Academy II (Complete)

[PeculiarChangeling]

1 hour ago, Sophie ♥ said:

I knew this was coming before you posted it, Penn.  But I gotta just jump in here to say.  One, I am never going to let Mia forget that when you wrote her life, it's in the format of an S&P story!! 😈  Two, you did a REALLY good job imitating our style.  

Also, I wanna be the first to say it.  Your story is 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

You could say it was a bit of a "Meta" Moore situation 🤭 It just seemed like it fit!

 

[BabyLexie]

Just caught up on everything... holy hell. 🤯 This is a wild way to play out the final chapter of this story. Lynchian, Charlie Kaufman-ian, an increasingly dissociative maze as Ai tumbles through the cosmos like a bug, until she hits the windshield of self-awareness.

Multiverse narratives rarely embrace the notion that, in an infinite multiverse, fiction itself must be included. Infinity encompasses anything conceivable and inconceivable: if we can imagine it, a universe exists somewhere. Looping in and homaging other ABDL niche universes (Diaper Dimension, Keeperverse) is a really effective way of showcasing this.

And inviting other authors into your story is a great way of showcasing the recursive nature of narrative. Time and again, Ai and Bala chase each other, effectively trapping the other in hell. But we see different variations, different themes, which blend together and help feed into the overall tapestry of the characters. Ai was created by Mia Moore, but she's also now covered in other authors' fingerprints too. I think that's a beautiful manifestation of the way humans tell stories together, passed along through time.

What an ambitious piece of literature. Amazing work Mia and all the other authors involved.

[PeculiarChangeling]

1 hour ago, BabyLexie said:

Ai was created by Mia Moore, but she's also now covered in other authors' fingerprints too I think that's a beautiful manifestation of the way humans tell stories together, passed along through time.

I just need to highlight this and make sure it gets the recognition it deserves, because holy crud, this is wonderful.

[bbykimmy]

Academy II
By Kimmy

"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 sits in her office, always dark whether or not the sun had set. Piles of papers and books lay strewn across every flat surface available. The desk, the table, even the top of a box that should have been discarded eons ago. Ash and smoke are old friends here. So is introspection.]

Reality is a funny thing when you look at it from the right angle.  Like one of those creations that look like a pile of garbage, but as you move around it you see an entirely different picture.  It could go from a collection of broken bottles to a rendition of the Mona Lisa, or it could go from a pile of ducks in disarray to Supergirl flying through the air wearing a diaper.

If you were looking at it from the right angle, it seemed like diapers were around a lot of corners.  Like there was some capricious god who ultimately believed that humanity was, in truth, overgrown infants.  Toddlers at best.

Every cartoon had an episode where the characters ended up in diapers.  Every TV show had some story where the main character returned to childhood, or regressed, or possessed the body of their younger self.  And they always seemed to involve diapers.

For being such a short part of the average person's life experience, the universe itself seemed strangely skewed toward those first few, helpless years of human life.

And there were a lot more weird occurrences in the world than the average person would ever believe.  I'd seen some strange things in my line of work.

I had a feeling that today would be no different.

[A figure at the door.]

"Miss Sinclair?"  

Shō Maitland.  Our paths had crossed before.  He’d left me at the altar.  I had thought we were done for good then, but there was no such justice in the world.  Trouble followed him, and it was the night he left me that I first saw the world for what it was: paper-thin walls separated us from everything and nothing.

Shō's body was a sculpted temple, a testament to his strength and power.  Even now, I longed for his touch, though he had left my heart cracked and bleeding like a wounded animal dropped in a vase of thorns, no rose in sight.

"You've got a lot of nerve to walk in here, Big Show."  He hated that name.  My jab was about as subtle as a midnight train in a graveyard of dreams.  Ideally he'd just turn and walk away.  But it seemed I was short on luck.  

"You have every right to be mad at me.  To hate me, even, but–"

"But nothing.  You don't have to tell me my rights, Maitland.  I'm the detective here." I wielded his last name like a weapon.  It should have been mine, after all.  I knew where to find the sharp edges.  He'd burned any fondness I had for him to the ground that day three years ago. 

Answers were all I wanted the next day.  Answers were all I had ever wanted.  It was the world that was short on giving them.

Shō had about three seconds before he met the man that replaced him in my life: Samuel Colt.  My hand was already gripping the pistol under the desk.

"It's Aya."  One second left.  "She's the new priestess of the Argentum."

There were very few things of interest that the man who threw me into the pit of nothingness could have said, the pit that tore open the seams of reality itself, but that was one of them.  Ayoka Kanoska.  We'd known her before she came into her power, before she learned to cut those threads, before she learned to turn sideways.  And the Argentum was the last place reality needed her to be.

The Argentum Astrum, the Silver of the Stars, was an occult order that specialized in pudormancy.  Plutomancers, kleptomancers, oneiromancers, even dipsomancers - I'd dealt with them all at one point or another in these past three years of enlightened insanity, but purdormancers had a particularly nasty way of turning things sideways.

Purdormancy was drawing the humiliation from others and wielding it to shape things to the mancer's will.  The Argentum was a nasty bunch and this news lined up with the way the city's corners seemed a little more frayed than usual.

I sighed in exasperation.  "How'd you find out?"

"You're a smart woman, Ai.  I'm sure I don't have to spell it out for you."  

I tried not to be too blatant as I scanned him again.  His top half was clothed in the way I expected, a skin-tight shirt that showed off the abs of Adonis with a long jacket that would let him conceal whatever he needed on his person.  But his pants - they weren't the skinny jeans I knew to be his favorite.  They were baggy things, but even with that, I could see the bulge in his crotch that wasn't his manhood.  That telltale roundness between his legs that showed they'd gotten to him.

Well, that someone had.  Might have been a pornomancer.  But he wouldn't have been standing in my office prattling on about the Argentum if that were the case.

And I couldn't even tease him about it.  If I did, it was just giving the Argentum more power, so with a face straighter than my heart, I nodded.  "Don't think about it too much.  You came to the right place, much as I hate to say it.  We were a good team once, Shō - but this won't be some heartfelt reunion for us.  I won't–"  I had almost said leave you high and dry but I could tell he wasn't, and humiliating him further - even by accident - would only make my job harder.  "–let you down.  This is bigger than the two of us, even if I blame you for my tumble into this world."

Shō’s Dear John had told me that he left me for my own good, that the world he was born into wasn't the one that I knew to be real.  That there were things out there beyond my belief or understanding, and while he thought I could live on the sidelines, he'd figured out that wasn't true.

Men.  Protecting poor little me and taking away my choice in the process.  He should have known that I wouldn't leave a mystery like that alone.

I knew he felt bad for all the things that had happened in my life over the years, my slide into that world beneath the skin of the world, but I wasn't going to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to get picked by the birds.  I'd follow it right to the witch's house, and I had.

"What part of town were they in?  So I know where not to start."  The Argentum would move the moment they were discovered by another faction, and while a double-fake was possible in this circumstance, it wasn't likely.  Maitland had connections he could tap for help.  Other than me.

That meant I had the element of surprise.

"South-Central.  Eighteenth and Oak."  A more posh neighborhood would have more potential humiliation for them to farm.

Which meant they had likely gone farther south, to a more ritzy area than South-Central.

"Got a charge for me?"

Amoromancers.  If I had known then what I had learned in that tumble through dusty libraries that held the lost chapter in the history of darkness, what I had learned from the shops that sold a glimpse of the abyss in the human soul, I would have dumped him before he had ever asked me out.

My love for him had fueled him like a nuclear furnace in the heart of a dying star and I had been none the wiser.

The affection that grew in my heart made the seams of the city weaker because of what he was.  The sound of the ring clinking on my desktop was like a distant echo of lost possibilities.

The fucker tossed me the engagement ring given to him when I'd proposed.  That was a charge all right.  "Virgin?"

He only nodded.

I hid my surprise like a blade in a sheathe, a skill I'd honed well since that day.  An amoromancer carrying a charge this powerful for three years - for a moment, it made my heart ache.  That he really had cared.

If only he'd trusted me.

I stood, pocketing the gun and the ring, and grabbing my hat from the corner of the desk as I walked toward him.  It wasn't like Shō to flinch, even knowing I'd had his death in my hand.  So he hadn't.

Holding up my phone, I waited for him to do something I thought we'd never do again.  The love of my life held his to mine, and we had each others' new numbers.

"We're closed, Maitland.  You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."

Anxiety crossed his face like a flicker in a dying flame.  Barely there, but there without mistake.  "You'll take the case?"

"If you have to ask, you've forgotten more about me than you ever really knew."

Despite his towering height, I guided him out of the room with a hand on the small of his back.  Those lithe, solid arms would never hold me again.

Locking the door behind me, I gave him a minute to retreat with some modicum of dignity, pretending I couldn't track his every step from the crinkling.

[Ai Sinclair steps out into the darkness of late evening.  She strikes a match and raises it to her face.]

This city was a graveyard of dreams, where hope came to die, its streets a labyrinth with a minotaur on every street corner.  If you didn't know how to play the game, you'd get the horns.  For most people, it was easy - they couldn't see the threads that stitched their gray lives together, they couldn't see the patches that barely held.

Like the world had been sewn together after being ripped apart by childish hands again and again and again.

The smell of cloves followed me, the pretty purple smoke curling from the black cigarillo, up and around the brim of my hat like a halo of mystery.  Enough to keep those that knew out of arms' reach.  Ignorance was a bliss I'd lost three years ago, enlightenment was a Faustian bargain where only the tears themselves won.  On the other hand, knowing made it harder to fall into one. 

Looking at a right angle to reality was a skill like any other - you had to be willing to be bad at it before you could hope to be good at it.

And I was good at it.

Being bad at it had gotten me into all manner of trouble, the sort of trouble that got a lot of young players in the dark corners of the world's true poker game dead.  Those that did survive learned the rules that no one would teach, and the truth revealed itself.

Nothing was really real.

There was no all-knowing, all-loving god... but there were enough mischievous, selfish assholes out there with enough power to fold reality like an origami gun that shot bullets of creation.

[A neon sign after a long walk.]

The Null&Void was a nightclub with only one way in: a charge.  I was no mancer, but you didn't have to be if enough of them owed you favors.  They could make a charged item with time and effort, it was a currency in the hidden places.  Tonight I paid with a drawing of a dream pressed to the right brick in the right wall at the right time.  Not my drawing, not my dream, and not the mancer’s who paid me with it.  Truthfully, I didn't want to know where the dreamtaker got it.  Some small ignorance for someone who knew all too much but was forever driven to learn more.

I didn't allow myself too many of these little mysteries, but the happy smiles in the rain of blood was better left mysterious.

"Can't smoke in here, Sinclair."  I wasn't all the way through the wall before Cephas was on my case.  Just to be a bitch, I stubbed it out on his outstretched, stony palm.  "I'm as tired of telling you as you are of hearing it."

"If you say so, Ceph."  With a sigh like rocks crumbling from a boulder, the bouncer moved aside, letting me get to the bar.  There were as many of my kind here as the other - edgers like me, people who existed at the fringe of the tapestry rather than mancers who sought to bind the threads to their own will.  Thankfully Maryam was willing to leave me be that night.  Some part of me, the part that had learned to see sideways and around edges and corners that weren't there, knew that these faces weren't ones I should know, that something wasn't right in this place and time... but it wasn't like I could snap my fingers and change it all.

Gus behind the bar looked ridiculous as usual, his horns covered by blue pool noodles to keep him from hurting people accidentally, his tie half-eaten.  It was a big bite out of the middle, the bottom half of the thing dangling like an empty boot from a power line.

The old goat was nervous today.

Good.

Pulling up a stool, I sat at the bar, looking him in one of those rectangular things he called pupils in those golden-brown eyes.

"Nope."  He spoke first, a further show of his anxiety.  "Not today, Sinclair.  I've got no love for you and you'll get nothing from me."

If that was the way he wanted to play it, that was fine by me.  Rather than words, I spoke with my hands, reaching over the bar and grabbing a glass before filling it from the nearest tap myself.

"Hey!  You can't do that!  Ceph!"

I was already seated and sipping with a silver safety pin on the bar between us by the time he finished bleating.  Overpayment for underservice.  So Ceph did nothing at all, but I said everything in that gesture.  He knew exactly what my goal was.

Which, of course, was exactly what he'd been afraid of.  "I don't know nothing about Kanoska."

My reply was simply a raised eyebrow.

We both knew that Gus was only here because of the holes.  Gus, Ceph, this whole damn building.  And if the Argentum had a new priestess after all this time, it was a big clue in a cold case.

The goat had already told me he knew what I wanted.  Aya Kanoska.  Whatever game she was manipulated into playing, that sliver of a girl with a disproportionate slice of 'mancy was bad news for everyone.

And it was a damned shame because I loved her once.  Love had come easily to me then, in the before.  Like it was woven into my being.

"I don't!"  Gus was still bleating, mancers and edgers alike moving away from us as I took a long, slow drink from the pint.  "What the hell do you want from me, snoop?  I don't know nothin'."

With a thud, I set the glass down and stared into his squares with my rounds.  "Then I suppose you're going to tell me something you don't know then.  The Star just moved from South-Central.  Where'd they go, Gus?"

He pocketed the safety pin like it was a serpent, a quick grab on its head and gone before it could bite him.  "You paid your tab, not me.  'Sides, you think I want to end up in public squatting down and filling my pants while everyone watches?  You can't pay me enough to risk pissing off Kanoska."

That was new.  Very new.

Aya didn't get "pissed off". She was a fae of a girl, dancing on toadstools made of hopes and fantasies.  The only mancer I knew that could work more than one kind as easy as you please.  The fact that a joyous girl like her was working for something as serious as the Argentum was enough to be worried about in the first place, the idea of her being "pissed off" didn't help things one whit.

Turning the glass in my hand, that last few swallows of beer danced inside while my eyes never left his.  

"You didn't hear what happened to Kione, did you?  Trapped in her own body, giggling like a toddler and sucking on anything anyone put near her mouth.  Any.  Thing.  Wetting herself constantly and laughing about it, but nothing but horror in her eyes.  People stop, they look, they laugh, and they leave.  Sometimes someone will come and feed her, right there in the park, change her diapers, and leave.  The Argentum shouldn't be powerful enough for it to last more than a few minutes - forcing someone to charge for you is never worth it - there's no such thing as perpetual charge, everyone knows that."

Finally, I gave him a word.  "But?"

"But she's been at it for three days.  Someone takes her home in a giant stroller.  Everyone knows it's fucked up, but no one does a thing other than gawk and tease.  The cops don’t even get involved.  And no one's recharging her.  She's just... stuck.  Like the Argentum changed the rules. Like they tied her threads in knots and she's a prisoner in her own flesh.  And it's not just humans.  The humiliators managed to embarrass a clutch of imps.  They won.  It's over.  They're going to stitch the holes.  If you don't want to spend the rest of eternity in constant humiliation, you'll turn and walk away.  Kione's not the only battery they've planted in town.  Whatever they did, they did it.  Limitless charge."

"You think Null&Void is going to stay safe if they really won?  Think about it, Gus.  They either sew you up into the nothingness, turn you into humans, or..."

The room was clearing out.  Rats were leaving this sinking ship, not a single edger or mancer wanted to be within earshot.

"You're ruining our biz, Sinclair,” Gravel called out to me from over my shoulder.

"Cephas.  Tell me where the fuck they are or you won't have a biz to ruin and you know it, pebblebrain."

Boulders shook the ground in stomps toward me but the gamble paid off.  

"The old church on fifty-third."  Gus spat the words, a cloven hoof stopping behind the bar.  "But if you go in there, you're done.  If they know you found out from me, I'm done."

"That wasn't so hard, was it kid?"

A rocky hand on my shoulder.  "Don't come back, Ai.  You're done here.  You're banned from the Null&Void."

"Cry me a fucking river, Rocky."  My mood was going the same way as the Argentum, the same way as the world: real south, real fast.

Gus wasn't done yet though.  "What the hell are you going to do?  You're an edger, you don't even have ‘mancy of any kind."

"Same thing I always do, Gus.  Ask the questions nobody's asking.  Find the answers nobody's saying.  It's a curse."
 

[bbykimmy]

Chapter Two

[Ai Sinclair stands in front of the old church on fifty-third, one foot from the answers she seeks and one foot in the grave.]

The threads were tight around the church, The Holy Academy, but they were wrong.  Stitched together by force, not by nature.  I could see the angles everywhere except for a two block radius around the church.  Their stronghold.

The rain fell like tears from the sky, weeping for the lost souls of the city.  Strong ‘mancy did funny things to the weather.

One corner of the building was wrong though.  The whole place was still dark, empty if you looked through the windows, the For Sale sign in the grass inviting anyone and everyone to save it from its abandonment.  It was as lost as so many other souls in this town.

My car was two blocks away, tucked behind a building like a hunted animal in its lair.  Gripping the gun tightly in my pocket, I stalked the building as though it was an even more dangerous beast, letting my eyes go slack and looking through that corner.  Turning my body slowly, I let my subconsciousness find the angle that its threads existed at, the things you could never see when you were looking but invaded the corner of your eye when you weren't.

The patches there were wrong.  Far more wrong than any other place in the city.

Shō hadn't come to my door quickly enough.  It was eminently possible that Gus was right, that they'd already won.  But how?  Why?

The world was unfathomably old, the tears were part of the world, unless I was right and this place was truly a patchwork made by a mad god.  But that was far crazier than a gargoyle and a goat running a bar with no doors and no windows in literal nowhere.

And I wasn't one to turn away from the big questions.

Walking through a tear was certain doom.  Wisdom said to avoid them, but the doors went to an empty church and this was unmistakably the place.  So I walked through backwards, holding my hat with one hand and my gun with the other.

[Everything changes.]

I stepped from a rainy world of grays and browns into a palace made of pink foam with smiling faces everywhere.  There were no silver stars, the preferred symbolism of the Argentum.  

The floor was soft beneath my boots, water dripping from every part of me.

"Oh, someone's so wet!"

The words nearly stopped my heart, coming from further in, further down the hall of pink marble and bubblegum bunny sentries with unfeeling, unseeing eyes.  I stepped to the corner, turning my body at an angle, perpendicular to the real, making myself infinitely thin in this funhouse.

But the voice wasn't for me.  She hadn't been speaking to me.

"My goodness, you're soaked, Bala!"  The name was familiar, deeply, deeply familiar but it was the whisper of a forgotten dream.  A cotton candy cloud lost in the waking from soft sweetness to the harshness of the really real.  "You like being soggy though, don't you?  Yes you do!  Yes you do!  Because you're a good girl.  And good girls are..."

"Wet!"

The world was upside-down and fragile like a house of cards in a strong breeze, ready to collapse at any moment.  That voice called to me from a past that wasn't mine, from a place that tugged at my heartstrings like a shattered promise.  

I knew that voice, but I knew that I shouldn't.  That the entire deck had been arranged to specifically prevent me from ever hearing it, but a bad shuffle from a dealer that wasn't in on the take changed the whole game.

I wasn't supposed to be here and I knew it in my bones.

"Please Auntie."  Another voice.  While there was noise, I dropped my waterlogged hat and coat, ditching my boots and socks to eliminate the squelching anathema to the stealth that I needed.  "I don't like this.  I'll be good, please let me go home."

"Oh do we have another volunteer?"  The name Bala, the intentional mystery, had stunned me from recognizing that first voice.  It was wrong.  Like the woman that owned it hadn't slept in a thousand years, like she was run ragged, giving her absolute all to children who would never understand the sacrifice of their parents.  It was Aya, but worn thin like a well-loved blanket, threadbare and nearly torn through.  "Someone who wants to be like Kione?  I think we're ready for another battery out there, but I'm sure we can make it more humiliating.  What if we make you..."

The second voice, Bala, finished her sentence gleefully.  "Work a regular job but everyone always forgets you're a baby until you wet yourself and then they change you and dote on you as the office baby until you're carried home to your crib!  Then you wake up and do it alllll again.  I know it's what you really want in your heart of hearts!  It's what everyone wants, deep down in a place they don't tell the truth about."

"No!!"  The other girl was frantic, screaming from a primal terror that humans should have forgotten long ago.  "Please, I'll be good.  I'm sorry I asked!  I'm sorry!"

"Oh poo."  Bala sounded as though she were pouting as I inched closer to the voices.  "Why haven't you given up to be baby yet?  You want to be baby, don't you Tali?"

"Yes, yes I do."  The other girl, Tali, answered quickly.

Aya cooed at her.  "You know what you have to do to show you're baby, don't you?  Come on, show Auntie.  It will make us all so happy and then you can go to bed."

I peered around the corner just in time to see a grown woman beginning squatting, in a dress that did absolutely nothing to cover the absurdly thick diaper taped around her.  Her face turned red and her eyes clenched shut, and just as I feared, the seat of her diaper began to expand.

"Tali is such a good baby!"  I recognized Aya, but her eyes matched the fray of her voice.  Dark, heavy purple circles rested there and she reached out to stroke the hair of the girl who was still messing herself as though life itself depended on it.  "What are you doing, sweet Tali?  Tell us what you're doing."

"Goin' poopy..."  She managed the words between grunts, her diaper drooping behind her.  Aya's hand in her hair glowed, collecting the charge in a way that shouldn't be possible.  Charge went into objects so they could be used later.  The glow was familiar, that color-that-wasn't-a-color, and it flowed through Aya and into Bala as she brushed the other girl's cheek.

Bala was similarly, obviously diapered beneath her shortalls and pink shirt, shivering in pure joy at the energy she was receiving.  A soft moan of wretched, innocent-sounding pleasure came from her as tears began to well up in Tali's eyes.

"Yes you are, sweetie.  You're goin' poopy!  And... all done!"  As though the girl weighed nothing at all, Aya lifted her to one hip, a hand pressing the mess in the seat of the girl's diaper against her.  "And we'll change you tomorrow!  Now you get to go to bed just like we promised, nice and safe in your crib!  Say thank you!"

"No!  Please!  Please, it's so yucky!"

With a tsk coming from her lips, the exhausted Aya began patting Tali’s bottom again and again.  "Oh someone's fussy.  You want to go be that battery?  We'll get you a nice job in a nice, public place.  You can get changed right there on the floor in front of everyone, finding out that - oh no, you're baby - again and again and again and just giving us oh-so-much humiliation to feed our princess Bala!"

"I wanna go bed!  I speepy!"  Tali sobbed as she clung to Aya.  "I'm baby... thank you Auntie..."

The Aya-that-shouldn't-be carried the sobbing girl through a doorway, leaving Bala giggling and alone in what looked like an enormous playroom with every manner of toy, stuffed animal, and adult-sized baby furniture imaginable.

All of the building, all of this torn corner of reality, vibrated with the charge - this was more powerful purdormancy than should have ever been possible, but I couldn't deny it.  With a hand in the pocket of my loose trousers, I stepped into the room without a plan at all and asked the question.

"Why?"

Bala looked at me, familiar eyes in a familiar face that was entirely unfamiliar.  A girl thrumming with power that wasn't hers, filled with the humiliation of who knew how many acts of depravity.

"NO!"  Her face contorted in a mask of frustrated, helpless rage that made no sense at all to me.  "No!  You can't, not again!  Not this time!  I'm happy!  I'm the good girl!  I'm the princess!  I'm helping people and I'm fixing things and all people have to do is be baby!  All they have to do is let themselves be happy!"

I repeated myself.  The only question that ever really mattered.

"Why?"

"Because I deserve to be happy!  Because I'm a good girl!  Because I'm... I'm so tired... why can't you be happy?  Even when I try to keep you away from it all, you're never happy..."

I loved this girl.  I knew it in my heart of hearts.  I loved her, I'd lived for her, and part of me knew that I would die for her.

Aya was back, looking at me with forlorn, devastatingly tired eyes and I felt the world go sideways.  I felt my clothes shifting, my panties unmistakably becoming a thick, puffy diaper inside my pants.

There were but precious moments.  My left hand drew the ring from my pocket, popping it my mouth and swallowing it to draw that amoromancy charge, enough to stop the transformation.  The charge of my love freely given and kept for years in secret from a man that I knew in the depths of me that I'd never see again.

Samuel Colt, my only lover now, was drawn from the pocket of my wet and out-of-place gray trousers in this pink paradise, and Bala looked at me with unthinkable shock as I pointed the barrel of the .38 at her.

And pulled the trigger.

[Mia Moore]

Thank you so much Kimmy!  I used to read Life in the Dollhouse way back in the day and I was so excited to see you finished it recently.  When a list of authors came up on who to include on this project, I just had to have your unique style and tone.  And gosh, you sure didn't disappoint!  This is such an incredible penultimate installment.

Also, Ai should have always been a detective.  In retrospect, I have no idea what she was doing working at that grocery store back in Academy I

~Mia Moore~

[bbykimmy]

23 minutes ago, Mia Moore said:

Thank you so much Kimmy!  I used to read Life in the Dollhouse way back in the day and I was so excited to see you finished it recently.  When a list of authors came up on who to include on this project, I just had to have your unique style and tone.  And gosh, you sure didn't disappoint!  This is such an incredible penultimate installment.

Also, Ai should have always been a detective.  In retrospect, I have no idea what she was doing working at that grocery store back in Academy I

~Mia Moore~

You're welcome, Mia.  Thank you for inviting me to be a part of this project.  I am worried my entry is a little too avant-garde for the audience but I had a lot of fun writing it.  I'm a big fan of the noir genre (but it's unreadable now because holy shit racism/sexism was rampant in fiction back then) and painting this story with such a heavy brush was delightful.

And for those who don't know, I finished "Life in the Dollhouse".  The story in its entirety is available here: 

https://www.legitfic.com/s/1465-life-in-the-dollhouse

[princesstreegirl]

@PeculiarChangeling I absolutely loved this story!! It was so meta and so sci-fi. For a second I thought you had sent AI into Academy M. I was like out of the frying pan and into the fire if she enters Judith’s body 😂 Figured it would have been a day where Maria was off globe trotting or visiting an Academy.  Totally amazing to have her enter into Mia’s girlfriend’s body.  Can’t wait to read more of your works!!  I’m so excited to read the hell Kikmy is going to put AI through.

[princesstreegirl]

@bbykimmyi loved the gritty noir background mixed in with the fantasy elementS You really knocked this story out of the park!! I loved the cliff hanger at the end of the story! No idea if AI actually shoots Balla or if she is able to evade the bullet! Is it me or does Balla keep becoming more sadistic with each story. I’m starting to loose sympathy for her. What she put Tali and Kione through wasn’t kindness or love, it was torture. It’s like she’s taking all her anger with AI out on others.  I hope you continue writing in this amazing universe. You could create so many fun and erotic mysteries. Keep up the great work and I look forward to reading more of your writing.

[Mia Moore]

First and foremost, I want to thank @Sophie ♥, @Pudding, @Personalias, @bigred0603, @Lyra Silver, @PeculiarChangeling, and @bbykimmy for their installations in Academy II.  When I decided to write seven different worlds for the finale, I admit, I found the task incredibly daunting.  And when it was suggested to me that I should instead let seven other authors write those worlds, I admit, I found that to be even more daunting.  I am so used to being in control of everything in my life, lending out something as important as Academy Works - especially for the finale! - felt so dangerous.  But they brought the worlds to life in ways I never could have.  They created their own art within my art, and I will be forever grateful to have worked with such incredible writers and such incredible people.  I believe that Academy Works is stronger for their involvement, and I believe it will make this next chapter all the more powerful.

Secondly, I want to thank everyone who has been reading this series.  When I started writing Academy Works, I wanted to prove to everyone that I was good at something.  That I could write some kind of huge epic baby smut story that had something for everybody.  Something people would want to show their friends, something they would be inspired by.  I wanted to go down in history as one of the great ABDL authors, just like all the people who worked on A:2 with me.  Just like Ai, I wanted to find my purpose.  But now that it's ending, I realize that I don't care what happens next.  If my story ends up forgotten along with all the others on this website, if nobody ever talks about it again, that would be okay.  Because writing Academy Works has taught me so much.  It's given me so much.  Wonderful friendships.  Camaraderie with other writers in my field.  A readership that thinks and cares and speculates and treats my words like they are important.  A sense of competence.  Academy Works is also the reason my girlfriend and I are together.  So... to everyone who read this series, and especially to those who have left comments, thank you so much for showing me that the journey is more invaluable than any destination.

Anyway...

The end of Academy Works has always been in the back of my mind.  I imagined a world after countless worlds, where everyone was too tired to keep on going.  Where they had to stop and think for once.  To talk.  To connect.  For those who have played Xenogears, I took a lot of inspiration from the second disk.  But I didn't know how it would truly end until I started writing it.  Until I read all of the A:2 stories from the authors listed above.  I saw the puzzle come together and the pieces fall in place.  And I ended up with... this.

I hope this is good enough.  I'm terrified that maybe people will read the ending and hate it.  How am I supposed to wrap up everything at this point?  How can I possibly make everyone happy?  Well... I guess I can't.  I'm not perfect.  But I hope I'm perfect enough for all of my fans.

Once more, in valediction... thank you all so much.

~Mia Moore~

[Mia Moore]

Academy II
By Mia Moore

"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 (Last) One

"Why..."

Bala sat in the dark.  A spotlight clicked on above her, forming a puddle of yellow light beneath her dangling feet.  She was sitting in a high chair, with her head down on the tray.  When she finally found the energy to sit up, another spotlight clicked on, six or so feet away from her.

Ai was standing in the middle of the pool of light.  She was naked.  So was Bala.  Neither of them cared enough anymore to dress themselves.  In the indefinable vastness of possibility, clothes were a chore.  Their bodies, however, were second nature.  First nature, perhaps.

"Why?" Bala asked again. "Why can't you leave me alone?"

"You're one to talk," Ai said sharply, but her sharpness was that of a toddler's knife.  Fragile, plastic, without an edge.

Behind them, a wheel turned.  An infinite, infinitesimal, contradictory wheel, decorated with time and fate.

"Just stop it," Bala begged.  Tears filled her eyes.  Big, wet, floaty tears.  They fell away from her without gravity, like a spilled canteen on a spacecraft.

No, Ai thought.  Because that was what she always said.  That was how she always felt.  But this time, the word was too heavy.  She had pushed that word - "no" - up the hill so many times, for it to tumble back down.  As she tried to shove the word out of her mouth, she was too weak to move it a single inch.

"Whatever," Ai said instead.  She sat down in the darkness and held her head in her hands.

Behind her, a wheel turned. 

The two of them were each quiet for a moment, because they both knew that it didn't matter what they said. They were like oil and water, like the sun and the moon, like politicians across the aisle: understanding, empathy, and common ground were impossible goals. 

Ai and Bala were mutually exclusive, and both of them knew it. That fact was, perhaps, the only thing they'd ever agreed upon.

"Out of all the places I've been, this is the worst." Ai finally mumbled, after a time that could have been a moment, a while, or forever.

"Alone, in a room, with you?" Bala asked rhetorically. "Agreed." It seemed even the universe was tired of the two of them, and now they were in time out.  A fitting punishment.

As they waited in silence, an image flickered above them, grainy and jittery like an old overhead projector from an elementary school on a low budget. It showed Ai, and it showed Bala; as children, as friends. A screenshot of a reality that never existed, and for the two of them, never could.

Bala looked up and watched the image melt into another, like a movie playing in the sky.  Two little girls, ignorant of the complexity of the universe.  Two little girls, playing in the din of inconsequence.  Two little girls, purposeless.  Two little girls, happy.

"I tried to make this happen so many times," Bala said.  She had no reason to talk to Ai.  So she went on, to herself. "I tried to make us friends.  I tried to make a world where there were no repercussions for anything."

"A world where I didn't exist," Ai added. "A world where you didn't exist.  A world where neither of us could remember anything."

"A world frozen in time," Bala continued. "A world made up of nothing but emotions."

"A world with big people and small people," Ai remembered. "A world where we were all specks of light."

"A world of different worlds.  Where everyone could have their own world."

"A world where we were characters in a story.  Remember that?"

"I ran out of ideas, and I had to break the pattern," Bala sighed. "I still don't know how you got out of that one."

Ai didn't answer.

"I liked the world with all the map puzzles," Ai said.

"You solved them faster than I could make them."

Silence.

"I liked the one with the pet people," Bala said.

"Yeah, I was… a puppy girl or something?"

Bala didn't answer.

"I don't know what to do," Bala confessed. It was baffling to hear the will of God admit to such a mortal failing. "Trying to make sense of you is like trying to catch a deluge in a paper cup."

It was silent.  No time passed, because time did not exist.  Behind them, a wheel turned.

"Do you know why I'm strong enough to be here?" Ai finally asked. "Do you know why I can fight you like this?"

"I know everything," Bala sighed, like everything was the worst thing to know.

"That woman from the Academy--"

The Academy.  Those two words brought back a surge of nostalgia to the both of them.  It was like hearing a nickname you were called as a child, a nickname you didn't particularly like.  The movie above them flickered to disparate, inconsequential scenes from their pasts, interlaced in an order unorthodox.

It was lifetimes ago, but Ai remembered.

"Maria, she..."

"Betrayed the Academy," Bala finished.

Ai shook her head.  Maybe Maria did betray the Academy, but she did more than that.  She betrayed herself.

Ai looked up at Bala, sitting naked in the high chair.  And though she thought nothing of her own nudity, Bala looked incomplete.  Had she always looked that way?

When Bala looked down at herself, she was suddenly wearing a onesie with little angel wings and halos printed on it.  Underneath it, the familiar feeling of a diaper.

Bala looked up at Ai, sitting naked in the pool of yellow light.  She had more thoughts in a single moment than all of consciousness through all of time, but it wasn't enough.  A diaper and a onesie was not a malicious outfit, and nothing explained why Ai would afford her any kindness at all.

Behind her, a wheel turned.

"I hate you," Bala said flatly.

"I know," Ai sighed.

"You betrayed me," Bala said, and fresh tears floated around her head.  The movie above them flickered to one scene in particular, when their stories overlapped.  The moment when Bala was sent back to the Cold Room, and Ai was given all the answers she could ever want.

"I know..." Ai watched the low-quality film reel.  That moment was so long ago, and it was only a moment ago.  Ai knew, even then, that she had made a mistake.

Throughout every universe, every battleground, Ai justified her actions with a single doctrine: next time, she could do better.  That moment with Bala didn't define her, no more than the thousands of mistakes before it or the million mistakes after.  In time, she would learn.  She would grow.  She would change.

But as she watched that movie, she realized... she hadn't changed at all.  Maria betrayed herself and the institution she worked hard to build, all so that Ai could have some autonomy in the new world.  And what did Ai do with it?  She fought for countless lifetimes to be the same person she had always been.  The same woman who walked away from Bala all those lifetimes ago.

For the first time in infinity, Ai understood why Bala was doing what she was doing.  Because it wasn't enough to trust in humanity's desire to grow.  Change was hard.  Change was long.  And for so many people, they never bothered to start.

Ai never bothered to start.  Behind her, a wheel turned.

"I'm sorry," Ai said.  Big, wet, floaty tears filled her eyes. "I should never have treated you that way.  I should never have acted like my needs were more important than yours." 

For a time - although time was nonexistent and incalculable now - Bala was quiet and still. Frozen in thought. A thousand universes could have been born and a thousand and one could have died in the moment that it took her to form words. 

"You're right. You shouldn't have treated me that way. You shouldn't have acted that way. You shouldn't have. But you did. And now look where we are." Bala remembered a thought she had a long time ago, at the end of one of her stories, and a thought she kept close to her throughout the incalculable iterations of the universe.

"This is all your fault," Bala spat at her, eyes wet with tears.

"I know..." Ai rubbed her eyes.  She didn't want to cry in front of Bala.  She didn't want to show weakness.  But something about the space she was in, or something about her realization, was too much to mask.  Tears dripped away from her cheeks, forming globules of glittering water that drifted around her head like planets around a star.

For a while, in relative terms, Bala and Ai cried.  Above them, the movie of childhood friends - the impossible universe left unmade - flickered onto the screen.  The two little girls cried together, on opposite ends of a front stoop.  They held themselves instead of each other.

Ai racked her brain for some way to make it up to Bala, but it wasn't possible.  She couldn't make up for millennia of suffering.  She could never atone for bringing sin into Bala's worlds.  All at once, her resolve began to crumble.  Could she ever really change?  At this point, would it even matter?

Ai wanted to sink into her old ways.  She wanted to slip into self-pity or self-hatred, old clothes she never had the time to wear anymore.  She wanted it to be easy.

Finally, Ai and Bala were on the same page.  There was no reason to fight.  If she let Bala have her way, all her sins would be erased.  She could start over again, as someone perfect.  She never had to know the feeling of wanting to be more than she was.  Of not being enough.

But Ai's catharsis lasted only a fraction of never.

Ai looked up at Bala, crying in the high chair.  Overhead, a new movie was playing.  Moments of Bala, through her childhood.  Through her job as a nurse.  Through the Academy.  Through universes, like pages of a flip book that didn't tell a story.  But Ai knew the story.  She'd known it for a long time.

Ai remembered a memory of a memory. Behind her, a wheel turned.

Ai slowly got to her feet, wiping the tears out of her eyes and splashing them into the ring around her head.  It was a solid circle now, glittering in the spotlight.  But it vanished along with Ai when she stepped out of the pool and into the darkness.

Alone with an empty spotlight, Bala cried.  She cried, because she couldn't do it right.  And she knew, deep down, Ai wasn't the reason her universes kept failing.

The truth was, Bala just wasn't good enough.

Then Ai appeared in front of her, in her spotlight, and touched the tray table of her high chair.  It evaporated into glitter.  Bala looked up at Ai, and before confusion could wash over her face, Ai wrapped her arms around the crying girl.  Above them, in the movie, one girl had moved to the other side of the stoop and hugged the other.

"Shh..." Ai whispered. "It's okay.  It's okay."

"It's not." That was Bala's first thought, her first response, her knee-jerk reaction in the form of words, as instinctual as pulling away from a flame. Not an answer from her brain, but from her lips. How could things ever be okay again?  There was nothing left but the two of them, and for anything else to exist, it was predicated entirely on Bala's will for it to be. How could she ever will someone to be part of her constant, unending failure?

The truth was – to Bala, in her nothing – Ai meant everything to her.  Ai was the only thing she couldn't control.

Bala sobbed.  Each tear had enough energy to birth a billion realities. Each heaving, choking, ugly cry took away so much potential that even entropy itself ceased to exist. 

Behind her, a wheel turned.

"I'm lost… I've lost…"

"You didn't lose anything," Ai said warmly, holding Bala tight to her chest. "They gave you an impossible task.  To make a world where everyone is supposed to be happy?  To make something perfect?  It's not possible."

"It is," Bala argued, because it had to be possible.  Because otherwise, she never had a chance to succeed in the first place.  And all this was for nothing.

"It's not," Ai said again, softer. "It's not possible to be perfect.  Nothing is perfect.  Nobody is perfect.  You... you can't be perfect."

"I have to be perfect," Bala tried, sobbing into Ai's chest.  She clung tightly to Ai's white dress, hand-embroidered with little flowers.  She wanted to cling to a dress.  She wanted Ai to be wearing it.  And so she was.

"No, Bala.  You don't have to be anything.  Not perfect.  Not a baby.  Not an adult, either.  Not a god, or a nurse.  And certainly not this.  You don't have to be anything you don't want to be."

But only one thing came to mind when Bala thought about what she wanted to be:

"I want to be a good girl..." she cried.

Ai knew how Bala felt, because Ai too wanted to be a good girl.  Every girl wanted to be a good girl, and every boy wanted to be a good boy, and everyone wanted to be a good person.  Because a drive for goodness was not the product of the Academy, but the product of humanity.

A long time ago, something came into existence, and that thing was one thing.  Be it consciousness or God, that was all there ever was.  Then, something happened, and there was something else.  This dichotomy led to discussion, debate, protest, argument, and war.  Right versus wrong.  Good versus bad.

But at the root, good has always been nothing more than the thing you want to move toward, and bad has always been the thing you want to move away from.  The difference may be subjective, but the purpose is clear: movement.

At the end of a million worlds, with millennia of experiences behind you, it's not hard to see the truth.  In that moment, it wasn't hard for Ai, and it wasn't that much harder for Bala either.

Behind them, a wheel turned.

"You're a good girl," Ai said, hugging Bala even tighter. "You're good, because you try to be better.  That's all it takes." 

With each passing universe she created, Bala measured goodness by the starting point.  She had to optimize the rules, not to allow for betterment, but to encourage stagnation, because the only way to go was down.  If what Ai was suggesting was true, and it was movement that mattered, then Bala had created worlds without "good".  How could she be a good girl in a goodless world?

All this time, Bala had been thinking that, if only Ai would stop interfering, she could find the right answer.  She could create the perfect world.  But if Ai wasn't there to foil all her plans, would she ever be happy?  Could she?

The truth was, a long time ago, Bala had given up on ever finding happiness.  That was why her mission was so important: it was her last chance to do something right.

For the first time in time's nonexistence, Bala was at a loss.

Behind her, a wheel turned.

"I have to figure it out," Bala mumbled under her breath. "I… I gotta…"



"And then what?" Ai asked.  She broke her hug, but she kept the soft tones. "You'll always worry about it.  Always think that you're doing something wrong.  It's not fair to you, Bala.  Everyone isn't your responsibility."



Bala shook her head quickly.



"You're just… trying to trick me.  That's all you do, is trick me and hurt me."



Ai hesitated.  Was Bala wrong?  Had Ai ever done anything for Bala, or in Bala's interests?  She couldn't remember a single time, in all the universes they had shared together.



"Listen…" Ai said quietly, taking Bala's hands in hers. "I know you don't have any reason to trust me.  I know I probably shouldn't trust you, either.  But you're not a villain.  And neither am I.  And, I'm starting to think… we aren't even the heroes.  We're just people."



Bala looked up into Ai's eyes, still blurry with tears.  She had to be the hero.  She had to be the martyr.  She had to die on the cross, to save everyone else.  She didn't have to be happy about it.  Good and happy… she couldn't be both.



"I have to…" Bala muttered.



"I don't think so," Ai said simply. "But, I'm done assuming everything I think is right.  So, if you really want to, then… make a new world.  Try again.  I won't stop you this time."



Bala stared blankly, as if in all the impossibilities the multiverse had to offer, this was the least likely.



"I don't believe you…" Bala said.



"Well, I can try my best," Ai answered, because she figured it was about time she believed in someone other than herself.  For better or for worse, Ai wouldn't make the same mistakes.

There are two important facts about faith that worked in Ai's favor at that moment.  The first: you have to be entirely without evidence to have faith, which was perfect for Ai and Bala, who had no evidence that either of them was worth trusting.  The second: you're more likely to put your faith in something when you're desperate, and Bala was very desperate.

Behind them, a wheel turned.

"…what kind of world should I make…?" Bala asked.

At first, Ai thought her question was rhetorical, like someone asking themself "what to wear…" in the morning.  But, like an unanswered instant message, Bala seemed to be waiting for Ai to take her off Read. 

"Are you asking me?"

Bala nodded sheepishly.

Ai had absolutely no idea. She had spent the better part of existence in reboot universes.  She'd seen everything there was to see.  She knew how every single outcome of every single variable would play out.  And so did Bala.  But there was one pervasive feature that always seemed to come up, and Ai's curiosity once again got the best of her.

"Do you actually like all this baby stuff?" Ai asked awkwardly.  She quickly added: "No judgment."

"I... I'm not sure," Bala admitted, looking up at the two children talking on the stoop. "I just don't want to have any more responsibility..."

In a way, Bala was the caregiver to every soul in the universe.  But before that - before the Academy - Bala liked having responsibilities.  She liked feeling needed and valuable.  She liked doing the right thing, even if it meant sometimes doing the wrong thing.  Maybe she didn't even want to be a baby at all.  She just didn't want to be a mom.

Ai and Bala were quiet for a while, as each tried to think of the right answer to an unanswerable question.  What ending would be satisfactory?  What was a good conclusion, after such an impossible, incoherent series of events?  How could either of them hope to make everyone happy?

"What about that?" a voice said.  Not Ai's voice, and not Bala's, but the voice of God herself.  Ayoka Kanoska stood a few feet away, dressed in something impossible.  She was pointing up at the sky, where a movie was playing.  The two little girls weren't on the stoop anymore; they were playing hop-scotch with sidewalk chalk.  Whatever turmoil had them crying just before… it was gone now.

Behind Aya, a wheel turned.

"It's not possible," Bala sighed.  She'd spent so many eternities with Aya that even her sudden presence wasn't a surprise anymore.  Her hopeless optimism, her unflinching generosity, her unbearable kindness.  And what had Bala done with it?  Mutated her.  Abused her.  Took her for granted.  More tears spilled from her eyes and began to orbit around her head.

"It's okay," Aya said warmly, resting a hand on Bala's back and kissing her temple.  Ai took an awkward step backward, and the spotlight around them grew to accommodate.

"How can you say that? Don't you have any self-respect?" Bala shouted.  But her voice was no louder than a hatpin hitting the carpet.  And Aya's voice was full of every star in the universe.  She was true power, and Bala was as fragile as the human will.

"We chose this together," Aya said simply. "We've sacrificed everything, you and I.  I don't regret it."

"How can you not?" Bala laughed, rubbing tears out of her eyes.

In that moment, all three of them knew the same truth of Bala: that when Maria gave her that gun, she wished now that it had killed her.

Behind her, a wheel turned.

Aya took Bala by the hand and helped her to her feet.  The high chair was gone, as if it was never there to begin with.  Then Aya wrapped her arms around Bala in a hug.  For no good reason other than there was no good reason not to, Ai stepped forward and joined in.

"I don't regret it," Aya said again, "because I would rather be here with the two of you than nowhere at all."

That hug lasted forever.  It still goes on, to this day.  It transcends space and time and everything known and unknown in the universe, and it has nothing to do with Aya or her power.  It lasted forever because hugs between friends always do.

In front of them, a wheel turned.

"What about that?" Aya said again, pointing up at the sky where a movie was playing.  The two little girls were still playing hopscotch.  The little girl next door came over to play with them.

"It's not possible," Bala said again. "I've tried."

Ai watched the three of them jumping from one square to the next, taking turns.  One and two and three four and… she fell.  The little Indian girl, with dark hair and wet eyes.  She looked up at the other two in a panic.  Afraid of… something.  But they each took a hand and helped her up.  She tried again.

"No…" Ai said quietly.  She finally understood what Aya was saying. "Not a world where we all get along, or a world where we can be friends.  But that world."

Ai pointed up at the sky where a movie was playing.

"That's… no way." Bala shook her head in a panic. "I have hundreds of requests!  I promised I'd do it right, I promised, and they're gone now, so I have to–"

"You don't have to," Ai reminded her.  She took Bala's hand.

"You can always say no, and you can always change your mind," Aya said.  She took Bala's other hand.

Once upon a time, Bala Khatri would do anything to honor someone's choices, even if it went against her values or beliefs.  Now, she was asked to do that again: to honor her own right to choose, even though it went against her values and beliefs.

In front of her, a wheel turned.

"We don't know anything about that universe," Bala muttered. "It could be a horrible world.  Death and famine and hatred… if I could take a look, tweak it…"

"You'd never stop," Ai said with a sad smile.

"I've seen you do it," Aya concurred.

Bala watched the movie in the sky, as the child that could be her readied herself to once again hopscotch across the sidewalk.  Her friends on the sidelines cheered her on.

"She doesn't even know…" Bala said, with fresh tears floating down her cheeks and collecting in a circle above her head. "That girl, she doesn't know what I am.  What we are.  What we've done…"

"We don't have to be this," Aya reminded Bala and Ai both.  Then she gestured at the movie playing overhead. "We can be that, if we want to."

"And what?  Forget everything?  Pretend we're not the creators of this universe?"

"It's not pretending," Ai said to herself, working through everything she had learned.  Everything Maria did, everything she failed to do.  Then she said: "We can just choose to be different.  We always could have."

Bala was at a loss for words.  Ai and Aya were proposing ego death, to cease to be.  To willingly give up parts of who they were, for a chance at being something different.  To… change.  

At the heart of it, that's how change works.  A part of you has to die for another part to live and grow.  That's why change is so scary.  That's why nobody ever wants to do it.  Not until it's too late, and things are too terrible.  Nobody ever changes… until they can't stand not to.

"I don't want to be in charge of everyone…" Bala finally said.

"I don't want to have all this power," Aya added.

"I don't want to keep fighting all the time," Ai finished.

All three of them looked up at the movie and watched it together.  They stared at it for so long that they started to believe the girls in the spotlight were a dream, and the girls in the grainy, low-budget movie were real life.

In front of them, a wheel turned.

Eventually, Aya looked at Bala.  Eventually, Ai looked at Bala.  Eventually, Bala looked at the floor.  With enough time, no wall can stay up forever, not even the bonds that hold together the human soul.  All three of them were on the same wavelength, and all knew what was coming next.

Bala slowly nodded.  It was time for this to end.  But then she said: "I want to check on something first."

"No," Ai and Aya both said in unison.

"One thing," Bala begged. "One thing, I promise.  And… in return, you can each check on something too."

Ai and Aya both looked at each other.  Three rules.  Three rules, and everything else was left up to chance.

"What do you want to look into?" Ai asked.

"If the Academy exists," Bala said simply, "because I don't want it to." 

Everyone agreed.  No one should have power over another's fate.

Ai was next.  She could have anything in the new world.  She could be rich, or she could be powerful.  She could have her fiancé back, but she'd had thousands of fiancés.  Thousands of life partners.  And each one was as special and important as the last.  In the new world, whoever she found, she knew they would be exactly what she needed. 

So Ai thought of something else. "I want everyone to always have the opportunity to grow, no matter what happens."

"Are you sure?" Bala asked skeptically.  She had known Ai for a long time, longer than anyone knows anything, and Ai's request felt out of character.  So she challenged it: "Even Maria Porter?"

Ai sighed.  She didn't like to think about Maria, because she couldn't help but think the worst of her.  But the woman who came into the Memoriam and apologized, that wasn't the Maria that Ai knew.  Whatever happened to her, whatever made her change… it was nothing short of a miracle.  Ai wanted a world where miracles could happen.

"Yeah, sure," Ai shrugged. "She deserves a chance to be happy."

"That's very gracious of you," Aya smiled.

"Hey, I'm not actually a demon!"

"No, you're an angel," Aya said, and tapped the halo of tears circling around Ai's head.  Ai blushed.  Bala reached above her own head and smiled to herself.  All that crying, all that emotion, had formed a halo.  Maybe she had been a good girl after all.

"What about you?" Ai asked Aya. "Last one."

"Hm…" Aya put her finger to her chin in thought.  In every universe, she always had exactly what she wanted, even when what she wanted wasn't good for her.  She had power beyond even her own comprehension.  But power wasn't enough.  Even the Source knew it: one person alone couldn't reset the world.  It had to be two.  It had to be together.

Aya looked at Bala, her connection to humanity.  Her chariot, pulling the sun across the sky.  While Aya sat at the lead, Bala did the work.  She was the guide, like Virgil through the afterlife, writer of myth and creation.

Aya looked at Ai, her connection to reality.  Her magician, a polymorph spell, a serpent in defense of fate at Delphi.  While Aya was young and naive, Ai followed her instincts.  She was the challenger, full of mistakes and questions as juicy as apples.

Never once did Aya see evil in either of those two girls.  Perhaps because there was never any evil to begin with, or perhaps because Aya couldn't find any within herself.  In her soul, there were no shadows; it was full of fire, of destruction and light.  

But Aya chose to never nock an arrow.  She never found evil beyond redemption, and that was a choice anyone could make.

"No matter how powerful any one person gets," Aya decided, "I want the world to be everyone's responsibility."

The rules were set, the choices made.  Three girls, three wishes, and the dawn of something new.  A place where they could be less of what they had to be, and more of what they wanted to be.  A place where I get to put down this pen and do the same.

They got three rules; I get three more sentences.

With nothing left to do and no time left to do it, God hugged her angels goodbye and hello.  In a dark room, lit by a single spotlight and the glow of an old movie, the world came to an end for the last time.  But that hug will last forever.

[End.]

[BabyLexie]

7 hours ago, Mia Moore said:

For those who have played Xenogears, I took a lot of inspiration from the second disk.

I finished the story by imagining Ai and Bala as PS1-era 2d sprites sitting in a dark void. Added to the mystique!

There's so much to unpack in Academy II, and I'm not gonna lie, it's a headier ending than I expected from the Academy series. I really loved the ever-broadening scope and worldbuilding (very Xenogears) as a story that began in the back of a dark van expanded, more and more, until it encompassed all of reality. The anthology-style format built a wonderful world while keeping it grounded in its characters. Using Academy II to blow up the world, bringing in other authors, is an incredible experiment in continuing the themes and structure of the rest of the story.

I really do adore this series, it's so incredibly well-written. Thanks so much Mia and the other authors!!!!!