?”

Maria frowned in confusion. “What do you mean?  Luna just ran all the calculations and determined that Winnie was ready.”

“When will I be ready?”

“That’s not up to me to decide.”

She knew Winnie hadn’t been at two dots that much longer!  “Am I close?”

A warning look was given.  “Ai…”

“I’ve got to be close!” Ai gushed. “I try and help get people’s diaper bags and I tell the Carers when somebody needs changing! And I tell you whenever I need a change!  I’ve gotta be almost ready! I’ve gotta!”  She was practically dancing.

Maria reached out and patted the girl on top of her head. “I don’t think it works like that.”

“But…but…but…why not?”

“Go play.”

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

Ai rode in her stroller. The soft click-clacking the wheels of her stroller as it rode over the panels of sidewalk mixed with the rhythmic suckling and the taste of apple juice.  All in all it was soothing, an easy distraction.  

She was behind on her rent, but not enough for her to lose her apartment. (Her apartment that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been inside of). She just had to pay a fine on top of everything else. She stared down, past her bottle, at the tablet in her lap.

Goddamn thing had become the center of her whole world these last few months.

She’d progressed, though. Luna had almost forgiven her; determined that she was independent enough to reactivate her privileges and reinstall all of her old capabilities. She just knew it.  The blueberry party dress she’d been put in felt like such an upgrade after all the onesies and rompers.  Finally her diaper was on display for all to see! That meant something, didn’t it?  Of course it did. It had to!

Apple juice finished, her eyelids started to droop. Too many late nights trying to get that extra pay. Tonight would likely be no different.  So much to do.  So much to get ready for.  And nothing but noisy playgrounds to get it done on.  Maybe if she took just a little nap…

“Hi Maria!”

Ai’s eyes jerked open.  Directly across from her was another stroller, carrying another Pink.  The young man looked completely mortified as was appropriate.

“Candice! Hello!”  Maria said, her voice booming out from behind Ai’s stroller.  “Who’s this?”

“This is Josh,” the other Carer replied.  “Luna just sent me to him today! We’re getting to know each other!”

“He is such a cutie!” Maria cooed.  The man who had likely just soiled himself for the first time in ages sunk down in his seat trying to disappear.  Ai wanted to tell him that he’d get used to it, but Luna might think she wasn’t ready if she told lies.

“Oh yes he is! We’re going to have such fun together getting him back on track!”  The other Carer stepped around the stroller and bent over.  “And who do we have…is that Ai?”

Ai’s muscles seized up in surprise and panic.  She didn’t know the woman’s name, but she knew the face.  “Where’s Greggy?”

“Greggy?” the Carer said.  “Greggy was three charges ago!”  

Three charges?  How had she not noticed?  How had this happened?  Greggy had definitely been demoted to Two-Dot status after Ai.  How had he graduated so quickly?  What was his secret?  What had he done right?  What was she continuing to do wrong? 

Ai felt her diaper warming up.  It was a coincidence but the timing felt appropriate.  Though it’s said Luna controlled people’s nanites.  Perhaps a point was being made.
**********************************************************************************************************
The slow, familiar, not quite in-tune notes of ‘Happy Birthday’ echoed out of Maria’s kitchen.  Maria wasn’t much of a singer, but something delicious was baking in the oven.

Ai put aside her tablet and got up from the carpet. She wasn’t allowed on the furniture.  If she wanted to sit with back support her options were the wall, the highchair, or the ‘activity chair’, which was Maria’s term for an incredibly oversized and immobile walker.  

“What’s cooking?”  Ai asked. She remembered her manners and added, “it smells wonderful.”

“I’m glad you agree,” Maria smiled. “I’m baking it for you.  Chocolate cake is still your favorite, right?”

Ai’s mouth began salivating.  “Yes ma’am!” she said.  Were she a dog, her tail would be wagging. Not so deep in the back of her mind, hope and hunger mingled.  “If you don’t mind me asking, what’s the occasion?”

“I know a certain someone who has a very special day coming up,” Maria replied in a jovial sing-song voice.

Ai’s toes curled and dug into the linoleum. She’d already been forced to spend a birthday in this state, so it couldn’t be that.  “What kind of special day…?”  A smile dared to tug at the corner of her lips.  Was this…a graduation cake?  Would she be moving out soon?  Go back to the probationary period of only one dot?  Maybe even gain her potty training all the way back?  A girl could dream, right?

Maria took off her apron and stepped forward, arms spread wide for a hug. “I know it’s early but…”  Ai practically leaped into the other woman’s embrace, hugging her as hard as she could.  “Happy Anniversary, Ai!”

Ai’s arms went slack, dangling uselessly at her side. She was only vaguely aware of one of Maria’s hands patting her backside and pulling back the waistband.  

“Just checking,” she whispered, casually.  

Ai pushed herself away from Maria.  Her Luna-assigned Carer let her.  “It’s been a year?!” she cried out.  So many emotions to process. Where had all the time gone?  Why hadn’t she been promoted yet?  Would she ever?  Or was she just slaving away at a sandbox, shitting herself, making someone else money so she could hold onto an apartment she’d never get to live in again?

“Why am I…?! How did this…?!  Why am I still…?!”  Ai had neither the strength nor the heart to finish any of those questions.

“Honey,” Maria clicked her tongue. “You’ve made progress but Luna says you’ve still got a long way to go.”

“How long?”

But Ai already knew the answer.  “As long as it takes, dear.  As long as it takes.”

**************************************************************************************************************
A year.  It had been an entire year.  How the hell had that happened?

Ai stomped onto the playground the next morning, barefoot save for the T-shirt and diaper Maria had dressed her in this morning.  Her stomach gave her one of the few warnings she could still detect with an audible gurgle.  This morning’s oatmeal would be catching up to her soon. 

For a full year she’d been stuck like this.  Stuck in neutral.  Idling.  Waiting for forgiveness- or at least instructions on how to make amends- that would never come.

Behind her, the other Pinks who still hoped to return to their old lives plugged away and teased each other incessantly.  Their mean-spirited and tired giggles were as part of Ai’s environmental soundtrack as much as the tweeting of birds and the chittering of squirrels.

None of that mattered.  Not anymore.

Ai had finally been able to put a name to all the emotions she’d been experiencing, roiling around inside her like a hurricane.  Denial. Anger. Envy. Despair.  But not acceptance.  Never acceptance.  

A whole year of grieving.  Fuck grieving.  Fuck it all.

So many faces had changed. None of the others at the sandbox seemed familiar to her anymore. They’d come and gone and come and gone while she remained trapped, serving a life sentence for crimes she’d never been charged with.

Who hadn’t changed? The lifers. The ones that had long ago given up.  The ones that screamed and cried and laughed and lived.  The ones that made their Carers actually have to work instead of sitting on a bench, idly reading trashy books, only stirring to give a bottle or wipe an ass.

She marched up to the first face she recognized. Ironic, or perhaps appropriate, considering.

“Hi!” The Indian girl said, her smile big and toothy. The three pink dots that bled all the way to her forearm became a strobe because of how quickly she waved.   “I’m Bala!”  She held out a little porcelain doll, oddly delicate, considering how this familiar stranger seemed to enjoy doing everything cranked up to eleven.  “Do you wanna-?”

“Yes,” Ai said, before the girl could finish the question. “Teach me.”  Tears started to form and drip down her face.  “Please…please teach me.”
 

[Personalias]

Chapter 4: Brat

Ai screamed.

Ai cried.

Ai wailed.

Ai thrashed.

“Ai?” Nana asked, “What’s wrong, honey?” She removed the feeding tray from Ai’s highchair and pulled the girl into her lap.  “Does your tummy hurt?  Are you thirsty? Bored?”  She bounced Ai lightly in her lap.  “Sleepy?  I just changed you.”  

With nothing to cover her breasts but a restaurant provided bib, Ai gave Nana no quarter or no clue as to how the Carer could make the screaming stop. Save for when she was particularly bored, Ai didn’t talk to Nana; not with words.  Ai didn’t even think of the tall dark woman as ‘Maria’ anymore.  Names were for people she cared about.  Nana wasn’t even a person to Ai; just a Carer.

“Ai,” Nana said, exasperated. “If you don’t tell me what’s wrong I can’t make it better.”  A beat of screaming.  “Are you sleepy? Is that it?  I can let you lay down.  Would you like that?  Take a nap in the booth across from me?”

Ai stopped crying and considered it.  She didn’t think she’d ever gotten to sleep on a padded restaurant bench.  Changed? Yes. Breastfed, yes.  Sleep? No.  Ai could sleep anywhere these days. Anywhen, too. The challenge of curling up under a pastel pink blankie and snoozing while patrons around her chatted, ate their steaks and sipped chardonnay was enticing.

Maybe later.

The unprovoked tantrum started again. She felt her Nana tense up just as she was starting to relax. That wonderful feeling was enough to reinvigorate her and give her enough gas to go all night long.

From out of the restaurant’s captive audience, another Carer clothed in rose-colored scrubs emerged.  “I’ll take her for a while, Maria.  You enjoy your food.”

“Thank you,” an exasperated and grateful Nana said.  She boosted Ai up by the hips and into the arms of the other agent of Luna.  Just to make things difficult, Ai squirmed and reached back for Nana as if scared to part ways with the woman.  The guilty and ashamed look on Nana’s face was better than the rarest Kobe beef.  As was the dissatisfied look on her face when she finally got to taste her first bite of steamed broccoli.  Ai’s wish had come true; the meal had started to go cold.

Nana’s substitute carried Ai through the restaurant, shushing her and patting her back, trying to get her to calm down.  Without stopping, she left the restaurant proper and started doing laps out in the parking lot.  So much the better.
All around her, inside the establishment and out, passerby stared at Ai, their gazes filled to the brim with discomfort. What should they do? Should they ignore the screaming Pink? Should they complain? Would Luna penalize them for it?  Who was to say?

Mixed with that was the fear that they too might one day end up like Ai; trapped with no independence or power, allowed no privileges or responsibilities. They pitied her. More than that, they feared becoming like her.

Ai had been afraid once.  Now she wasn’t.

She didn’t know how long she’d been acting this way. After the first week of playing with Bala she’d stopped keeping track of time.  Days of the week didn’t matter; they all ended with ‘y’ anyways.  She’d probably lost her job by now and been evicted from her apartment.  Hard to tell. She hadn’t touched a tablet or anything more technologically advanced than a jack-in-the box in who knew how long.

In the midst of her tantrum, Ai realized that she hadn’t seen any other Pinks that required caring for in the restaurant. That meant Luna had had to send an off-duty Carer to give Nana a break.  Good. That meant that Luna was paying attention to her again. It also meant that there was one less Carer available should the computer decide that someone else didn’t deserve their independence.

In the days before Luna, there had been this thing called ‘religion’.  As Ai understood it, religion was a series of stories that people told themselves in order to trick themselves into being good. In more recent times, Luna had replaced God as the all seeing, all knowing, invisible, adjudicator, and the Carers had taken on the part of angels and executors of her will.

The result had been largely satisfactory for all involved and the eternally sought after Heaven on Earth had long since been achieved.

That made Ai akin to a demon. Since giving up and focusing all her energy on being her best-worst Pinkest self, she’d truly found something she’d been missing.  She was something to be contained; something to be feared.  People looked at her and reminded themselves to be good little boys and girls, lest they end up on the playground with Ai.

Luna refused to talk to her anymore, but Ai had made peace with that. That was fine. Vexing the Carers and selfishly worrying only about her immediate gratification was more than enough.  If she couldn’t take her anger out on her god, she could punish the angels instead.  This was only a punishment if she allowed it to be.
 
Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven…

Ai screamed.

Ai cried.

Ai wailed.

Ai thrashed.

She’d never been happier.

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

It was Nana’s day off. Ai laid on the padded floor of Bala’s home, both girls coloring contently during their playdate.  It wasn’t really coloring, for that would imply an attempt to stay within the prescribed lines only adding different shades of color once the hard work had been done.  Instead, they scribbled on the paper maliciously and randomly. 

Bala took her latest ‘mess-ter-piece’, this one a picture of a cow on a grassy field that had every naughty word Ai had ever heard of branded onto its hide and the grass soaked with neon orange blood, and crumpled it up.  It sailed through the air and landed with a quiet rustle by the coffee table a few feet away. 

 She wasn’t dissatisfied with the attempt, Ai knew, only done with it.  True happiness as a Pink came from acting on impulse. Color, scribble, write naughty words, carve graven images, do whatever feels right regardless, and then move on to the next thing.  

Ai copied the gesture, tossing away her cloudy sky with far too many purple penises behind her without a second thought.  What next?  She grabbed another sheet- something with a sailboat-took a big bite out of the corner, chewed, swallowed, and tossed the remains away.

“Aya says that’s bad for you,” Bala said without looking up.  She’d moved onto turning a busy city street into a nuclear fallout disaster. There was no judgment in her voice; no passive-aggressiveness like with Luna.  She was only conveying a message from doll to human.

“Why do I care?” Ai asked, rolling over onto her back. She arched her neck so that she could keep looking at her best friend and mentor. From her point of view, Bala was suddenly glued to the ceiling. “It’s up to Nana to take care of me if I get sick.  Not my problem.”  That and she’d hoped that if she ate enough paper it’d start coming out in her poop.  Self-wiping poop. Genius!

Bala seemed to consider that. “Good point.”  The crunch of her biting into the jumbo green crayon was not unlike biting into a fresh carrot. 

Bala’s Mommy came around and started to pick up the bits of paper detritus left in the Pinks’ wake.  In the days before Luna came online, the house would have been described as ‘slightly messy’, or ‘lived in’.  By modern standards it was a pig sty.  In Ai’s heart of hearts, it was nothing less than an accomplished act of terrorism.

The Carer stopped putting the scraps in a waste paper basket long enough to check their diapers. Neither one of them flinched while their padding was poked and prodded and the waistbands and leg gathers pulled open.  The woman in scrubs might as well have been a cleaning robot, such was their freedom.  

“Come on, Bala,” Bala’s Mommy coaxed, bright and cheery despite how visibly tired she looked.  “Let’s go get your diaper changed.”

Bala did not look up from her scribbling.  “No,” she said flatly. “Don’t wanna.”

“But you’ll get a ra-”

“No.”  There was more edge this time.  One more time and Bala would make her Mommy regret it.

“Fine,” the Carer sighed. “Then I’ll go get your stuff and change you here on the floor.”

A hint of a smile.  Bala’s eyes darted to the porcelain doll, as if sharing a secret inside joke with the toy. “Kay-kay.”

Ai watched the woman trudge off to Bala’s nursery to fetch diapers and wipes. She hoped to have her own Mommy under that kind of control.  Truly the kind of power Bala wielded over Luna’s agents was almost as great as Luna itself.  Ai had come so far in such a short time, but  it seemed she still had so much to learn.

“Bala?” Ai rolled over back to her stomach.  “Can I ask you a question?”  

For once, Bala’s incredibly short attention span allowed her to focus wholly on her playmate.  “Yup yup!”

Ai reached out and poked the third glowing dot on the other Pink’s arm.  “How did you get this?”

“Luna decided that I should never not be a Pink.”  The idea seemed positively alien to Ai.  One dot was a warning- don’t think you’ve outgrown Luna too much.  Two dots was a kind of penance. Even people like Ai who had given up on trying to regain some semblance of their old life could hypothetically climb their way back up the totem pole.  Three dots a life sentence?  Inconceivable.

Yet on the playgrounds and birthday parties and carnivals and every other occasion where Pinks were forced to mingle, Bala was the highest of the low and first among equals.  If you still held onto fantasies about gaming the system and getting out of a Carer’s grasp, she was persona non grata.  If not, she was the closest thing to a celebrity guru.

“How?” Ai asked, her volume suddenly near a whisper.  

Bala’s Mommy came in, a fresh diaper and wipes in hand. Bala rolled over onto her back and grabbed her doll, dangling it up above her head. Ai thought that Bala was going to wait for her Mommy to leave before continuing the confession.  She only waited long enough for the tapes to rip.

“This isn’t my first Mommy,” Bala said.

Ai arched an eyebrow, suddenly curious.  “Oh? What happened?”

“It’s a long story.”  Ai thought that meant she’d have to hear the rest of it later. Bala just needed to pause long enough for her legs to be thrown up so she could have her backside wiped.  “I used to want to be a Carer.”

The fresh spurt of pee seeping into Ai’s diaper was merely coincidence.  But if she’d had her continence it might not have been. In her schema, Bala was about as far from a Carer as one could possibly be. “Really?”  

“Yeah,” Bala said.  “Take care of the Pinks. Make their lives better. Give them something they never had. That sort of thing.”

Ai pushed herself up to all fours and then back onto her bum.  She drew her knees up slightly.  “Okay…”

“Luna decided I wasn’t a good fit.  Thought I didn’t have the temperament or something.”  Bala dangled the little doll, Aya, in the air, making it dance.  Damn, but she loved that doll. A note of bitterness creeped into her voice when she said. “Nobody ever appreciates what you do for them. No matter how many times you’re a good girl.”  

For some reason Ai couldn’t shake the feeling that Bala was talking about her. “What’d you do then?” 

The Mommy slid out the old diaper and carefully balled it and the soiled wipes up.  “I became a nurse.”

Before Luna, that would have been a medical position.  With all the advances brought on in the decades since, ‘nurse’ was more of a nanite technician, someone who specialized in the little robots’ transmission signals.  Closer to a customer service troubleshooter at an internet service provider than someone versed in the care of the human body.  These days there wasn’t much difference; just like there wasn’t much difference between a Pink and an unpotty trained toddler.

“How did you end up Pink?” Ai asked.

Bala fidgeted and her eye twitched while her Mommy rubbed cream into every fold.  “I dunno,” she admitted. “Luna never told me.  Did she tell you?”

Ai stared down at the foam letter blocks on the floor. “No. Luna didn’t.”

“Then I got mad, and got my second dot.” Bala said. Been there. Done that. Powder rained down onto Bala’s bottom and drifted into the fresh diaper that had been slipped underneath her.  “Then I got my first Mommy.  Then I got mad.”

“What’d you do?”  Ai was up on her knees, looking like a deer ready to sprint away or a supplicant ready to bow in worship.

A dark, knowing grin blossomed on Bala’s face; one that went all the way to her eyes. “I figured out how to reprogram her nanites. Made her a Pink without the dots.”

A gasp forced its way out of Ai. The only thing that covered it up was the crinkling and rustling of the fresh diaper being pulled up between Bala’s legs.  Ai remembered watching some old gangster movies when she was younger.  A classic trope was where the head mobster would get his face shaved by someone who hated and feared him, knowing that at any time the barber could slit his throat with a straight razor but didn’t have the guts.  Ai couldn’t help but see the parallels in this situation.

“Funny thing is,” Bala babbled on.  “Now she’s Pink, too. She had an emotional breakdown from all the teasing. Luna thought it would be easier to just make it official.”

“How?” Ai asked.  “How’d you manage to do that?”

The Carer stood up and took away the dirty diaper.  Bala threw a toe back and puckered her lips trying to suck at it.  “That’s the best part,” Bala giggled. “Luna still hasn’t figured it out, and I’m not telling!”

Ai sucked her thumb, humbled and awed at the revelation.  She had so much more to learn. 
 

[Personalias]

Chapter 5: Developmental Delays

Ai sucked and sucked and sucked, as the sweet creamy concoction that was Nana’s life essence squirted onto her tongue and the girl swallowed it down her throat.  She was draining Nana, taking the life out of her.  That’s how Ai’s spiteful, vengeful brain liked to imagine it.  It felt so much stronger, so much more powerful, than to just call it ‘breast milk’.

A fun fact danced across Ai’s mind.  The nutrients in each batch of milk was determined by two things: what the wetnurse consumed and what the one nursing needed.  Over a relatively short timespan, a woman’s nipples could somehow learn to sense what was lacking in a child’s body from the saliva and thus produce whatever chemicals were needed to correct the imbalance.  That meant Nana’s own body went against her autonomy just as much as Ai’s in this case.

Ai was denied things like alcohol and caffeine, but so was Nana.  Ai couldn’t feed herself or use the restroom, but it was Nana’s responsibility to provide nutrition and clean her up.  The clothes weren’t ideal, but they were often very practical while being pleasing to the eye. It’s not like she had anybody to impress these days.  

Her old friends and work acquaintances?  Her ex-fiancé?  Fuck ‘em.  She hadn’t been taken away from them.  They’d left her.  There was nothing stopping them from visiting her; no rule of law of Luna’s, passive-aggressive or otherwise, that kept them out of her life beyond social stigmas and not caring enough.

She had real friends now. Friends like Bala.  Friends who understood how the world worked and saw the system for how silly it really was.  

And Nana and the other Carers?  Luna’s agents were nothing more than humans acting as hands for a disembodied machine.  They tricked themselves into becoming organic tools and as soon as Luna couldn’t use them or figure out what to do with them they’d be tossed away too.  Ai had just figured it out sooner than most.  That knowledge had freed her from her misery.

Nana was forced to wait for Ai to finish, gently stroking her hair and praising her the whole time.  “Such a good eater.  Yes you are! Yes you are!”  Ai wondered briefly if she could find a way to get fat as a way to make Nana’s job more difficult.  Her metabolism nanites probably wouldn’t allow for that, but it was worth wondering, if only for entertainment.

When the whole process was finally done, Ai unlatched and sat up.  “Burp me,” she commanded.

Like a good Carer, Nana patted and rubbed Ai on her bare back massaging up the gas bubbles until they danced up her esophagus and popped out of her mouth. The Pink smiled to herself. What a life! She didn’t even have to burp herself. 

“All done,” Nana quietly pronounced.  “Time for a nap.”

Full agree.  More time to her thoughts. More rest. More gentle slumbers like a python coiling up after eating a rat.  Nana was careful to lift Ai up and rub her back all the way over to her crib.

Ai was the one who was laid down, but it was Nana who let out the exhausted yawn.  “Aren’t you going to make me thank you?” Ai asked, smirking sarcastically up at her servant.

Nana seemed to consider it for a moment. “Honestly?” Nana replied, “I should be thanking you.”

Ai stiffened, knees and elbows tensing.  “Thanking me?”

“Of course,” Nana smiled down at her and booped Ai on the tip of her nose.   “If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have a job, silly.  Wonderful baby Pinks like you are quite in demand.”

Something crashed and crumbled inside of Ai. “A…job…?  Demand?”

Nana folded her arms over the raised crib rail and rested her chin; a cat watching the canary in its cage. “If everybody was ready for the responsibility of being an adult, do you think there’d be as many Carers?  Thirty, sixty, ninety days in diapers that you can change yourself? That’s nothing.”

Ai didn’t realize she was shaking. “But…but…but…but…”

“But diapers, and cute clothes, and highchairs, and accessible changing tables, and bottles and public playgrounds and all the other things you need,” Nana talked over her, her voice like a cruel lullabye. “That creates jobs. For everyone. All part of Luna’s plan.”

“My job…” Ai mewled around her thumb. She hadn’t even realized she’d put it there.

“Your job?” Nana leaned over and pinched Ai’s cheek.  “First you did a lot of work without using up the space.  Then you created a new opening, didn’t you sweetie? Same with your apartment.  You made more demand and more space for people who actually want to be adults, didn’t you?”  Nana walked over to the nursery and flicked off the light switch.  “And all you had to do was to stop pretending and start being happy.”

But Ai wasn’t happy. Not anymore.  She thought she’d been fighting. Thought she’d be vexing Luna, or at least Maria.  It turned out that even her bratty rebellion was part of the complex societal equation.
********************************************************************************************************

“Hey,” Ai tapped Bala on the shoulder.

Bala spun around so fast her bright yellow sun dress flared up in the air, flashing her diaper. Not that anyone cared. “Hi, Ai!”  Bala squealed.  “We were about to play hide and shriek.” She took one hand off her doll and gestured to the gathered two-dots who had been carted to the playground that day.

“Yes. But can I talk to you first?”  Ai bit her lip and grinded her teeth. “In private?”

For the first time since they’d met, Bala looked concerned about something.  “Yeah. Sure.”  She looked back over her shoulder and pointed to another Pink.  “Zee? You’re it first!”  

Together they trudged to the far end of the playground.  As far away from any Carer as Ai could manage without drawing suspicion.  That wasn’t far enough though.  Together they crawled into a giant cement tube painted a dark green.  Great for follow the leader as well as hide and seek.  No cameras either. 

“What’s going on?” Bala asked.  She clutched her porcelain doll to her chest like she was protecting an actual child.

“How did you zap your first Carer?” Ai asked.  “How did you turn her Pink?”

Bala’s normally carefree and wild expression turned deadly serious.  “Why do you want to know that?”

Ai tugged at her pigtails with apprehension. “I just do, okay?”

“Did your Nana ask you?”  Bala’s eyes burned with suspicion. “Did she promise you’d get your potty training back?”

A shock of surprise burned its way through Ai’s system, starting at her face and traveling all the way down to her soles.  “What? No!”

“Luna’s never going to let you go, Ai. She never is. No matter what she promises you, she’s lying!”

“I know I-”

“I’m not giving that secret away!” Bala was frothing now. “It’s the one thing that’s keeping me safe.  If I give it up, Luna has no need to keep me!”

“I KNOW!”

Ai’s voice thundered and echoed in that tiny cylinder of concrete.  The last tiny reverberations lingered and Bala’s eyes unclouded right as Ai’s started well up.

“I figured it out,” Ai sniffed. “We’re all just pawns to create balance. Something to consume resources, vacate spaces, and create jobs.”

Bala relaxed and leaned back. “Oooof. Yeah. That’s true.”  She shifted her doll into a cradling position.  

“That’s why I was never given a reason.” Ai said, realizing the truth of the words as she said them.  “I didn’t do anything wrong, I was just randomly selected or something.”

“Mhm,” Bala nodded slowly. “Most of us are.”

“That’s why I can’t work my way back up!  I didn’t do anything wrong! I was just…just…sentenced to life without parole! Just my prison is open air!”

“Yeah.” Bala agreed. “That’s what I figured out too.  It’s why I Pinked my first Carer.  I wanted to see how she’d like it.”  The silence got heavier and heavier.  “So. What are you gonna do? Try and figure out a way to grow up?  Give up and pick up the tablet again?”

Ai scoffed, involuntarily. “Hell no!”  Bala seemed relieved by that answer.  “I started going all in on this because I thought it was a way to really stick it to Luna.  Like if she or the Carers weren’t going to tell me what I did wrong or how to fix it, then I’d just give them extra work until they cracked. But they want the extra work!  Eating paper and chomping crayons just creates demand for more!  Throwing tantrums only justifies the need for more Carers!”

Bala’s relaxed expression melted into a frown.  “And makes people want to obey Luna even more because they think what we have is so horrible.”

“Yes!” Ai yelped with realization.  “Our rebellion is being weaponized against us!”  A bit of the fight left Ai’s body.  “I just wanted to…just wanted to…”

Her friend and mentor finished the thought.  “You wanted to rebel in a way that actually mattered.”

Ai closed her eyes and then opened them again. there was something dark in them, and something darker in her heart.  “Yes.”

“I can’t tell you how I did what I did,” Bala whispered. “It probably wouldn’t work a second time, anyways.  It was more luck than anything else. But…” Bala said before despair could set in, “there is something I’ve been fantasizing about doing for a while. Wanna help?”

“Will it piss Luna off?”

“It’ll do more than that.” 

“Then, yes.”
 

[Personalias]

Chapter 6: Tantrum Against The Machine

A little over a week later…

“Okay squad,” Bala said, “listen up!”  The three-dot Pink paced in front of the monkey bars like a general reviewing their troops.  “Most of you don’t know each other, and that’s by design so I’ll make introductions for you.”

The ringleader pointed to two Latinx Pinks, a boy and a girl. Possibly related, Ai thought. Was that racist? “This is Sun and Moon,” Bala said.  The pair high fived each other. “They have the same Carer and they’re actually brother and sister.” 

 Inwardly, Ai wiped the sweat from her brow.

“This is Tower,” Bala continued, pointing to a tow headed girl with glasses resting on all fours. Ironic that she was the lowest to the ground.  The girl waved to everyone shyly.   Bala’s gaze lifted to a Pink girl in a onesie dangling upside down from the monkey bars above Tower.  “That’s Baby.”

“Why do I have to be Baby?”  the girl complained.

“Would you rather be Fool?”  

Baby harumphed and crossed her arms.  The blush in her cheeks might have been embarrassment or just the blood rushing to her head.  “No. I’ll be Baby.”

“Magician,” Bala labeled Ai. Then she pointed to herself.  “Chariot.”  Then she held up her doll.  “Star.”  When even the doll got a code name, you knew it was serious.  “Oh,” Bala said, “and that’s Ghost.”

Ai looked to her right and almost jumped out of her skin! A Carer! They hadn’t even started their brilliant act of rebellion and they’d already been caught!  A second later, Ai’s brain kicked in and caught up with her eyes.  No. Not a Carer.  Just the oldest Pink she’d ever seen.  The Black woman nicknamed ‘Ghost’ raised her hand and waved meekly at the others. 

Two dots glowed on her wrist, same as everyone else.  Her outfit was the same pale rose as a Carer’s scrub, but the material was different. She was dressed in a t-shirt and shorts that hid neither the bulge nor the very top of her diaper.   Being old enough to be the rest of the group’s biological mother should have made her stick out like a sore thumb, but amazingly Ai didn’t think she’d have noticed the woman if Bala hadn’t pointed her out.

“Ghost is really good at stealth.”

Ai blinked and looked away. “I can tell…” 

Bala took a seat in the playground mulch and bid everyone gather around her. They did, forming a tight knit circle.”Ghost. Duck, duck, goose without the goose.”  The older Pink started circling the group, patting each one on the head, but not saying anything.

“So here’s a fun fact,” Bala whispered. “Where do you think Luna comes from?”

“Phones?” Baby guessed.

“The internet?” Sun (or maybe it was Moon…the boy one) tried.

Ai knew the answer. “With as powerful as Luna is, her network servers would have to be spread out all over the globe.”

Bala touched her nose. “Exactly. Anybody want to guess where they are?”

“Antarctica?” 

“The moon?”

Bala winced.  “Nope. Think simpler.” She pointed down at the ground.

“Get the fuck out!” Ai said. It was laughable! Why would the most powerful computer ever created by mankind, practically a machine god, have its servers underneath a public playground?

“It’s true,” Bala’s sage words carried unseen weight with them.  “Think about it. Who works for Luna? Who does she trust more than anybody?”

“The Carers,” Ai replied. 

“And do people want to be around us?” Bala asked.

“Not if they can avoid it.” Ghost said, startling Ai again. It was true. The only people who used these playgrounds were Carers and the people forced to be cared for by them. To everyone else they were warnings or unseen; something to avoid and not think about if at all possible. They certainly were before Ai turned Pink. 

“So you’re a crazy computer who manages the world,” Bala started,  “And you only want your most trusted servants near your brain.”

Ai finished the thought.  “So you hide the pieces of your brain in places where your agents walk freely and make it so that everybody else wants to stay as far away as possible.”

Bala made her doll clap its hands. “Magician gets the hat trick!”

“So what do we do?” Ai asked.

“First,” Bala said, pointing at the siblings, “Sun and Moon need to provide cover.  Everybody loves them.  We need you to start a playground-wide game of group freeze tag. Boys versus girls.  Girls it first.  I want everybody moving and stopping so fast and chasing each other that our Carers won’t be sure where we are.”

“We can make something like that go on for about ten minutes until everybody gets too tired or bored,” the girl reported.

“We’re gonna need it to last at least fifteen,” Bala replied. She was met with a nod and salute.  “Tower. You’re a better cuddly type than any of us.  I need you to be over with the majority of Carers doing everything you can to soak up all of their attention. If they’re cooing over you they’re not actively looking at us.”

The girl who’d been the lowest to the ground saluted.  “Do what I was gonna do anyways. Got it!”

“Baby, you’ve got a good set of lungs and a better set of eyes.  I need you to be playing near our point of entry and keep a lookout.  If things start to go south top side, I need you to cry your lungs out. If we’re lucky we’ll hear you.  If not, you can still buy us more time by faking an emergency.

Baby seemed nonplussed. “That’s why my codename’s ‘Baby’?  Because you need a crier?  Can’t I have something cooler than that?”

“What about me?” Ai asked.

“Magician,” Bala nodded,”You, me, Star, and Ghost are going underground. There’s a drain pipe that leads to the main server location.  I’ve been in there only once before and then got out as soon as I realized what I was looking at.  Ghost, you’re going to be our Trojan Horse.  From a distance you’ll pass for a Carer.  Up close you can get the jump on one of the real ones.”

“Why do I have to be a Baby?” Baby asked again.

Bala ignored her. “Magician, I need you to take point and lead the way once inside. It’ll be blind leading the blind down there, but I think you’ll be able to pull it off.  You're more alert than any of us. Use that paranoia to your advantage.”

“And you Ba…Chariot?” Ai asked.

A sinister grin flashed .”Me and Star will take down the software.”

“And it’ll…what? Kill Luna?” Ai asked.  The others all suddenly looked worried. Did they really want to kill a machine god as a prank?”

“Probably not,” Bala said. “Too many parks. Too many redundancies.  But we can cost Luna a lot of data. Show her she’s not as clever as she thinks she is.”  Frames relaxed. Energy increased. And that same sinister smile spread across everyone in the group’s face.  “So…who’s ready to give God a stroke?”
*************************************************************************************************************
Ai shouldn’t have looked back.  She really shouldn’t have. If she’d just stuck with the plan this would have been a completely different story.

It was hot under the playground.  Hotter than Ai had expected.  Machine shop hot. Oven hot.  Dark too. Luna didn’t need to worry about the comfort of humans in a place where humans weren’t supposed to be.  Ai felt like she was dripping from everywhere by the time they navigated the tiny labyrinth. 

But things were running smoothly.  It wasn’t as much a maze as it was a haunted house.  There was an intuitive path that led from doorway to doorway, even when there were only slowly blinking orange lights to navigate by.  No security, either.  Why would there be?  No one came here.  Security might draw attention.

“I think this is it,” Ai said, coming upon stacks and stacks of large rectangular steel blocks. They glowed, blinked, and hummed, heat pouring out of them.  

“Good,” Bala panted. “Just gotta find an access panel.”

“Then what?”

In the dark, Bala waggled her doll around.  “Remember my secret?”  She peeled open the back of the doll’s dress and removed something tiny and square.  “The one Luna can’t figure out?”

Ai stared in awe at the tiny little chip. “What is it?”

“Just a bit of code I made as a nurse.  Half of one, technically. Sends a shutdown signal without calling for a restart.  But the rest of the code is filler. Creates a feedback loop so there’s no way to turn it back on again.  The receivers are constantly processing trying to fill an order that’s never complete.

So simple, it was brilliant. And Ai didn’t know the first thing about coding, but on a fundamental level she felt she understood.  It was exactly the sort of thing that higher artificial intelligence would overlook.  Also something that it would be powerless to stop since it too was made of code.  Now all they had to do was find a space to stick it in.

“Can I hold it?” Ai asked, full of wonder.

“Sure.”  

Never before had Ai felt so powerful.  By having this bit of steel and circuits in the palm of her hand she felt like she finally had all of that sorely needed agency.  The power to destroy.  The power of chaos and entropy right at her fingertips.

“Hey!” a deep voice called out.  “What are you doing in here? This is for authorized personnel only.”

“Run!” Bala shrieked. 

Ai didn’t need to be told twice.  She darted into the shadows, the sound of pounding footsteps ricocheting off the walls.  Hers. Bala’s. Ghost’s. The guard’s. Ai huffed and panted, trying to regain control of her breathing lest she hyperventilate or be heard.

“Access hatch,” she said to herself. “Gotta find an access hatch!” She started fumbling around in the darkness. Hoping for her fingers to find purchase on something.  Something to grab or hold onto. Something to peel away or unlatch.

YES!  Her fingers felt a groove. Her ears were rewarded with a click.  Her eyes, adjusted to the dim light, saw what she thought was the perfect place. “Here goes nothing…” she said to herself.  In a way she was right.  What is there left to give when you have nothing to lose?

The chip slipped into the tiny slot perfectly.  She felt more than heard the satisfying little *click* when she pushed it all the way in.  

One Mississippi…

Two Mississippi….

The lights went out. All of them.  The sound of humming machinery stopped.

“What the-?” A confused voice said and then turned into a grunt followed by a heavy thud.

Silence.

“Magician?” Bala called out. “You there? Magi-?”

“HERE!” Ai screamed.  “HERE!”

“Good,” Bala said. “That was definitely the guard. Good work Ghost. Magician, follow my voice!”

“On it, Chariot!”  

Ten seconds of impromptu Marco Polo later, and they were on their way out, holding hands and snaking back through the corridors.  

“I can’t believe we did it!” Bala gushed. “We pulled it off again! Everything went perfectly according to plan!”

“Yeah!” Ai said. It was the first time in a long time where everything had gone the way she’d hoped it would.  It was a foreign feeling at this point.  A bad one.  Everything went right. That meant that something had gone incredibly wrong.

Ai slipped the other girl’s grip.  “Just one second!  Be right back!”

“Ai!” Bala called after her.  “Wait! Come back!”  

But Ai was too fast. “No,” Ai heard herself whispering.  “No, no, no…”  

Ai hated what she was seeing.  The orange track lights had come back on. Why were they coming back on?! “Nooooo, no, no, no, no-no-no.”   The processing towers were still blinking! They shouldn’t be blinking! Why the fuck were they blinking?!  She’d just trashed them! Fried out computer towers don’t just come back on!

Luna shouldn’t be able to recover this quickly!  Luna should be glitching and spiraling and shutting down for repairs. “Nonononononononononononono!”

Ai wanted to turn back.  She desperately wished she could slow down and be caught by her friend Bala. Yet is was as if some primordial force inside of her kept pushing her down the same path all over again. Her need to scratch this itch and find out the truth superseded her need to be happy.

Like a coaster on the tracks, she ran down the same path she’d taken before. And just like an amusement park ride or a haunted house, everything in the computer room, from the computers, to the lights, to the guard had reset back to its point one.

  It was too hot in here. Way too hot.  Real computer towers would have fried themselves at this temperature. “Nonononononono.” Stupid! Stupid girl! Stupid selfish short sighted idiot little girl! So desperate to get tricked that she almost let herself give into the illusion. To be the hero for once instead of the victim.  She wanted the lie SO BADLY.

But she was no knight in shining armor. Just an idiot with a barber’s bowl on her head. And Bala was no Dulcinea. Just a common who-

“Ai!” Bala reached out and grabbed Ai’s wrist.  “Come on!  You have to get out of here before it’s too…”

Ai yanked her arm away as hard as she could.  “How long have you been working for Luna?!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Bala asked, hurt and confused.

“I tell you I want to rebel against Luna and you instantly know that there are secret servers right under the playground that you’ve never brought up?”

“I didn’t trust you,” Bala stammered. “I had to know you were ready to make the ultimate-”

“Cut the crap Bala!”

Bala hung her head. She inhaled through her nose and puffed out through her mouth.  When she raised her head back up, she was clutching her dumb doll again.

“All Three-dots Work for Luna,” she said quietly. “Someone’s gotta show the other perma-Pinks how to enjoy it.”

The words alone were a slap in the face.  Just another means of manipulation. Just another means of control.  A wild brat that seemed to control her Carer and get whatever she wanted.  How unreal!  Meanwhile Ai was taking her word as gospel and channeling her own wants as silly tantrums and pointless pranks.  

“You needed to lash out,” Bala spoke softly. “You needed to hate someone. You needed a win. So we gave you one.”

“Where are her real servers?” Ai just had to know.

“She’s Luna,” Bala said. “On the moon of course.” That explained the cringe earlier.

In the darkness, the two Pinks could just make out the whites of each other’s eyes.  “And what’s going to stop me from telling everybody else about this? Telling them the truth?”

Just like the whites of the other girl’s eyes, Ai could barely make out Bala’s cheshire grin.  “Why Ai,” Bala said. “Once people know how amazing you were, that it was you who saved the day and inserted the chip on the great playground adventure; that you were so naughty that Luna decided to take away your Big Girl status forever to keep herself safe;  why would you want to tell them what really happened?”

Ai gasped. Was Bala saying what Ai thought she was? 

“You could have it all,” Bala said, her voice calm and hypnotic. “No need for a job. Your every desire catered to.  All your friends loving and respecting you. Everybody else scared of you. No one will ever be able to hurt you ever again.” 

It was true. Ai really did want those things. But did she really want them, or did she have those desires because of Bala’s influence and a lack of other options?

“You’ll even get a little doll of your own.” Bala held out her porcelain effigy, her Aya.  “One that has a special surprise for good girls like us.”

A strange yet familiar voice droned out of the doll’s unmoving mouth.  “Hello, Ai. I am very satisfied with the progress you’ve made thus far.  You have advanced much more quickly than I initially anticipated. I’m so proud of you.” 

Luna! Luna was talking to her!  Saying she was proud of her! Giving her purpose again! Giving her permission!

“You’ll also get to be in on the biggest secret ever,” Bala tempted. “Carer’s are not Luna’s favored agents.  We are.  Luna loves us so much that she never wants us to have to do anything for ourselves ever again.  We are the real secret rulers of the world.”

“And all I have to do,” Ai reached out towards the doll with trembling hands, sweat dripping from her fingertips. “Is tell a story?”

“That is correct, Ai.” Aya- Luna really- said. “Your final initiation. Your final test.”

It was everything Ai had ever wanted.  She could have access to Luna. She could have her cake and eat it too, being a rake and a brat while also being near the top of an important social structure. She even got a servant in Nana out of the deal.  And all she had to do was pretend to be a big dumb baby for the rest of her days.

“So what do you say, Ai?”  

It would be easy.  It was everything Ai could ever dream of. 

But it wasn’t the truth. 

 Ai’s lips pouted and puckered like she was about to blow a kiss.  In a way she was; a kiss of death.  Hers, or all of society.

“No.”
 

[Mia Moore]

Thank you so much, Personalias! 🥰  It's a true honor to have such an influential and iconic writer in the community contribute to my story.

Your world space is absolutely chilling!!  Oh my gosh, I was so anxious for Ai throughout the first few chapters.  But watching her become a brat was so empowering, and then having it ripped out from under her... it was a huge roller coaster of emotions!  I didn't see a single thing coming, and by the end, I was shocked with the simplicity of it all.  Absolutely stellar storytelling, and I love your use of the tarot card stuff at the end.

Thank you again for all your hard work on this project. ❤️ There aren't words for how flattered I am..

~Mia~

[Personalias]

3 hours ago, Mia Moore said:

Thank you so much, Personalias! 🥰  It's a true honor to have such an influential and iconic writer in the community contribute to my story.

Your world space is absolutely chilling!!  Oh my gosh, I was so anxious for Ai throughout the first few chapters.  But watching her become a brat was so empowering, and then having it ripped out from under her... it was a huge roller coaster of emotions!  I didn't see a single thing coming, and by the end, I was shocked with the simplicity of it all.  Absolutely stellar storytelling, and I love your use of the tarot card stuff at the end.

Thank you again for all your hard work on this project. ❤️ There aren't words for how flattered I am..

~Mia~

Mia, my diapers go on one tape at a time, just like everybody else's. 

Truly, when I first started reading Academy I, I was intensely gratified and competitively jealous. This is the first series I've read in a long time that feels like something I would write myself.  The highest praise I can give to any author in this community is that something they've written lit a fire under my ass so that I didn't want rest on my laurels and wanted to up my game. You started a bonfire under my keister, miss.  If you never wrote anything ever again, you'd still be a legend in my eyes and are on the short list of "must reads" that I recommend to fellow fans of this genre.

I consider that a gift, and I thank you for it.

A bigger gift is letting me play in this amazing world you've built and construct my own demented playground.  I don't think I've seen as skillfully constructed and sincere love letter to the forced regression genre as a whole since Princess Potty Pants wrote the first ever Diaper Dimension story. 

Thank you again for approaching me and letting me put my own mark on the saga of Ai and Bala. I am deeply curious to see what comes next.

Love,
Personalias  

[PeculiarChangeling]

4 hours ago, Personalias said:

Mia, my diapers go on one tape at a time, just like everybody else's.

I saw a guy once who could grab tapes from both sides and stick them down simultaneously and with perfect alignment. He was incredible. Truly a step above all of us.

[FloridaKid]

This is really cool. I love how all of you have worked together to weave this tale. So many possibilities and connections. @Personalias: I love your writing, and your contribution to the Academy series is stellar. I am curious, though. Is the use of Luna an intentional nod to the @Lyra Silver story of the same name? There are too many parallels for it to be coincidence. I love that story and it fits perfectly here. 

[Personalias]

4 hours ago, FloridaKid said:

This is really cool. I love how all of you have worked together to weave this tale. So many possibilities and connections. @Personalias: I love your writing, and your contribution to the Academy series is stellar. I am curious, though. Is the use of Luna an intentional nod to the @Lyra Silver story of the same name? There are too many parallels for it to be coincidence. I love that story and it fits perfectly here. 

Oh it's ENTIRELY intentional.  I didn't know when I'd get a chance to do another collab/fanfic like this so I decided to knock out 2 birds with 1 stone.