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Romance! Boys! Girls! Diapers! The adventures of our ageplaying heroes in a city torn between warring teams: Baby Blue (a boyish AB/DL fraternity) and its rival sissy Pink faction.", "count": "25", "submission_left_submission_id": "41848", "submission_left_file_name": "50453_kitncub_bb_spring_fever.doc", "submission_left_thumbnail_url_huge": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/huge/50/50453_kitncub_bb_spring_fever.jpg", "submission_left_thumbnail_url_large": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/large/50/50453_kitncub_bb_spring_fever.jpg", "submission_left_thumbnail_url_medium": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/50/50453_kitncub_bb_spring_fever.jpg", "submission_left_thumb_huge_x": "200", "submission_left_thumb_huge_y": "190", "submission_left_thumb_large_x": "200", "submission_left_thumb_large_y": "190", "submission_left_thumb_medium_x": "120", "submission_left_thumb_medium_y": "114", "submission_right_submission_id": "45434", "submission_right_file_name": "55574_kitncub_boy_scouts_short_ib.doc", "submission_right_thumbnail_url_huge": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/huge/55/55574_kitncub_boy_scouts_short_ib.jpg", "submission_right_thumbnail_url_large": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/large/55/55574_kitncub_boy_scouts_short_ib.jpg", "submission_right_thumbnail_url_medium": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/55/55574_kitncub_boy_scouts_short_ib.jpg", "submission_right_thumb_huge_x": "200", "submission_right_thumb_huge_y": "190", "submission_right_thumb_large_x": "200", "submission_right_thumb_large_y": "190", "submission_right_thumb_medium_x": "120", "submission_right_thumb_medium_y": "114" } ], "description": "The one where a secret plan is afoot and the relationship drama begins! The finale arc really begins with this story. See if you can pick up on clues to future surprises if you missed them the first time! Also don't forget I promised we'd catch up with one of our recurring canine friends, Byron the malamute!\n\n[b]In brief:[/b] Rian is the lupine second-in-command of Baby Blue, a fraternity of AB/DL boys founded to create safe spaces for boyish behavior among the city’s age players and protect them from the feminizing forces of the enemy pink team!\n\nRian has just made a lifestyle decision. This is the first 24 hours of his new life in diapers. Roger, his Labrador mentor, is the group’s leader and daddy to many of the boys. He is on a secret mission of his own. This will be one of the longest—and crinkliest—days of their lives!\n", "description_bbcode_parsed": "The one where a secret plan is afoot and the relationship drama begins! The finale arc really begins with this story. See if you can pick up on clues to future surprises if you missed them the first time! Also don't forget I promised we'd catch up with one of our recurring canine friends, Byron the malamute!

In brief: Rian is the lupine second-in-command of Baby Blue, a fraternity of AB/DL boys founded to create safe spaces for boyish behavior among the city’s age players and protect them from the feminizing forces of the enemy pink team!

Rian has just made a lifestyle decision. This is the first 24 hours of his new life in diapers. Roger, his Labrador mentor, is the group’s leader and daddy to many of the boys. He is on a secret mission of his own. This will be one of the longest—and crinkliest—days of their lives!
", "writing": "[b]24/7!\nA Pink and Blue Diaperfur Adventure\nWhole Story![/b]\nkitncub\n[url=mailto:kitncub@yahoo.com]kitncub@yahoo.com[/url] \n\n[b]General Note: [/b]This is an 18+ story. So please be 18+, o gentle reader, or else return to studying very, very hard. It involves furs in diapers, who are not babies (physically), and furs in dresses, who are not girls (biologically). It is an adventure/romance story with these elements rather than a straight regression/sissification piece, so it has an involved plot and stuff. It is part of the Pink and Blue diaperfur series, and may be hard to follow if you have not read any of the other stories. Yadda yadda, et cetera et cetera. Don’t sue me for not saying any of these things, and don’t sue me for anything else, either, because it would make me sad.\n\n[b]Author’s Note on this Story: [/b] There are three big Pink and Blue stories left, including this one. I am calling them Season Two since they will lead directly into each other. 24/7 is written in a day-in-the-life, hour-by-hour format (a nod to the fact that this will be the last season of 24).\n\n[b]In brief:[/b] Rian is the lupine second-in-command of Baby Blue, a fraternity of AB/DL boys founded to create safe spaces for boyish behavior among the city’s age players and protect them from the feminizing forces of the enemy pink team!\n\nRian has just made a lifestyle decision. This is the first 24 hours of his new life in diapers. Roger, his Labrador mentor, is the group’s leader and daddy to many of the boys. He is on a secret mission of his own. This will be one of the longest—and crinkliest—days of their lives!\n\nOther (Big) Stories in the Pink and Blue Series:\n\n(Swim through the pool for bonus shorts!)\n\n[url=http://inkbunny.net/submissionview.php?id=26115]Newbie[/url] \n[url=http://inkbunny.net/submissionview.php?id=26219]Operation Baby Blue[/url] \n[url=http://inkbunny.net/submissionview.php?id=30905]Damsel in Distress [/url]\n[url=http://inkbunny.net/submissionview.php?id=35863]The Star Attractions[/url] \n[url=http://inkbunny.net/submissionview.php?id=41324]Serafina’s Big Day[/url] \n\n\n[b]Season Two Opening: Character Recap!\n[/b]\n[i]The Baby Blue Boys[/i]\n\n[b]Roger[/b]. The leader. This playful black Lab is founder of the team and daddy to the Baby Blue boys, and many of them look to him for guidance and emotional support. He has many good traits but one thing he’s not is organized . . . usually. Likes: His boys. Water balloons. Squirt guns. Comic books. Dislikes: Girls. Telling furs what to do.\n\n[b]Rian[/b]. The fun one. Roger’s sidekick, Baby Blue’s co-founder and second-in-command, best friend to Dex, occasional big brother to Twitchy, and boyfriend to the sissy princess fox Serafina, with whom he is deeply in love. Although once shy about his odder preferences, as Roger’s partner-in-crime the wolf has come into his own as a natural extrovert who is generous to a fault. The other boys are sure lucky they have Rian to lean on. Likes: Serafina. Diapers. Accessories. Dislikes: Schoolwork. Contests.\n\n[b]Dex[/b]. The serious one. A sensitive raccoon martial artist and the team’s third-in-command and combat leader, Dex is in diapers not by choice but in the aftermath of a traumatic tournament injury, a secret known to only a few of the boys. Roger and Rian coaxed the once apathetic coon back out of his shell. Now he’s dating Twitchy after coming to terms with his regressive tendencies during a mission to rescue the bunny. If only he could do something to pay back the furs who gave him a new lease on life. Likes: Sports. Being outdoors. Feeling useful. Dislikes: Frills. Meat (he’s a vegetarian). Bullies.\n\n[b]Twitchy[/b]. The smart one. The nervous, goggle-wearing bunny makes up BB’s tech team at Hideout #4 together with his partner, the pocket-sized mouse and gadget engineer Squeak. The bunny is dating Dex after the raccoon stunned the team—and Twitchy—by coming through for him on a daring solo rescue mission. Twitch can fix anything broken . . . maybe. Likes: LEGOs. Computers. Magic tricks. Dislikes: Lin Lin. Being talked down to. Having to explain things more than once.\n\n[i]The Girl[/i]\n\n[b]Serafina[/b]. The naughty one. Once a member of Roger’s boy’s team, the red fox defected to the pink team long ago after an abortive tryst with Roger and has since become a feminized sissy who thinks of herself as a vixen first. Unlike some of her pink teammates, though, Serry is a sissy because she likes guys . . . a bit too much to be one herself. She teaches sex education at the sissy team’s feminizing Academy for Special Boys. She’s dating Rian—who treats her like a real princess—and just got a lead role in a local Shakespeare festival production. Likes: Boys in tight diapers. Flowers. Ribbons. Romances. Play-acting. Dislikes: Repression. Overly serious furs. Jealousy.\n\nNow, here goes . . .\n\n\f[b]Part One: The first two hours! 1:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m.[/b]\n\n[i]1:00 p.m.[/i]\n\n“Somefur looks like a dog on a mission,” the koala waiter remarked as he touched a pencil stub to his notepad. “So . . . pick a poison?”\n\nThe Labrador seated at a stool on the counter, who was wearing a black tee shirt and black jeans under a loose-fitting black windbreaker, wagged his tail and let his sunglasses down his muzzle as he looked up over the edge of the menu. He flipped it over in his paws, handed it to the waiter decisively, and rested his elbows on the counter.\n\n“A root beer float, but,” he said in a clipped tone, “with chocolate ice cream.”\n\nA pawful of customers had just begun to filter into the ice cream parlor in the warm spring afternoon; it had only opened at noon.\n\nThe koala blinked and he tilted his head, regarding his visitor curiously. “But . . .” the squat grey bear said carefully, as though responding to a prompt, “that will be all muddy.”\n\n“A little mess never stopped me.” The Labrador nodded. “After all—boys are built for playing in the dirt.”\n\nThe koala bit his lip and shook his head. “Sorry,” he answered slowly. “We’re all out of chocolate ice cream. I do have strawberry.”\n\nThe dog’s eyes flickered from the menu to the ice cream display case behind the counter, and scanned the list of flavors and the full canisters of ice cream it housed suspiciously. \n\nSince chocolate ice cream was, of course, there, one might have expected the canine to protest. Instead, the dog wrinkled his nose, made a distasteful face, and pronounced, as he looked back up at the attendant, “Anything but pink!” \n\nThe bear now tilted his head to the opposite side. He could hear crinkling as the dog’s tail wagged; most furs would have assumed it was his windbreaker. “Your name is . . . Roger?” the fuzzy grey counter attendant asked.\n\nThe Labrador’s face lit up and he grinned playfully. “Hey!” Roger exclaimed, sounding genuinely surprised. “How did you know that?”\n\nThe bear set down his notepad and reached under the counter to press a button, abandoning any pretext of taking Roger’s order. Then he motioned to the opposite end of the counter with his paw.\n\n“Go around back, through the employee entrance,” the bear said, nodding. “The manager is expecting you.”\n\n**************************\n\n[i]1:15 p.m.\n[/i]\nThe raccoon let out a disappointed sigh as he watched the last stragglers from an afternoon econ lecture filter out of the building.\n\nHe shouldered his backpack and turned to leave—only to stiffen in surprise as he found himself facing a tall, bony red fox wearing a loose-fitting green silk dress, with a small bow on a barette clipped behind one of her ears. She had been standing on the other side of the departing crowd, and her eyes sparkled as she suddenly noticed the raccoon, who was wearing a nondescript blue tee-shirt tucked into his black jeans.\n\n“Dex!” Serafina said, smiling. “I almost didn’t recognize you out of your karate uniform! I was hoping to catch Rian after class and wish him a good start today, since I can’t make the party later on.”\n\n“Ditto,” the raccoon said stiffly, blinking twice. “But it wouldn’t be the first class he’s cut.” Dex shook his head and scanned Serafina. “So it’s true. You two really are going 24/7 with your respective . . . things . . .”—the coon flicked a paw up at the fox, indicating her head-to-toe attire—“on the same day.”\n\nThe sissy fox crossed the flagstone path between them looked around furtively, nodding. She was still a bit nervous about crossdressing on the street, but not overly so on campus—nofur at City College would have seen her any other way, anyhow. And she had foregone her diapers, for the time being—making it through the play as a full-time girl would be complicated enough.\n\n“That was our decision. To show solidarity. Besides, yesterday was my last day at the stationery store,” she said. “It never paid that well to begin with and now that the academy gig is pretty steady, between that and the play I’m going to be too busy for anything else anyway. Rehearsals start tonight. But I’m so glad to see you alone for once!”\n\nShe threw her arms around the raccoon, who shuddered involuntarily as she gave him a quick, tight squeeze. “Oh, relax,” she said, letting him go and gesturing at the bow on her head. “It’s not catching!”\n\nDex bit his lip and frowned, his eyes glinting. “What was that for?” he asked suspiciously.\n\n“Oh, I know we never run into each other except at group things, but two things I’ve wanted to tell you,” the fox said. “One, congratulations on your acceptances. I’m sure you’ll just go across town to Twitchy’s school, but it’s cool to have choices, right? And two,” she blushed slightly, and hesitated for a moment before adding, “thank you. Rian tells me you’ve been a good friend to us. I’m sure that can’t have been easy with your teammates. I know, maybe better than you think, how boys can be about this sort of thing. Even Rog, sometimes. So I really appreciate it.”\n\n“A good friend to him, you mean,” Dex corrected her, softly but with a tinge of sternness entering his voice. “I’m Rian’s friend. Let’s not get confused about whose friend I am.”\n\nThe sissy fox’s smile faded and she eyed Dex curiously, one of her ears twitching. “Rian’s best friend is my friend too, Dex. I want to prove that to you. You’re so tense. Is everything okay with you and Twitchy?” she asked, sounding concerned. She noticed, when most furs wouldn’t, the blue fabric pet collar peeking out from under the raccoon’s shirt. That would mean Dex was on bottom. That seemed odd. Especially with someone topping who was probably even less experienced than he was. She took a deep breath.\n\n“I know you two just started,” she said carefully, “but if you ever need to talk to somefur, you know . . . off team . . . about anything that might not be, well, things you want the other boys to hear about . . . I troubleshoot all kinds of things with my academy students. I know everyone’s different and, well, it’s not easy, getting started. Sometimes it’s awful, the first couple times. It wasn’t pretty for me. It can still be wonderful after that, though.” She smiled at him. “Really.”\n\nThe raccoon’s eyes widened in horror and he stood rooted to the ground, his backpack still hanging loosely over one shoulder and his other paw holding the opposite strap, for a split second that felt to him like five long minutes. Then his eyes narrowed to steely slits.\n\n“Let’s rewind and pretend none of that was said,” he snapped. “I’m glad to see you too. There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you as well. Congrats on your own thing. How long does the play run?”\n\nSerafina frowned and looked down at her footpaws, answering simply, “Through the summer.”\n\n“Sounds like a big commitment,” the raccoon remarked as he settled the loose strap of his backpack over his other shoulder and his posture slackened a bit. “I hope you’re serious about it.”\n\nSerry tugged on her skirt and wrinkled her face up. “What are you getting at, Dex?” she asked distastefully. “What do you think you’re doing?”\n\nThe raccoon snorted. “Rebalancing the scales. I heard that you ran out on Roger, when you switched teams, ages ago.”\n\nThe fox bristled. “That’s . . . not what happened. There was never any relationship there. More like a misunderstanding. Just ask Rog. He doesn’t hold a grudge.”\n\n“Then someone has to,” the raccoon shot back, the corner of his lip turning up in the start of a scowl, “right?”\n\nSerry glared at Dex, both her paws tightening their grip on the green silk, and said nothing.\n\nThe raccoon shook his head. “Well try not to do a repeat performance. Rian’s not the total goofball he’d like everyfur to think he is,” Dex said gravely. “He’s a lot more sensitive than he lets on. I hope you know that. If he wants some alone time before the party it’s probably because he’s getting in touch with his serious side right now. I know you two have an unusually . . . open relationship. But for whatever reason he’s put his whole soul into it. And I for one am sick and tired of hearing him worry about whether he’s good enough for you. You’re the one who ought to prove yourself to him.”\n\nThe sissy fox rolled her eyes. “Great,” she said, sighing. “Macho posturing. You really are the bluest boy over there, aren’t you?”\n\nDex turned to leave. “Have to run,” he said curtly. “If you do see Rian tell him I said good luck and if he needs to reach me I’m tied up until tonight. Male bonding with Ace.”\n\n“Good,” Serry said, relaxing. “Talk things out with your friend. Talk about me, too. You’ll feel better.”\n\n“Ace and I don’t talk,” the raccoon, already walking away, corrected her without turning around.\n\n“Then have fun doing whatever it is you two budding psychotherapists do instead,” she replied dismissively, waving a paw after him.\n\nDex looked back at the vixen over his shoulder and said matter-of-factly before marching off, “Standing notice: Break my best friend’s heart, and you’ll find out. Full-time or not, you’re still a boy under that dress, by prevailing standards.”\n\nSerry released her grip on her skirt and chewed on her lip, staring after the vanishing coon thoughtfully. “Somefur,” she muttered, “is having more trouble in bed than I thought.”\n\n**************************\n\n[i]1:30 p.m.[/i]\n\nRian looked down into the hefty white plastic garbage bag full of pale blue briefs and brightly patterned boxers. The words “CLOTHES DONATION” were written on the garbage bag with permanent marker, in a childish block print. He stuck his tongue out at the sack’s contents right before he pulled the drawstrings shut with a flourish. “So long to all of you!” the cubby gray wolf remarked, before turning his back on the bag.\n\nHe stripped off his shirt and, leaving it on the floor, plopped down onto the twin bed in his small apartment wearing nothing except two diapers and a pair of blue socks with puffy clouds printed on them. He heard himself crinkle as he did, and smiled up at the green and white wrapping of the unopened pack of X-Plus diapers that stood next to his pillow.\n\n“And hello to you, my friends!” he remarked exuberantly, grabbing the bag and squeezing it to his chest as tight as he could. “My diapers!” he said with satisfaction.\n\nThe comforter of his bed had been pulled back, and Rian lay there for a moment on the sheets with his eyes closed. He had sprinkled baby powder copiously over the bed linens after diapering himself, and he let the smell wash over him, hugging the bag of diapers in a fetal position and rocking back and forth.\n\n“Oh, crinklies!” He said to the bag, rubbing the tip of his nose against it and listening to the sounds it made, “I love you so much! You can do anything. Thanks to you I met my wonderful daddy and my beautiful girlfriend and my brave best friend and my smart little brother and all the boys! If I could I would wear six of you and waddle everywhere! If I could I would—I would—” the wolf fidgeted and giggled as he felt his stiffening weewee press outwards against the cushioned inner layer of the pair of diapers he was wearing. “I would wear ten of you and crawl everywhere! Don’t worry about being bundled up though, friends!” he continued excitedly and slowly began to rock his hips back and forth, humping sideways against the air. “I promise I will still use each and every one of you with love!”\n\nHe stopped himself, releasing the bag and scooting backwards up onto his knees, and looked all around the room furtively. It was a spartan place, except for the closet and the dresser and overflow wardrobe next to it that contained all of his clothes and cub gear. \n\nRian was not the sort of fur who spent very much time at home—at least, he hadn’t been ever since he had met Roger and they had founded Baby Blue, a fraternity of diaper-loving boys devoted to promoting boyish behavior among the city’s ageplayers and protecting them from unwilling sissification by the enemy pink team, currently headquartered at Empress Calliope’s feminizing Academy for Special Boys.\n\nIf the wolf wasn’t in class—and, let’s face it, that was pretty often—he was usually visiting Roger or one of the boys, supervising a Baby Blue team, organizing a party, combing the mall and thrift stores for cub gear and team supplies, or, increasingly, spending time with the one sissy he loved, and thought of without hesitation, boy parts under her panties or no, as a vixen and his girlfriend, Serafina.\n\n“It’s okay,” Rian whispered to the bag of diapers, his eyes darting from wall to wall and ceiling to floor, as he ripped it open, his excitement mounting. “We’re all alone. Let’s have our own little pre-party!”\n\nHe began removing diapers from the bag and kicked his pillows off the bed. They fell to the floor with a soft thud. Rian carefully laid out and unfolded one diaper after another, scooting backwards to make more space as he completed each row. Soon he reached the foot of his bed, and hopped backwards on to the floor.\n\nRian grinned at the surface of the mattress, which was now entirely overlaid with a layer of soft, absorbent cushioning, and reached down next to his dresser to snatch up another full bag of diapers. He tossed it gently to where the pillows had been. Then, from the top of his dresser, he took one bottle of powder in each paw, and, walking around the bed, shook both bottles vigorously, liberally powdering all the unfolded diapers and sending clouds of sweet-smelling talcum up into the air. The cubby wolf shut his eyes, blissfully taking in the scent, and, the diapers he was wearing drawn taut, dove onto the bed.\n\nRian kept his eyes closed and heard the whole surface crinkle as he landed on it. More powder wafted up into the air around him, and he rolled back and forth on his bed, flattening his ears and listening to the magnifying crinkling of his own diapers and the unfolded rows he rolled over. He felt like he was riding on a cloud, far above the world—a soft, cottony, protected place where nofur could see anything he did.\n\n“Can’t move wiffout crinkling!” he said to himself with a giggle.\n\nReaching down, he pulled out the front of the diapers he wore and lowered them just a bit, letting his erect yiffer pop out over the top, without taking them off. Ah, that was a relief. It had been getting hot and sweaty, and a tiny bit sticky with precum, in there.\n\nThe wolf slid the unopened bag of diapers he had substituted for his pillow under his chest and rested his torso on it and his left paw next to it, keeping himself elevated a few inches over the bed. The base of his cock rubbed against the waistbands of the diapers he was wearing, and its tip just brushed against the soft cushioning of the diapers on the bed as he moved it back and forth. Each time it did, he felt a tingle under his fur. His right paw made its way to the base of his shaft and gripped his weewee loosely, gently and skillfully applying, and then withdrawing, pressure, as he began humping.\n\nHis nose also inclined downward to the bed and brushed against the soft cushioning of another diaper, and he started snuffling involuntarily at the overwhelming scent of powder. “I love you I love you I love you I love you,” he kept whispering into the diaper near his muzzle as he pumped away. “Would wear five of you ten of you twelve of you twenny of you thirty of you . . .”\n\nThen he exploded. His whole body shook and a thick, warm, sticky white puddle poured out of the tip of his cock into the comfortable, welcoming cushioning of an unfolded bulky diaper. He flopped over on to his side, shivering, and hugged the unopened bag of diapers into his chest, whimpering, “I love you!” into it. He lay there trembling for several minutes. Eventually, his cock feeling shorter, but still stiff, he repositioned the diaper bag-support, resting on it to crouch over another open diaper—and began the process again, except this time, feeling hardly able to string words together, he just whined joyously until, after what might have been fifteen or twenty minutes, he really wasn’t sure, he achieved a second release, and opened his eyes, looking sideways across the room, panting. Everything looked fuzzy. He couldn’t make out the time on his clock.\n\nWith his vision blurry and his sense of smell dulled by the clouds of powder that his humping had thrown up into the air, the wolf’s hearing was momentarily sharpened. He could hear every crinkle, every creak in his hallway. He heard a nervous tapping from right outside, then there was a cautious knock on the door. He smiled softly and rolled off the bed, making no effort to clean anything up, got to his feet, and tucked his slackening yiffer back into the front of his diapers. A thin layer of talcum adhered to his fur. “Just a . . . minute,” he called out, his voice wavering. He opened his closet, pulled out the first bathrobe he found and slipped his arms into it, letting it hang open loosely as he staggered to the door. It was a white terrycloth robe covered with colorful blue and brown pawprints.\n\nRian unlocked the door, cracking it open and tilting his head as he smiled up at the bunny in the hallway. He opened it wide and motioned for him to come in. “What’s up,” the wolf asked unsteadily, “Twitch?”\n\nThe white rabbit fidgeted with the safety goggles settled on his forehead as he hopped into the room. His large ears flicked. “Commander?” he said uncertainly. “I . . . umm . . . got your e-mail . . . and I wanted to talk to you before the party. Not on the phone. But is this a good time?” Twitchy looked around the room quizzically. “Is Serry in the bathroom? I heard a lot of voices and . . . stuff . . . and I thought maybe I should just go . . .”\n\nHe sneezed at the onslaught of powder and his eyes flicked from the bed to Rian. The wolf had a dazed smile on his face and rested one paw on Twitchy’s shoulder as he pushed the door shut behind the rabbit with the other. “That’s sweet,” the wolf said dreamily. “You’re a good friend.”\n\nTwitchy, who spent most of his time outside Baby Blue in labs, disassembling electronic devices, or doing homework, pawed a good deal less than most of the boys, but he could certainly recognize that his friend was in the afterglow of multiple orgasms.\n\n“Umm. . . Rian,” Twitchy bit his lip and phrased his question euphemistically as he stared at the bed. “Were you . . . talking to . . . your diapers?”\n\nRian laughed and hugged the bunny tight. “Aww, don’t worry, Twitchy!” he said happily, reaching behind the rabbit with one paw and patting the bunny’s cushioned rear, which crinkled slightly, beneath his cottonball tail. He concluded reassuringly, “I’m sure yours are cute too!”\n\n**************************\n\n[i]2:05 p.m.[/i]\n\n“Hey!” the lion next to Roger in the elevator snapped as Roger pressed the floor 12 and floor 14 buttons at the same time. “Make up your mind where you’re going! Some of us have meetings to get to.”\n\n“Ooo!” the Labrador remarked as the elevator doors slid shut. “I have one of those too!” He glanced at his watch, frowning. “And I think I might be late for it. Little hand is minutes. . .” he bit his lip and calculated in his head, then nodded decisively. “Yup,” he concluded. “I’m five minutes late.”\n\nThe cat raised an eyebrow. “Umm,” he asked tentatively, “do you know which company it’s at? Maybe I can tell you which floor it’s on and save you a little time.”\n\n“Huh?” Roger asked as the elevator carriage lifted, then glanced from the panel to the business-suited lion. “Oh, you don’t know! Don’t worry! It will only stop once!”\n\nThe lion blinked as the number on the floor counter blinked past 12 and settled on 13 and the doors slid open with a ding. His eyes widened as Roger stepped out of the elevator on to the floor that, officially, didn’t exist.\n\nThe Labrador turned around to look back the puzzled cat, grinning, as the elevator doors began to shut.\n\n“Don’t tell anyone though!” Roger added good-naturedly, pushing his sunglasses back up his muzzle with one finger, right before he vanished from sight. “I think it’s supposed to be a secret!”\n\n**************************\n\n[i]2:10 p.m.[/i]\n\nSerafina sat on the edge of the stage and swung her feet idly as the tabby cat playing Orsino struggled to get on his not-yet-broken-in leather boots.\n\nShe was watching a beaver and a white opossum curiously as their paws flew about and they conducted a rapid, incomprehensible argument. Eventually, the beaver cocked the beret on his head triumphantly, and the marsupial settled into a despairing posture, burying his face into his forepaws and shaking his head. He trudged along behind the beaver, emitting loud sighs periodically, as both approached the scattered crew of half-dressed actors. The beaver, whose shirt pocket was stuffed with pencils, withdrew one and began chewing on it thoughtfully as he surveyed the stage.\n\n“What’s the deal with those two anyway?” she whispered to the tabby cat. “Are they always together? Who are we supposed to listen to?”\n\nThe feline blinked. “Oh right,” the actor said, smiling. “I forgot! You’re a newbie. Well, Marty”—he gestured at the beaver—“is the director and Woody”—he gestured at the opossum—“ is the producer, but he’s sort of like a sidekick, I guess. Woody will actually spend most of the rehearsals looking tortured and muttering into his paws just like that. But at some point Marty will get too carried away and there will be some insurmountable problem with money or staging, something technical, and he’ll snap into action. This is my fourth show with them and it’s always the same thing.” He shrugged and smiled. “They’re good guys, really. I’d do all my work with them if it paid better.”\n\nSerry bit her lip and eyed the beaver. With a start, she realized that the tabby cat was reaching over her legs for a canteen on the other side of her, and she jerked herself backward, one paw reaching up to shield the chest padding under her dress.\n\nThe orange cat raised an eyebrow. “Honey,” he said with a laugh, shaking his head as he picked up the canteen and leaned back, “Relax. Unless it’s in the script, I never touch girls with my paws. Don’t worry that anyone around here is going to feel you up or anything. Well, maybe the tigress playing Olivia. She’s a strange one. Now if you were a boy,” he added with a sparkle in his eye, “you might have a spot of trouble.”\n\nSerafina bit her lip and scanned the crew nervously. The beaver spread his arms wide. The opossum peeked out from between his fingers. \n\n“Okay, gents, and—” Marty looked over the actors already on stage, noting Serafina — “lady. I asked you few to come early because this is the first day on board for you lot. For technical reasons we were only working on the Malvolio plot yesterday. Now some of you know Woody and me and some of you don’t—yet—so the first thing I want to say is congratulations and—” He grinned broadly and thumped his tail against the floor as the spotlights on the opposite side of the auditorium clicked on, momentarily blinding all the furs on stage. “Welcome to the family!”\n\nThe beaver reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a pair of sunglasses, which he unfolded carefully and put on with one paw as he kept chewing on his pencil.\n\n“Umm . . .” Serafina asked cautiously as her eyes adjusted to the light. “What are you doing with those? We’re indoors.”\n\nThe beaver thumped his tail against the floor again and tilted the beret on his head back. “What am I doing?” Marty asked rhetorically. “Why, the same thing as all of you. Getting into character!” He glowered at Serry, trying to appear villainous. “Hope you’re resting up, young lady! Because after this you’ll be on your feet until I’m convinced you know your lines backwards and forwards!” He nibbled on his eraser, then added, “And sideways!”\n\nWoody the opossum, still next to him, lowered his head again and let out a contemptuous groan.\n\nThe tabby cat chuckled and leaned over to Serafina’s shoulder. “I hope you’re ready too!” he whispered in good-humored warning. “Marty runs quite a show, but he is one of a kind.”\n\nThe sissy fox looked up at the beaver as his beady eyes as he raised his pencil into the air and began motioning to the lighting crew energetically.\n\n“Actually,” she mused, as much to herself as to the tabby cat, her eyes fixed on the beaver, “this all feels a bit familiar.”\n\n**************************\n\n[i]2:15 p.m.[/i]\n\n“Umm, don’t sit on that one!” Rian warned Twitchy as he slid one of the sticky diapers off his bed into his wastebasket. “There you go! Make yourself comfortable.” The rabbit didn’t move, except to fidget in place. “Twitch?” Rian asked, tilting his head and looking up into his friend’s face as he felt himself drop down a little closer to earth. “Is everything all right?”\n\nThe rabbit bit his lip and remained silent, but his foot began tapping as he thought about what, and how much, to say.\n\n“This isn’t about Kyle, is it?” Rian asked sternly, collecting himself and waving a paw at the bunny.\n\n“What? No!” Twitchy answered, then let out a sigh. “Although to be honest having him hanging around at Hideout #4 doesn’t help. He can’t do anything without step-by-step instructions! And I don’t even keep the user manuals to most things. Engineering requires a little bit more . . . thought and flexibility than that.”\n\n“Look,” Rian said, crossing his arms seriously. “I already told you, you asked for him to stay posted there. So he’s with you until he asks for a new assignment, and you’ll find stuff for him to do. I know he’s not a rocket scientist. Just find a way to make him feel important. It’s bad enough he knows that Ace wanted him off the combat team. That happened when I was gone or it would have been handled better. We are not having a last fur picked situation. Not on my team. No one is being frozen out like that. We’ve all had it hard enough, outside.”\n\nTwitchy’s foot stopped tapping. “We all have, huh?” he asked pointedly, then pressed ahead without explaining himself. “Don’t worry about K. I’ll figure something out. And stop changing the subject! You know perfectly well what I came here to talk about. I want to know why it’s so important that I make sure Dex goes to your party.”\n\nRian frowned. “He’s my best friend! And our third-in-command. It would be weird if he wasn’t there.”\n\nTwitchy tapped his foot. “Well he may be your friend but he’s my . . .” the rabbit bit his lip, as though unsure what word to use next. “Well he and I are dating,” he concluded lamely after a moment’s hesitation. “Dex doesn’t have a choice about those—” the rabbit pointed to all the diapers spread out on Rian’s bed—“like the rest of us do. And he bends over backwards to make sure not everyfur knows that, because he doesn’t want the whole team to feel sorry for him. Did you think the occasion of your party might be a little weird for him, maybe?”\n\nThe wolf sighed. “Yes,” he admitted. “That’s why I asked you to make sure he didn’t make an excuse and slink off to the dojo or something. But it won’t be awkward once you just get him there.”\n\nHe grabbed the rabbit’s paws anxiously. “I promise! He needs to be there. Or else it just won’t be the same.” A sneaky twinkle entered his eyes. “Just tell him I need his support. That will get him to come. This is a big decision for me, you know. It’s as important to me to know that Dex is on board with it as Serry and Rog, and you. I don’t want him to feel like his approval doesn’t matter, or to be weirded out about it and start avoiding me.”\n\nTwitchy eyed his friend warily. “Is that really all? You aren’t going to give him anything super expensive in front of everyfur or anything like that, are you?”\n\n“Huh?” Rian blinked, knotting his paws together behind his back nervously. “What makes you think that?”\n\nThe rabbit let out a long breath and looked down at his feet. “You’re very generous, Commander, to me as much as anyone, but to speak freely, I wish you’d think more about the effect your gestures can have on people.”\n\nRian stared at the rabbit, perplexed. “What’s this about, Twitch?” he asked. “Is this why you’ve been avoiding me since spring break? I didn’t want to say anything, I mean I thought you were just miffed after I said you couldn’t transfer Kyle.” He furrowed his brow thoughtfully. “And come to think of it I haven’t changed you in forever, have I? Are we okay?”\n\nThe bunny fidgeted with the goggles on his forehead and avoided the question. “Look, he might be your best friend still, and I’d never want to get in the way of that, but just don’t give Dex anything big and expensive in front of everyfur at the party. It would be weird. I know you don’t realize it, but it’s like you’re always throwing around how much more money you have than the rest of us. With your outfits, and all your diapers.” He gestured at the bed. “I mean, Byron had three jobs until last night. Dex works at the dojo, he doesn’t just train there. I’m on a merit scholarship. You just — do school, sort of, and Baby Blue stuff.”\n\n“Hey!” Rian puffed himself up. “How do you know I’m not on a merit thingamajig too?”\n\nTwitchy raised an eyebrow and stared at his friend without saying anything.\n\nRian let the air out of his chest and waved a paw dismissively. “Yeah, all right, I’m not,” he admitted, with a giggle. “Allowance, boarding school, City College — My dad would write a check for any amount sooner than say more than hello and goodbye to me. I’ve spent more time with Rog in the last couple years than I have with him in my entire life.”\n\nTwitchy frowned and started to say something, but Rian cut him off cheerily. “Anyway,” the wolf said, grinning, “stop being so paranoid! I promise I didn’t buy him anything. The reason you need to get Dex to my party is just because—” the wolf threw his arms wide and bounced up and down on his heels as he concluded in a self-satisfied tone, “it is going to rock!”\n\n**************************\n\n[i]2:45 p.m.[/i]\n\n“And all those sayings will I overswear,” said the sissy fox, with a nervous tinge in her voice, looking back over her shoulder, then back to the tabby cat dressed as a Duke, biting her lip nervously. “And those swearings keep as true in soul, As doth that orbed continent the fire, That severs day from night.”\n\nShe shifted her weight from one footpaw to the other and looked up at the orange feline expectantly.\n\nThe tabby cat threw his paws up and moaned theatrically.\n\n“Cut!” The beaver, chewing on his second pencil, shouted and raised a paw in the air. “What’s the problem now?” he asked. “Why did you stop?”\n\n“I just don’t think she should keep looking over her shoulder at Sebastian,” the tabby cat said to Marty petulantly, flicking a paw at Serafina and straightening his doublet. “It’s distracting me. She finds him, hugs him, whatever, then she moves on and leaves with me at the end of the play. I’m supposed to make a love speech to her when she’s looking at another guy? It’s weird.”\n\nThe beaver tilted his beret on his head and looked down at the pocket-sized notepad in his paw, flipping between two pages and wrinkling his nose. “Looking back wasn’t in my notes,” he said musingly. “And she does go off with Orsino. Serry? Is there something with the lights, or with Sebastian’s costume?”\n\nThe fox bit her lip. “What, is she supposed to forget about him?” she asked the tabby cat directly, sounding annoyed. “Sebastian’s her brother! It’s not like Orsino’s going to be the only man she ever speaks to from now on.”\n\n“Of course not,” the feline crossed his arms, “but focus on the scene, will you? This is a love story! And I’m the lover! The spotlight is going to be on the two of us.”\n\nThe cross-dressing fox shook her head. “It’s not a story about one kind of love,” she said. “It never is. You’d think gay guys might understand women a little better, but without fail you’re even worse than the straight ones. Besides,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “this is Viola we’re talking about. She has options if she wants them. You shouldn’t carry yourself as so sure of yourself from the minute you say ‘I love you’ to her. You should be a little bit nervous, too, maybe.”\n\nThe beaver returned his notepad to his shirt pocket. “That’s different than any staging I’ve seen,” he said, beginning to chew on his pencil. The opossum standing next to him stood on his tiptoes and whispered something inaudible, which the beaver leaned over to hear.\n\n“That’s what I’m saying,” whined the tabby cat. “ I’m not taking rewrites from some amateur. Say something, Marty. You’re the director!”\n\n“That’s right! I am!” The beaver remarked happily, twirling his chewed-up pencil a few circles in his right paw. He eyed Serafina appraisingly and fidgeted with his beret for a moment. Then he smiled at her and added, “But she’s the girl!”\n\nThe surprised fox, who had been bracing herself for a reprimand, smiled back at him—and blushed.\n\n[i]Next time: 3:00 p.m.–Nightfall: In the final hours before Rian’s party, Roger is thrown off schedule, Serry squirms when her cover is blown, Twitchy faces an unexpected challenge, and the wolf completes a very important mission!\n[/i]\n\f\n\n[b]Part Two: The first afternoon! 3 p.m.–Nightfall\n[/b]\n[i]3:00 p.m.[/i]\n\n“Ka-why . . . desu . . . ne,” Roger read off the postcard in his paw, then flipped it over and set it back down on the counter. “That’s cute, isn’t it?” he translated. “See, I told you I can read some of those squiggly things!”\n\nThe tanuki behind the glass display counter frowned up at him. The walls around them were covered with monitors, streaming demos of various soon-to-be-released games in various stages of beta testing. The glass cases were filled with consoles and accessory equipment.\n\n“Kawaii is cute,” the tanuki, who still spoke English with a Japanese accent, corrected his pronunciation sternly. “Kauai is an island in Hawaii.”\n\n“Well,” Roger said, smiling,“it was cute when I was there. Lots of blue!”\n\nThe raccoon dog stiffened, bit his lip, and held up one finger as he turned his eyes to the computer screen in front of him as though checking something. Then he looked back up at Roger. “Number 119856?” he asked cryptically.\n\nThe dog frowned and counted on his fingers—when he reached the end of them, he started again, but after two tries, shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, shrugging.\n\nThe tanuki turned the screen, which was mounted on a pivot, around so Roger could see. “Hawaii — Blue,” the tanuki pointed at the header at the top of the screen. “Are you the one who placed this order?”\n\n“Oh!” the Labrador answered, his tail beginning to wag when he saw the list that was still scrolling down the monitor. “You meant that order!”\n\n**************************\n\n[i]4:00 p.m.[/i]\n\n“Serry, I wanted to talk to you about the duel scene,” the beaver said without looking up from the memo book in his paw as the dressing room door swung open. “I don’t like all the running around and shouting. It’s confusing.”\n\nThe sissy fox gasped and spun around, startled, covering her chest with both quivering paws. “Some of the locks are broken, sorry,” Marty continued without looking up from his notes. “Woody called the building about it. I’ll knock next time. My paws are usually full, so sometimes I forget. I thought we might try using some kind of . . . escalator-elevator type thing. See, I drew a picture with all of you on it! And I wrote up . . .” He raised his head slowly when Serafina didn’t say anything. Her back was to him, but she had just realized, too late, he could see her reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall, and the reflection of the padded brassiere lying in front of her on the counter, and whimpered fearfully.\n\nThe beaver’s eyes narrowed and he withdrew a pencil from behind his ear, looking back down at his notepad and scribbling something. “So . . . You’re a boy . . . dressed as a girl . . . playing a girl . . . dressed as a boy,” he said thoughtfully after a moment, then seemed absorbed in writing.\n\n“Look, Marty, I’m sorry,” she said, sadly, her ears drooping. “It was fun for a couple hours. I’ll get my things and go. At least this happened early, right? You have plenty of time to recast.”\n\nThe beaver finished scribbling, clicked his tongue, and looked back up at the quailing fox. “Will it cause you any trouble if I put what I just said in the press kit?” he asked, smiling.\n\nSerafina blinked and slowly raised her eyes from the ground and slowly lowered her arms from her chest.\n\n“I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening before,” the beaver said when she didn’t answer him. “Did you ask me something?”\n\n“Marty,” she said, slowly raising her eyes to look at the beaver’s reflection in the mirror. “Half your ideas are . . . Putting an escalator onstage is the stupidest thing I ever heard. You’re a total goofball. But you’re also . . . not.”\n\nMarty blinked and slid his sunglasses back up his muzzle. “Well I don’t know what to make of that,” he remarked in a chipper tone. “So I’ll take it as an okay about your bio?”\n\nThe corner of her lip turned up, cautiously, in a smile. “Yes. It’s fine, it’s no problem for me. You just . . .” She eyed the beaver’s reflection in the mirror from head to toe, shivering again, but not, this time, from fear. “You just remind me of someone I used to spend more time with.”\n\n**************************\n\n[i]4:05 p.m.[/i]\n\nJay, I’m sorry, but you can come to one after your 18th. Don’t worry—we’ll save the best for then. Until then I can’t give out locations but we’re always glad to see you in the gaming group at the store, and talk about whatever.\n\nRoger finished typing and pressed send. Then he returned to his inbox and thumbed through the other text messages on his phone. When he had finished he grinned up at the otter who owned the coffee shop. “Can you put an extra shot in that?” the black Lab said cheerily. “I’ve been running around town all day. Totally forgot I’m hosting a party tonight! Which reminds me that I need to pick up a whole bunch of garbage bags.”\n\nThe otter looked at him quizzically and shrugged. Roger was a regular, and he had long since stopped trying to make sense of the dog’s non sequiturs.\n\n“The extra shot is on the house. If you promise not to tell me again that it’s not as good as it used to be,” he said. “It’s your own fault. You cost me my best cappuccino maker.”\n\nThe lab shrugged. “My loss too. But it couldn’t be helped. Dex is meant for bigger things. Oh! You can give me a newspaper too. Actually,” the dog said, wagging his tail and fishing for his wallet, “I’ll take like ten newspapers.”\n\nThe otter blinked and started to ask a question, but then thought better of it, shook his head, and rang up the sale while Roger collected the papers from the stand and tucked them under his arm.\n\nIn five minutes the dog was sitting at a table, resting his elbow on the stack of papers, and blowing on his cappuccino, when his cell phone rang. He eyed the number curiously and flipped it open.\n\n“Hi, Roddy,” he said into the phone, stirring his drink. “What’s up?”\n\nThe lab’s ears pricked and his eyes widened slightly as he listened.\n\n“Okay,” he said quietly. “It happens. Stay cool, and don’t beat yourself up about it. I know it seems like the worst thing right now, but it’s really not the end of all days. All of us make mistakes sometimes. I’ll put Kyle in touch with you. He had a similar . . . mishap a few months ago, and came out of it okay. Whatever they’re saying right off, remember, at least in your case, that they do love you. Keep a low profile and give them a day or two to deal with it though without . . . What?” The dog looked at his watch and gritted his teeth. “No, no, please don’t do that! I’m really busy right now and it’s also just a very bad idea! I don’t even know what you think I could . . .”\n\nThe dog winced at a burst of noise from the cell phone and sighed, slumping down on the stack of newspapers in despair.\n\n“Hello,” he said into the receiver in a resigned tone, “Mrs. Jensen.”\n\n**************************\n\n[i]4:30 p.m.[/i]\n\nRian stood fearfully outside the thrift store, his knees knocking, clutching the large garbage bag in both his paws. It wasn’t the store that scared him—he visited it and several others regularly, combing the racks for supplies and any cast-offs that might be useful for himself or his Baby Blue friends, and whatever purchases he made had never raised eyebrows.\n\nBut he was suddenly overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he was about to do. He rehearsed the rules he had made in his head: he would still use the bathroom for messing, except on weekends; take chlorophyll every day with his vitamins; bring a bottle of water in his backpack everywhere and keep drinking from it; never leave home without at least two spares, wipes, and a spare pair of rubber pants; always have plastic bags with him since he couldn’t know the disposal situation everywhere he might go; don’t spend much time alone, which he preferred not to do anyway; and spread the burden of changing out between as many furs as he could. Roger, Serry, Twitchy, and Dex had all volunteered to help, and he was sure others would when he asked at the party.\n\nHe squeezed his eyes shut, and, not able to reach around the garbage bag to the door, advanced clumsily, stumbling forward, the entrance to the store swinging open as he staggered through it and over to the clothes donation bin.\n\nTaking a deep breath, the wolf hoisted the bag with all his strength, and watched all the grown-up underwear he owned thud limply on top of a high pile of donated baby clothes.\n\n“Mission,” he said to himself with relief as his knees stopped knocking, “accomplished!” He turned around, wiping his paws against each other briskly, and marched to the counter. “I need a receipt please!” he said with pride. It wouldn’t be much of a tax deduction, but he would present it to Roger as proof of a job well done, and put it in his scrapbook.\n\nThe cashier smiled at the shrimpy wolf, who was wearing a polo shirt and loose-fitting jeans. “Oh hello, Rian,” she said. “I almost didn’t recognize you. Not wearing anything cute today?”\n\n“Oh!” Rian said, grinning broadly and wagging his tail, giving off a slight crinkle audible only to himself, “But I am!!”\n\n**************************\n\n[i]5:30 p.m.[/i]\n\nThe genet, sitting in a tree overlooking his vineyard, watched the sun set with satisfaction. The slight mountain cat blinked in surprise as a black Labrador clambered up the trunk and hoisted himself onto the wide, spreading branch beside him. “Sorry I was not down there,” the cat remarked in accented English. “I had given up on you!”\n\n“Je m’excuse mille fois, je sais bien que je suis très en retard,” Roger said gesturing apologetically. He unzipped his black windbreaker and slid his sunglasses back up his nose, then reached inside his jacket. “Quand même j’ai apporté tous les preuves nécessaires de retirer nos articles. Est-ce que ces tous sont arrivés?”\n\n“Tu parles français maintenant?” the petite spotted mountain cat asked, raising an eyebrow. “Roger?” he switched back to English. “When did you learn to do that? You told me that you never would.” \n\n“Did I say that in French?” Roger asked, tilting his head and smiling. “That was weird! Because I don’t know any French!”\n\nThe genet pointed up and Roger raised his head slowly to look up at the porch of a tree house about six feet above them. From this branch on upwards, wooden grips were nailed into the thick trunk of the tree, making it an easy climb from where they were sitting to the tree house entrance.\n\n“All in there,” the spotted mountain cat explained. “Since you impressed the need for absolute security, I did not want to keep them on the ground. I will follow you. You will need two combinations to get in.” \n\n“Ooh, this is the best one yet!” Roger exclaimed. “Gênial!”\n\nThe cat looked confused. “I thought you said you didn’t . . .”\n\n“I don’t!” Roger said over his shoulder as he began climbing. “Je viens toutefois de lire tous les numéros d’Astérix,” he remarked offhandedly, wagging his tail. “Maybe it’s that!”\n\n**************************\n\n[i]6:00 p.m. [/i]\n\nThe opossum had fallen asleep leaning against the trunk of a cardboard tree.\n\n“When we get it right, people!” the beaver shouted waving his arms above his head. “That’s when we can go to the next scene!” He spun and pointed straight at a cougar who was about to say something in protest. The cat bit his tongue and muttered something under his breath. “Finally!” Marty exclaimed, twirling a pencil in his paw and thumping his tail against the stage. “Our Malvolio is starting to look angry!”\n\nHe took a deep breath as other members of the crew started to grumble as well. His marsupial partner began snoring loudly. “All right,” the director said reluctantly, holding up all the digits on both paws. “Ten minutes!”\n\n“Someone’s fiery tonight,” the tabby cat, who was sitting cross-legged on the sidelines, remarked, looking up at the beaver as most of the actors wandered backstage.\n\n“Serry?” the beaver said, looking down at him. “She’ll turn out to be a find I think. I take full credit for that. Woody didn’t want to do it.”\n\nThe orange feline licked at his forewpaws, grooming. “Not the newbie,” he said. “Though I’ll admit she’s all right. You.” He tilted his head and eyed his director curiously. “You don’t have a new boy, do you, Marty?”\n\n“Don’t be silly,” Marty snapped, then began chewing on his pencil. “It’s just the material. The play is hard not to be excited about.”\n\n“Fine, be that way,” the cat purred, flicking his tail against the stage. “You always keep the good ones to yourself.”\n\n*************\n\n[i]6:30 p.m.[/i]\n\nThe bell jangled as the door to the comic shop swung open and Roger stepped inside. A malamute sitting behind the counter and dozing over an open comic book sat up with a start.\n\n“Hi, Byron,” the older dog said cheerily. “Did anyfur come by with anything?”\n\nThe sled dog bit his lip and looked up with a dazed expression, still blinking himself awake.\n\nRoger groaned. “Did anyfur walk out with anything?” he asked despairingly.\n\nThe malamute stared down at the floor ashamed and Roger shook his head. “Forget it, go get ready for the party,” he said, clapping the dog on the shoulder. “I know last night was your last night at the restaurant. Better you nod off here than as a lifeguard. Can you just turn on the heat in the back room and shake out the sleeping bag? I think Roddy might need a place to sleep for a couple nights and it’s better if it’s not my apartment.”\n\nThe malamute stood up, crinkling, and nuzzled at Roger’s paw before padding off drowsily. Roger was starting to close up shop when he noticed an adult gray wolf in a denim jacket standing at one of the shelves and rocking on his heels.\n\n“We’re closing,” Roger announced. “Can I help you with something?”\n\nThe lupine selected a book, adding it to the three under his arm, and turned to face Roger, who caught sight of a gold earring in his right ear.\n\n“Sleeping bag, huh? That sounds comfy. You know, in eighteenth-century Britain,” the wolf remarked vaguely as he approached the counter and held out his choices for Roger’s inspection, “booksellers used to do a lot of small, but important favors for their loyal customers. Receiving mail for people, that was a big one, when they were traveling, or just in the name of privacy — postal offices couldn’t be trusted to hold things yet.”\n\n“Huh?” Roger blinked. “Why did you say that?” he asked suspiciously.\n\nThe wolf shrugged. “You sell books here, among other things. I thought you might find it interesting.”\n\n“You have both a boy and a girl, I guess,” Roger remarked, changing the subject, as he looked over the lupine’s selections and rang up the sale. “Did you find everything you were looking for?”\n\n“Oh yes.” The wolf smiled. “A couple Christmases ago.”\n\nThe Labrador looked at him oddly. “Do I know you from somewhere?” he asked. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t really look or sound like you belong here.”\n\nThe wolf frowned and rubbed his thumb back and forth against the inside of his fingers thoughtfully. “I get that a lot. They eventually said the same thing at Trinity College. We’re just in town on a layover. Missed a connection because of a security hold-up.” He held up a finger and shook it at Roger in warning. “I don’t know where else is on your list, but do not ever visit Cambodia. Once that’s on your passport you have problems at every airport. Government conspiracy, I’m sure.”\n\n“I . . . wasn’t planning on it,” Roger blinked and took the strange wolf’s credit card and swiped it. “Do you need any advice on how to pass the time while you’re in town?”\n\n“Nah,” the wolf chuckled. “I’ve seen enough to think anything I did in this place would probably be superfluous. Oh, I almost forgot why I came to this store, though.”\n\nHe reached into the pocket of his jacket with one paw as he took his card back in the other, and produced a water pistol with an extended nozzle and an attachable water cartridge, setting it on the counter. “Is this yours? My boyfriend picked it up on our last stop. Based on where, I guess you dropped it from an overlook. It’s monogrammed with a name and address, so I thought, maybe it’s a keepsake, or something, and well—next thing you know we’re here,” he shrugged. “Might as well make it for a reason.”\n\nRoger looked down at the squirt gun and took it in his paw. “Hey! I did drop this . . .” he looked up, but the bell jangled as the door swung shut behind the wolf, who was already gone. The Lab concluded, puzzled, “A really, really long way away from here. And you forgot your receipt . . .”\n\nByron trudged back into the front of the store, yawning and rubbing his eyes with the back of both paws. “I brought you a coffee, By,” Roger said gently. “You don’t want to sleep through the party. And if you’re planning on it, trust me, Rian won’t let you. Can you do one last thing while I close up?”\n\nThe malamute tilted his head.\n\n“Find some cardboard and markers and make a temporary sign for the back room,” Roger proposed. “It should say something like . . . ‘Bag check and package deliveries.’”\n\n*******************\n\n[i]Nightfall[/i]\n\n“Hey Ace, hey Jax!” Kyle the Dalmatian waved to the approaching cat and dog pair. The team’s two wilderness patrol leaders fell into step with the group. Jax, a tracking hound wearing his Boy Scout sash over his clothes, waved, and Ace, a lynx in a Safari outfit, who was leaning on his partner’s shoulder and walking stiff-legged, almost as though he were waddling, just muttered something.\n\nKyle turned back to the wolf. The two were at the center of a small knot of boys making their way through the street together toward Roger’s apartment; some had set out with buddies, and others had fallen into the group as it slowly made its way across town.\n\n“How about you, Rian?” the dog asked. “Will you go back home for Memorial Day or just the Fourth of July?”\n\nThe wolf’s ears drooped slightly. “Oh,” he said uncertainly, “I’m spending Memorial Day with Roger! There’ll be so much clean up to do after all the School’s Out games and celebrations! I’m still trying to sell him on adding a You’re Not Graduating from Diapers ceremony to the schedule. He definitely won’t be able to do without me! But for the Fourth everyfur is gone and Serry will be performing the whole weekend so I’ll probably see one of her shows and then I’ll just be. . .”\n\n“He’ll be driving out with me to my folks’,” interrupted the raccoon in his karate uniform as he fell into step with them. He clapped a paw on the shrimpy wolf’s shoulder. “I had to fight to maneuver him out there. But what can you do? It’s not easy to get on Mr. Popular’s calendar these days.”\n\nWhen Rian looked back over his shoulder, Dex smiled down at the shorter fur and added, “Yo,” belatedly. There were paintball splatters on Dex’s uniform, and his headfur and whiskers looked a bit frazzled, with a few leaves clinging to his ears.\n\n“Dex!” Rian exclaimed, his eyes swelling up. “I didn’t know if you were going to come to the party with Ace and Jax or not!”\n\n“I wasn’t going to,” the coon said nonchalantly. “Too many financial aid forms to fill out still. But . . . ” he paused, blushing a little, before concluding softly, “But Twitch said you needed me around.”\n\n*******************\n\n[i]7:00 p.m.[/i]\n\n“Twitchy!” said Roger, looking out of the kitchen and pointing one finger on each paw at the rabbit as the door swung shut behind him. “I have no food. Byron ran to the grocery store to get some chips and soda.”\n\n“What?” the rabbit exclaimed. “How could you let that happen!”\n\n“Squeak!” echoed the pocket-sized mouse on Twitchy’s shoulder, shaking his head.\n\nRoger frowned. “I’ve been busy!” he said defensively, then vanished into the kitchen. Twitchy heard the sound of cabinet doors opening and closing at random. As he listened, he looked down at the open newspapers spread out on the floor around the couch—they covered almost the entire carpet.\n\nAfter several minutes the Labrador reappeared with boxes clutched in his arms.\n\n“I have mixes for stuff!” He listed them as he tossed the boxes to the rabbit, who fumbled and hopped around to catch each of them. “Angel food bars. Sponge cake. Vanilla frosting. Sugar cookies. What do you think? Considering the occasion, I thought it would be fun to have a lot of white, fluffy foods.”\n\nTwitchy, his arms full, stared up at his commanding officer apprehensively. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked, his foot beginning to tap. “Isn’t this the sort of thing you can run next door and ask your sister for help with?”\n\nRoger shuddered involuntarily and clapped his paws over his stomach. “Trust me, that,” he said, holding one paw up and wagging it at the rabbit, “is a really bad idea. Besides, you work with lab equipment and stuff . . .” The dog’s eyes narrowed and he stared at the bunny, as though daring him, “Don’t you?”\n\n“Right,” Twitchy took a deep breath and, managing to get one paw loose, reached up for the goggles settled on his forehead, gritted his teeth, and—something he only did on his most dangerous assignments—snapped them down over his eyes. “How hard could this be?”\n\n“Squeeeak,” said the mouse seated on his shoulder nervously.\n\n*******************\n\n[i]7:45 p.m. Backstage.[/i]\n\n“What is it now, Woody?” The beaver fidgeted with his beret as he turned away from the mirror, then started as he faced the door. “Serry!” he frowned. “Go eat pizza and mingle with the others. You’re not scared of Garrick, are you?” He waved a paw. “Don’t be! This is my fourth show with him and it’s always the same. He’s only fighting with you because he likes you enough to think you can take it. It means he’ll really hash through the lines with you on stage. He doesn’t do that often—” The beaver looked at her meaningfully. “With a girl. Speaking of which, we will have to tell the others eventually. We’re all a family, for the length of the show anyway. I’ll follow your lead, but sooner is better.”\n\nThe fox moved her footpaw in a circle and clasped her forepaws behind her back. “I’ll do it tomorrow. I just wanted to say thanks,” she said hesitantly. “For being understanding about me.”\n\nThe beaver reached for a pencil and turned back to the stage diagram he had been doodling. “You’re welcome,” he answered.\n\n“I think you and I are . . . a good team.” Serafina said. “I used to work with someone a lot like you. I miss it, sometimes. I’ll always wonder if that could have turned out differently.”\n\nThe beaver, who was trying to ignore her, kept scribbling and reached backward over his shoulder to wave a paw shooing her away. “I’ll come by with notes for you after we’re all finished,” he said, sounding distracted. “I like what you did with the ending. But you play the shipwreck at the start too melodramatic. You need to give people a chance to ease into the world a little bit. I’m still thinking about the rest. Right now your pizza’s getting cold.”\n\n“You don’t have a bad side, do you, Marty?” she asked. “You aren’t going to put your sunglasses back on after we wrap up for the night and press me for some sort of . . . special favor? In return for keeping me on?”\n\nThe beaver raised his eyes to look at her reflection in the mirror, and saw the flush in the sissy fox’s cheeks. He furrowed his brow in confusion.\n\n“Why?” he said cautiously. “Do you want me to?”\n\n[i]Next time: T minus zero . . . Rian’s 24/7 party begins! The wolf is determined to make it a celebration everyone will remember.\n[/i]\n*******************\n\n[b]\fPart Three: Celebration!\n[/b]\n[i]T minus zero. Rian’s 24/7 Party.\n[/i]\nThe coat rack behind the door was filled with pants, and others were laid folded up on the floor nearby. “You know the rules tonight!” Rian, wearing his polo shirt and three layered diapers under a pair of plastic pants with ponies on them, said, with his arms crossed, to the latest entrant. He pointed at the pile of folded jeans and slacks in the corner. “Rule one: Any pants that aren’t plastic get checked at the door!”\n\n“Being a lousy employee isn’t the same, Byron,” the crinkling Dalmatian whined to the malamute standing over him. The spotted dog was crawling on all fours on the newspaper experimentally. “You’re still our best swimmer. I’m not our best anything. I think I’m slowing Twitch down more than I’m helping. What’s worse is I don’t think I’m getting the hang of this tech support stuff. It’s like housebreaking all over again. Whenever I made progress at home it was off to sitting around all night and all weekend in a restaurant kitchen where you always have to let other furs go first to use a one-toilet bathroom.”\n\nThe spotted dog turned his head around the room and sniffed curiously as he crawled in a circle. “Where are my teammates anyway?” he asked. “Twitch and Squeak came straight from the hideout so they should have beat me here.”\n\nDex was sitting on the couch and shifting his weight around a little uncomfortably. He wore the top of his karate outfit over red plastic pants that covered three layered cloth diapers fastened carefully with safety pins. Jax sat beside him on the sofa, eying the coon while sucking noisily on three of Ace’s fingers.\n\nThe lynx was standing behind the couch, one paw surrendered to the nursing dog’s muzzle and the other resting on his head, while he faced away from the couch, absorbed in heated debate with a civet.\n\n“I can’t believe we’re still having this argument,” the small, cat-like fur protested insistently. “Our government is not tyrannical! Just take my word for it, I know it has issues, but it just isn’t. Is not. Have you heard of Stalinist Russia? Nazi Germany maybe? I bet you’ve seen that one in movies.”\n\nAce snorted. “So I guess we should wait until we do elect a fascist government, and ask nicely for it to restore our Second Amendment rights, afterwards,” he snapped.\n\nThe civet rolled his eyes and sighed, looking up at the ceiling. “But making carrying weapons a fundamental right undermines democracy from the start. It sends everyone a message that violence is a legitimate response to social problems! The world has changed for the better since this country was founded, you know . . . And to prove it I will make you see reason if I have to stand right here arguing until one or both of us get a rash,” he pouted, crossing his arms. “Then when you break down and start begging for a change first you’ll have no choice but to admit that I’m right and all conflicts can be resolved through peaceful discussion.”\n\nThe trailblazing lynx’s eyes glinted and he grinned. “Diaper rash, ooh scary!” he said. “Had poison ivy recently?”\n\nRoger waved both his paws in the air and stood in the center of the room near the bowls of chips and bottles of soda on the coffee table. As the designated caregiver, if anyone needed one, he was the only one wearing his pants, although he had removed his belt and let them hang loose so that his waistband poked out quite visibly.\n\n“Okay, everyfur!” Roger said to the room of about twenty boys. “You know what you came here to celebrate. If you’re here, you’re for it. Are you for it?”\n\nRian, from his vantage point near the door, shifted his weight back and forth uncertainly, crinkling audibly as he did—but then, so was almost everyfur around him, excepting the small group of cloth-wearers that had been growing lately around Dex, Ace, and Jax. There was scattered applause. Roger beckoned to Rian, who made his way carefully through the crowd to his mentor’s side.\n\nEveryfur stood aside and smiled at him as he passed, some patting him on the back, some clapping him on the shoulder, and some tussling the fur on his head. By the time he made it to Roger’s side, he was beaming and beginning to relax. He tugged on the Lab’s waistband, and Rog bent over to listen to him.\n\n“They all seem to think it’s cool. It’s not something they’re going to laugh at afterwards is it? It’s really important that if anyfur said it was weird or looked at me weirdishly you tell me now. Do they think it’s cool?” the wolf whispered anxiously, tugging on the hem of his shirt, which wouldn’t quite come down to his waistband.\n\n“Of course they do,” Roger reassured the wolf, patting his head with one paw. “Or they wouldn’t have come to the party. You asked them all before they came here if they were really comfortable, didn’t you? And we made clear that there was no obligation, right? That this was never envisioned as a whole group thing? It’s your personal party, not a BB event.”\n\nRian bit his lip and nodded as the Lab straightened up and continued speaking. “Rian has worked hard and talked to a lot of us to come up with rules that will make his big decision manageable and responsible for everyfur. And we’ll go through those and put them up on an easel a little later. But for now, we’re here to have fun, and show support for my sidekick’s scary but exciting decision to try being Baby Blue’s first 24/7 diaper player.” Roger tussled Rian’s headfur. “Congratulations on your transition,” he said, “little buddy.”\n\n“Actually,” Rian cleared his throat and released Roger’s waist, suddenly confident, “I just copied most of those rules from someone else in this room.” He wagged his tail and looked up at Roger quickly, but didn’t give the older fur a chance to interrupt before he set his master plan for the night into motion.\n\n“And you meant to say,” the wolf said, beaming, “second 24/7 wearer. He just doesn’t like to brag about it, or make any of us feel inferior, especially because,” Rian tugged at his plastic waist band guiltily, “he’s so reluctant to damage the environment for his own hobby, but I only have the confidence in myself to do what I’m doing . . .”\n\nRian gestured across the room, toward the sofa. Every fur listening slowly turned their heads to look at Dex, who was blushing furiously and staring at the floor, as the wolf concluded triumphantly, “Because of my best friend.”\n\nKyle, however, was not listening. The Dalmatian had followed his nose, and his ears, into the kitchen, and when he could see into it he stood up and steadied himself against the wall with one paw, tugging up the front of his single Secure X-Plus diaper with the other.\n\n“Squueeeeeaaaaaaak!” cried the dizzy mouse, who was holding onto the whirling propellers of an electric mixer and being whipped around. Twitchy, oblivious to his friend’s plight, his goggles and the front of his overalls covered with flour, stared into a mixing bowl critically and tapped his foot. An open bag of flour, and containers of baking soda, baking powder, and sugar were open next to him, as were a series of spray cans.\n\nHis eyes flickered from the ingredients to the instructions on the back of several mix boxes, which were facing him, and the open pages of two cookbooks.\n\nThe Dalmatian caught the mouse in one paw and turned off the mixer. The rabbit looked up at him with a start, knocking two of the boxes over, and a carton of milk sideways, sending it spilling into the mixing bowl. “Kyle!” he cried fearfully. “Don’t touch anything!” Wincing as he heard the edge in his own voice, the rabbit added, unconvincingly, “Umm, you might get hurt.”\n\n“Squeak,” the dazed mouse said as he collapsed on to his back in the Dalmatian’s palm and smiled up at the dog in relief.\n\n“Squeak? Twitch?” The Dalmatian stared at the chief engineer of Hideout #4, dumbfounded. “What are you two doing?”\n\n“We’re making a cake!” Twitchy exclaimed, then bit his lip and stared down into the bowl, righting the container of milk and squinting at the mixture critically. “I think,” he added, frowning.\n\nThe dog shook his head. “But what . . .” he asked in disbelief, gesturing at the boxes and books, “are all those for?”\n\nTwitchy narrowed his eyes as he scanned the back-of-the-box instructions and cookbooks. “None of them say what kind of grease to grease a cake pan with,” the rabbit observed suspiciously. “Or how greasy it should be.”\n\nThe usually clumsy Dalmatian set Squeak down carefully on the counter and groaned. He leaned over Twitchy’s shoulder and snatched one of the mixes and the mixing bowl, and marched purposefully toward the sink.\n\n“What else is in the refrigerator?” he asked brusquely.\n\nTwitchy blinked. “We already took out everything on the ingredients list,” the bunny explained, gesturing at the cluttered counter. “If we had it. And if we didn’t, well, we’ll just have to skip that recipe, I guess.”\n\nThe Dalmatian looked back at him sternly as he dumped out the soupy cake mixture into the sink and turned the water on. “For goodness’ sake, Twitch,” the dog scolded the bunny, shaking his head in exasperation. “This takes thought and a little flexibility. You can’t just follow the instructions!”\n\nThe rabbit shrugged and opened the fridge. Kyle couldn’t do any worse, he mused, than he had been. As the noise of the blender died down, the rabbit’s ears flicked and he heard a second, louder round of applause from the crowded main room.\n\n“What’s going on out there, K?” the bunny asked idly as he scanned the sparse contents of Roger’s refrigerator. “Did the party start already? Is Dex here yet?” He chewed on his lip. “He didn’t seem too sulky about being dragged out, did he? Because I told him I’d make it up to him later.”\n\nIn the main room, the raccoon, who was now sitting on the newspaper-covered floor, had wrapped both his arms about Jax’s leg, and was nuzzling it contentedly. The dog, still nursing on Ace’s paw, scratched behind his raccoon friend’s ears, and occasionally Dex would purr a little. About ten boys were seated on the floor in a small ring around Dex, and some shook his muzzle or patted him on the head, while others regarded him admiringly and asked questions. “What do you eat?” asked one of the boys. “Can you eat whatever you want or is it a big hassle?”\n\n“What do you do on overnight trips, Dex?” asked another. “Don’t you camp out in the woods? And do you shave off any of your fur . . . you know?”\n\n“What chlorophyll do you use?” asked a third. “You must know the best kind. Cuz I just took some for the first time and it makes me feel funny. Is that normal?”\n\n“Have you ever been caught in a restroom?” asked a fourth, nervous-looking one.\n\n“One at a time, one at a time,” Roger admonished the group, crouching behind them and patting their shoulders. “Give Dex a little room.”\n\nThe raccoon smiled shyly from behind Jax’s leg. “It’s okay,” he said quietly, and addressed some of the questioners directly. “I wouldn’t shave everything off,” he said to one. “But I trim my coat down there a little bit with scissors. Something that helps me with that,” he said, nodding seriously to the furs surrounding him, “ is if you start taking baths once a week or so, and do it after those.”\n\nRian was standing in the middle of another small group of boys and glowering down at Byron, who was seated on the floor with his arms crossed. “What do you mean you haven’t used your diapers yet?” the wolf asked the malamute in disbelief, throwing his paws up in the air. “What’s wrong with you?”\n\nRian fell on to his knees, resting them on the sleepy dog’s lap, so that his muzzle lay an inch or so above the larger canid’s and he looked down into his face. “Well you’re going to use them tonight. No changes, for you, until tomorrow morning, either.”\n\nThe black dog quailed fearfully. “You don’t mean,” he asked with trepidation, “both ways?”\n\nRian’s eyes glinted and he held up a paw, and three fingers, in front of the canine’s face, grinning. “I mean all three ways,” he said.\n\nDex, still clinging to Jax’s leg, continued answering questions. “I’m already a vegetarian,” he was explaining, “so, no, I don’t think that’s such a big problem, really. You shouldn’t be eating so much fast food, anyway.”\n\n“Dex?” asked another of the boys, who leaned over and grabbed onto the raccoon’s toes with both paws.\n\nDex regarded him curiously, waiting for a question. “You’re cool,” the boy said simply, grinning at him.\n\nThe raccoon blushed and flicked his tail against the floor. His eyes wandered to his lupine friend across the room. When had he decided, he wondered, what would happen at this party? Was it a split second impulse? Or had the whole idea been to pull out of the group only the boys who would be curious about full-time diaper use? Either way, he had turned everything around for one night. Dex worried about most of the boys knowing he needed to wear diapers because he didn’t want them to take pity on him, so when possible he hid the signs of his heavier-than-recreational diaper use. But choice or not wasn’t even coming up. Every fur at the party who didn’t know better believed what Rian had said. Why wouldn’t they, when he had just announced he was going 24/7 himself? For the moment at least, they all looked up to Dex, some for precisely the things that the raccoon usually tried to hide. Dex teared up involuntarily.\n\n“Sugar cookies?” Twitchy asked, coming up behind Roger and holding out a cookie tin to the group at the foot of the couch. “Squeak and I made them. Umm, there’s milk too, but there aren’t a lot of glasses . . .”\n\nRoger stood up, wagging his tail. “Oh!” he exclaimed, dashing off. “I forgot! There are sippy cups and bottles, in the cabinet above the refrigerator. I’ll get them!”\n\n“Twitchy!” Dex exclaimed, his tail flicking against the floor, grinning widely as he looked up at his frazzled, flour-covered boyfriend. “Hon,” he blushed. “Big bro. You are here! You’re the one who told me to come. I’m so glad you did! Were you in on this surprise?”\n\nThe rabbit’s ears drooped sadly as he surveyed the boys clustered around Dex and took in the raccoon’s blissful expression, and heard the rustling as Dex involuntarily wriggled his bottom increasingly against the floor, the front of his cloth diapers becoming warmer and tighter.\n\nTwitchy’s pupils darted to the corner of his eyes and, without turning his head, he regarded Rian suspiciously. The wolf had pinned a spread-eagled, giggling malamute to the floor, and was tickling him mercilessly.\n\n“What surprise?” the rabbit asked Dex, an edge creeping into his voice.\n\nAce, still absorbed in argument with the civet, reached over Jax’s head with his free paw to take one of the proffered cookies, and Dex also reached up to take one before answering. The lynx bit into it—and coughed. The civet started to reach for one too, but Ace, his back to Twitchy, made a warning face at him.\n\nDex bit into his cookie, swallowed, and frowned. “What kind of cookies did you say these were?” he asked, sticking his tongue out and trying to pick mouse hairs off of it.\n\n“Sugar cookies,” Twitch said, observing the raccoon’s reaction. “But you shouldn’t have too many of these anyway! There’s more stuff coming. We’re even making a cake.”\n\n“Oh,” Dex smiled up at his partner uneasily. “Sounds exciting.”\n\nRian licked Byron’s muzzle and increased the pace of his tickling. The malamute’s right leg kicked into the air involuntarily. “Sttoooooooop!” the dog whined between convulsive giggles. “I’m gonna . . . I’m gonna . . . . piiddle . . . ”\n\nRian frowned as a trickle ran down the dog’s inner thigh and a puddle spread out under his legs. The wolf shook his head. “Somefur shouldn’t be putting on his own diapers yet,” he observed critically, slowing the pace of his ticking as the malamute whimpered. “It’s a good thing we spread out all these newspapers.”\n\nTwitch hopped back into the kitchen, having deposited the cookie tin on the coffee table, to observe his pocket-sized mouse partner, sitting at the edge of the sink, swinging his small feet idly as Kyle opened the oven and peeked inside. Then he shut it and returned his attention to the mixer, turning it off and sticking one finger into the frosting. He stuck it in his muzzle, nodded approvingly, and wagged his tail.\n\n“Squeak?” the mouse said to Twitchy, and shrugged, holding his palms paws out to both sides, questioningly.\n\n“Umm, K,” Twitchy asked uncertainly, unsnapping his goggles and raising them back to his forehead. “Any . . .” The bunny took a deep breath and swallowed his pride, “orders? You’re running the Hideout #4 team tonight. Anything your teammates can do to help?”\n\nThe Dalmatian tapped a spatula against the mixing bowl and looked at both of them thoughtfully. “Yes. You two can go on oatmeal duty! It’s a super-important job,” he suggested, then turning around, muttered, half to himself, “And no fur will be eating that.”\n\nRoger stumbled through the room, stepping over and around boys who were sitting, crawling, or cuddling, distributing sippy cups and bottles of milk to those who wanted them. He stopped midstream as he felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket and answered it. “Oh, hi, Roddy,” he said into the phone, as he made his way to the bedroom. “No, I can make a few. Let me get to somewhere quiet. Where are you? Are things settling down at home?”\n\nDex, who was on Cloud 9, let himself drift into a state of deepening regression and visibly mounting arousal as the questions subsided.\n\n“I diden know you could regress to an oral stage Jax,” he remarked as he hugged the black and brown mottled tracking hound’s leg tighter and looked up at him.\n\nJax, still sucking on Ace’s paw, looked down at Dex with his wide, soulful brown eyes and nodded, since he wasn’t exactly in a position to talk.\n\nDex giggled and rubbed his nose against the dog’s leg, flicking his tail against the floor as his vocabulary slowly deteriorated. “I wegress too s’times didja know dat?”\n\nJax nodded at him patiently.\n\n“We shudd do a dubba date!” The raccoon proposed, starting to get excited. “Twith and me and you and Ace! I can be a kitten you know. Whadda ya fink?”\n\nJax bit down gently and tugged on Ace’s fingers with his teeth. The lynx turned his attention away from his political standoff for a moment and looked down at his partner curiously, following Jax’s gaze down to Dex. “Huh, what is it, puppy?” the lynx asked.\n\nJax whined and muttered something around his fingers and the lynx smiled at the two of them. “Of course Dex can come over to play. He’s our friend,” he said reassuringly, then returned his attention to relatively grown-up things.\n\nDex flicked his tail against the floor and his eyes twinkled. “And you can chase me around and we can play tug of war wiff chew toys an’ twy to hepp feed each other and we can boff do our bestest for our big brothers.” The coon bit his lip poutily. “Well,” he added, whining a little, “you can. I bet you’s weal good. Nah me. Twith keep thayin’ I’s not ready. We haffen done anyfin yet an ith all my fault. Mebbe you ca’ show me fings ta do.”\n\nJax’s eyes glimmered and he regarded his coon friend curiously.\n\n“Umm, lemon angel food bars? They’re light and white and puffy and soft. Just like, well . . . you know,” Twitchy offered as he reappeared next to the group, holding out a tin. “Kyle made these.”\n\nNo one moved. Dex, seeing his boyfriend’s ears fall, reached up for one apprehensively. Jax tugged on Ace’s paw with his mouth again, and the lynx looked back over his shoulder. He rolled his eyes and reached for one politely.\n\nThe lynx, standing on the other side of the couch, and the raccoon, sitting on the floor, looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes and bit into them simultaneously. They chewed, and swallowed.\n\n“Hey,” Dex remarked, surprised, flicking his tail against the floor. “These are good!”\n\nJax, seeing Ace swallow, tugged on his boyfriend’s paw with his mouth again, trying to flash him a warning glance before he said anything tactless, but the lynx had already asked hopefully, “Is Kyle the one making the cake?”\n\nRian, who had been massaging the front of Byron’s diaper in a circular motion with his right paw, withdrew it suddenly and licked the quivering malamute’s nose as the dog’s erection came to a peak. With his left paw, the wolf guided Byron’s own forepaw to the front of his padding and pressed it against the plastic. “And you can leave it right there out front, but I don’t want to see it moving,” he said gently. “This is as far as you go for now.”\n\nThe dog had wet heavily, so even with the leakage, the inside of his diaper clung to his front as a warm, sodden mass, and had come partially detached from the thin layer of plastic that now slid back and forth over the inside of the diaper and crinkled loudly like a poncho. Combined with the effect of Rian’s pawing, the heat pressing against the canine’s crotch began to feel unbearable. Byron whimpered and thumped one foot against the floor, but Rian shook his head. “I know someone who can’t fasten his own diapers on tight can’t be old enough to count very high,” the wolf in the polo shirt whispered to him, holding up his fingers again, “but I think we both know that number 3 comes after number 2.”\n\nHe grinned evilly and added, “Now wouldn’t letting go in your pants in front of everyone like the little baby you are just be a tremendous—” he flicked his fingers against the still-tightening front of Byron’s diaper, tickling the desperately whining dog’s shaft through the crinkly, absorbent layer of plastic it strained against—“relief?”\n\nThe dog kicked both his legs in the air and moaned.\n\nRoger returned from the bedroom in a moment and moved from group to group, checking on things, looking at his watch, and peering into the kitchen. He grinned with satisfaction at the reconfigured Hideout #4 team, as Twitchy, stirring a saucepan of oatmeal, every so often stole glances at Kyle to try to figure out what the suddenly self-assured Dalmatian was doing.\n\n“Looks like you’re at the most important station, Twitch! Rian and Dex should cut the cake when it’s ready,” the Labrador leader whispered to the group, wagging his tail. “But I can get the first serving of oatmeal, right?” He scratched his head. “Wait a minute, where’s . . .?”\n\n“Squeak squeak!” the mouse who had crawled up Dex’s shoulder whispered into the raccoon’s ear, gesturing frantically and flashing his fingers in front of the bemused coon’s nose. The rodent’s beady eyes darted back to the kitchen and he knitted his paws together and stared at his feet worriedly. “Squeak squeak squeak,” he said.\n\n“What? Be careful? With Twitchy? Oh! You’re too late, Squeak!” the raccoon said, giggling. “I already ate the cookies. A bunch of them even. Someone had to, so he wouldn’t feel too bad. Poor guy. Thanks, though.”\n\nThe mouse shook his head and started gesturing more expansively. Dex blinked, still looking blissfully dazed. “Ah, I’m sorry,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t understand you. But I’m sure I’ll get better at it. After all, we’re going to be spending a lot more time together if everything goes through so I can switch to Twitch’s school.” The raccoon yawned, then smiled at his small visitor and patted him on the head. “Tell him I’m grateful he got me out tonight. And I hope I’ll be able to show him how much soon. I’m working on it.”\n\nThe mouse looked up at Dex with wide eyes, and said, “Squeak,” sadly. Then he scampered off down the coon’s arm, threading his way back across the increasingly cluttered floor to the kitchen.\n\nHe ran right by a distracted Twitchy. The bunny came out of the kitchen first, fumbling with a large mixing bowl full of oatmeal and a turkey baster, which he was pumping in the oatmeal uncertainly.\n\nRian waved to the bunny and pointed, sternly, down at the pinned malamute, who he was still holding, with his left paw planted firmly above the malamute’s over the front of his diaper, right on the brink of release. The dog shivered as Rian took the turkey baster from Twitch in his right paw and slipped it under him, into his diaper, and under his tail, pressing it between his cheeks but slanting the point downward so it wouldn’t release into his sphincter directly.\n\n“Here,” he said gently to the whimpering canine as he discharged a warm mass of oatmeal right between his cheeks and under the base of his tail. “Now I’ll show you what it feels like to get you started,” Rian whispered. “Does that help babykins any?” Rian handed the baster back to Twitchy, who snatched it back a little too quickly.\n\nThe dog gasped as his diaper expanded—and then felt his stomach heave as it kept on expanding, getting warmer and squishier underneath him. At the very moment it did, Rian, who could tell the dog’s bowels had just come loose, began squeezing the malamute’s pinned paw open and shut over the bulge in the front of his diaper. “What a baby,” the wolf teased. “Betcha can’t help but make a sticky mess in the front of your diapers next . . .”\n\nTwitchy shook his head and wiped the baster clean with a diaper wipe before moving on, without saying anything, to Dex’s group.\n\n“Now listen,” Rian whispered to the malamute as he stroked his head and ears, “as long as you’re still learning to count, honey, you’re always going to use your diapers in this one-two-three order, aintcha?” He licked the heaving canine’s warm wet nose.\n\n“I bet a baby like you is gonna like that new routine. Gonna learn to count past two finally? Yeah, buuut,” Rian released the dog’s paw so he could finish the job himself and patted his crotch, wrapped in warm, wet plastic, as he added, “too bad you’re an uncommonly slow learner. I have a feeling you’ll need a whole lot of practice. In fact, I don’t think you should be doing number three at all outside your diapers for quite a while. It’d just make everything sooo confusing. What does mister puppy-pants think?”\n\n“Uh . . . uh . . . huh,” the black dog managed to get out, nodding, in between heavy breaths; he was mostly pretty busy humping against the air and his own paws frantically.\n\nThe lights clicked off and everyone started—including Byron, who spasmed uncontrollably, moaning and discharging into the already sodden front of his diaper, as Rian stood up and released him. The other boys gathered around and bent over the dazed malamute, nosing at his ears and licking at his muzzle in congratulations. Roger and Kyle entered from the kitchen carrying a fluffy sponge cake, layered with vanilla, marshmallow, and coconut frostings, between them.\n\nThe cake was covered with sparking trick candles. The knots of boys broke apart and pushed Rian and Dex together, toward the center of the room. Dex grinned at his friend and blushed. The wolf rested his arm around the raccoon’s shoulder. “Happy very belated, Dex,” he whispered. “I knew you wouldn’t want a big deal around your birthday. This was the best I could do. I hope it was okay.” He added, hesitantly, “And now you can be a little less careful with everyone, maybe? With this announcement and now that I’m also...”\n\nDex seized his friend impulsively in a bone-crushing hug. “It’s one of the weirdest but also . . . also the most perfect things ever,” the coon said quietly, gulping. “Rian. Only you could think of this. I’m sorry that I thought . . . while you were gone, things happened, strange things, and I almost forgot what you were really like. How generous you are. But no one knows that better than me. I wish I could pay you back for this. For everything.”\n\n“Oh, Dex, don’t be silly,” Rian said casually, wagging his tail. “I’m just paying you back. You’ve already done the most importantest thing I could ever ask anyfur to do for me,” he said, squeezing the raccoon tightly, and Dex’s slow descent back to Earth began as Rian whispered, smiling, “You’ve been so supportive of me and Serry.”\n\nNext time: Into the morning! Serafina makes a fateful decision as Rian’s first 24 hours in diapers winds down. The boys recover from their celebration (what is a hangover compared to a full diaper pail?), and Roger’s mission comes to a head.\n\n*******************\n\n[b]\fPart Four: Into the Morning!\n[/b]\n[i]2:00 a.m. Backstage. Marty’s dressing room.\n[/i]\nMarty stood leaning on his elbows against the back of a chair in front of the fox, with his belt undone, and his pants unsnapped, but not yet unzipped.\n\n“Or I can take the sunglasses off,” the beaver said to the trembling sissy fox, on her knees on the floor, “if that makes it easier. I mean, Serry,” he said gently, “how many takes do you need? We’re both all grown-up, we’re on the same page: This sort of thing is just about fun, right?”\n\n“Who sent you roses, Marty?” Serafina asked, digging her forepaws into the floor and looking past the beaver up to the red roses on his dressing room table.\n\n“What?” Marty blinked, looking over his shoulder and blushing. “Oh! My mother did. She sends them at the start of every production. Why, did you think — look, I’m not married.” He waved a paw and laughed. “Not civilly or anything. Really. Woody’s only my creative partner.”\n\n“That’s not what I was thinking.” Serafina bit her lip and loosened her grip on the floorboards. “I was just thinking that . . . I’ve always liked white ones. I’m sure I never told him that. But somehow he—” She broke off, took a deep breath and stood up slowly, grabbing her dress with her paws, “I’m sorry, again,” she said. “I got carried away. You’re an unusually nice guy. I’m not married either. But I am taken.”\n\n“You?” Marty blinked. “Really?”\n\n“Well don’t sound so surprised,” she snapped indignantly, releasing her skirt at once.\n\n“No, no,” the beaver grimaced and fumbled with his beret, “I didn’t mean it to sound like that. It’s just . . . given how you were talking and . . . everything, I just, I didn’t think you worked that way.”\n\nThe sissy fox gulped. “I never have before,” she said, still surprised at herself. “I just . . . decided.” She looked at him uncertainly. “Is that how acting will be when I’ve rehearsed something enough? All of a sudden it just doesn’t feel like pretend any more?”\n\n“Well if that ever happens,” the beaver said doubtfully, snapping his pants up and fastening his belt, “I’m a better director than I thought.” He took off his sunglasses and put them back in his shirt pocket, turning to face the mirror. “Tell him congratulations.” He shrugged. “Or her. Whatever works for you.”\n\nSerafina opened her muzzle, closed it, and taking a deep breath, walked to the dressing room door without saying anything.\n\n“Serry?” She turned back to see the beaver looking over his shoulder with a good-natured grin, and a pencil gripped in his paw.\n\n“I hope we’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. “I already drew you and Garrick in on all the stage plans.”\n\n*******************\n\n[i]2:30 a.m. Roger’s apartment, post-party.\n[/i]\nIn the living room and kitchen, those boys who hadn’t already left were sprawled across the newspaper-covered floor, or the couch, dozing contentedly, each of their diapers filled with oatmeal—at least. Roger was in the kitchen with Kyle and Twitchy, washing dishes. Every so often, a boy woke up, and crawled or stumbled around for a bit, usually because he needed to go, and couldn’t release in his sleep. He would crawl around in a circle until he wet his already puffy diaper, trickling onto the newspapers spread over the floor, and then flop back over, cuddling up to his nearest teammate and sucking on his paw as often as not.\n\nDex, who wasn’t asleep, stepped gingerly over the collapsed malamute, whose rear was puffy with more than oatmeal and who kept fidgeting in his loaded diaper in his sleep. \n\nThe raccoon made his way to the bedroom, where he peeked through the half-open door. “I just wanted to say good night. And thanks one more time . . .” he began in a whisper, but cut off and smiled softly at what he saw.\n\nRian lay lengthwise across the head of Roger’s queen-sized mattress, which he was just short enough to do if he kept his knees bent. The diaper bag he had come with was on the floor next to the bed, and its side compartment open. A lamp on the night table cast a small pool of light over the wolf’s head and shoulders. He was wearing only his polo shirt and diapers, silently reading a battered blue children’s book with a worn image of a knight on a charger on its cover.\n\nDex reached up and pulled the door almost shut, then leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms. “I was right after all. I knew you’d carry that around with you your first day,” the raccoon said to himself. “See? Everyfur thinks I’m happy because of the silly party stuff. But it’s because I saw the real you again today. The one I’ve known since you brought me a root beer float and we all shared secrets during that first sleepover, right here in this apartment. Our first Circle meeting.” Dex yawned contentedly. “Don’t worry, Rian. I’ll make sure you two have some time alone together.”\n\n*******************\n\n[i]3:00 a.m.\n[/i]\n“Hi, Serry,” said Roger softly, yawning, as he unlatched and opened the door. He tilted his head to look at the fox, still wearing her loose-fitting green dress and chest padding, curiously, “Is everything okay?”\n\nThe fox avoided the question. “Rog. I hope I didn’t . . .”\n\nRoger shook his head, “Nah, a few of us are still awake for a bit.” He grinned at her. “Someone has to take out some of the garbage tonight, or it will really stink in here come morning.”\n\nThen he took her by the paw, and led her in, saying, as he pushed the door shut behind her, “The little guy’s on my bed. He’s still up. I think we’ll all be sleeping in tomorrow.”\n\n“ This is a special group, isn’t it?” he remarked, scanning the room. “Even by our standards. So many stories here. Some really complicated,” he looked down at Dex, who had eventually fallen asleep leaning against the doorframe and slid down on his rear, his head resting sideways on his crossed arms. “And some,” the dog added, pointing into the bedroom, and letting go of her, “really simple.”\n\nSerry started for the door as Roger padded off, but first she paused, smiled, and reached down to the raccoon, patting his head. “Hello again, Dex,” she whispered. “And thank you for the nudge. You have nothing to worry about.”\n\nInside the bedroom, Rian was looking at the inside cover of his book, smiling, his paw resting on an inscription that read, For my little hero.\n\n“Did you see how happy everyone was today? Like I said, my diapers can do anything,” he was saying to himself dreamily. “I knew ever since they helped me remember you, in my dreams at night . . .” The wolf took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut—“Mom. I wish you could meet her. I know you would understand about us.” He bit his lip. “Well, okay,” he qualified himself, “not everything. And not at first. I know that. But eventually. You understood about me before anyone, I think.”\n\nRian looked up from his reverie with a start as the door opened and the fox stepped inside. “Serry?” he blinked. “Did I just fall asleep? I thought you were busy until next weekend.”\n\nThe sissy fox hopped up on to the foot of the bed, on all fours, and smiled at him gently. “I am. I just needed to see you for five minutes, to make sure your first day went okay— even just to peek in if you were sleeping. But I’m glad you’re not. I’m a bit . . . pent up. Your friend fell asleep standing guard outside,” she said, jerking her muzzle toward the door. “He really cares about you.”\n\nRian looked past her, through the open door. “Dex,” he smiled and said to his girlfriend absently, “I wish you two would talk sometime. I think you’d really like each other. I know you think he’s uptight but—he always looks out for me. Just like a real brother.” Through the door, Rian saw Roger moving around, checking the other boys. All of them his friends. No, the wolf corrected himself. More than his friends. More than his team. His pack. His family.\n\nSerry tilted her head and crawled toward Rian, nuzzling at the sodden front of his diaper. “Did everything go okay?” she said. “You look a little sad.”\n\nThe wolf closed his book and set it face down on the nightstand. “What do I have to be sad about?” he asked, grinning goofily. “I just wish we could all stay just like this, forever.” He shivered, momentarily cold, as the sissy fox undid the tapes of his diapers, and folding the front down, nuzzled his package gently.\n\nSerry paused and rested her muzzle on the exposed gray fur of his stomach, looking up at him. “There might be one thing worth changing,” she suggested. “We’re going 24/7 together. Why don’t we go 24/7, on each other? I mean, go steady?”\n\nRian looked confused. “Go steady? How do you mean? We do both have . . . ” He took a deep breath and looked out the door, at the shadowy forms of Dex and the others. “Jobs. A lot of those boys only . . . only ever came into their own because of me. They’re my whole world. Besides Rog, and you. Aaand your students need your help, too.” He furrowed his brow, remembering the fumbling blow job he’d received at the academy. “Like really,” he added.\n\n“Of course,” she said, giggling, “The team stuff goes without saying. I know who you are. You know who I am. But I don’t want to . . . want anyone besides you any more. If that makes any sense. It’s one thing I’ve never tried. Being owned. Being someone’s...”\n\nRian cut her off and rested a paw lightly on the top of her head. “Don’t you dare say anything mean about yourself,” he said in gentle warning. “That’s maybe the only thing I’ll never, ever let you do. You’re my princess. And my sweetheart. And I’ve been yours since I laid eyes on you. Just like Callie’s tea leaves said. The only reason I haven’t sworn to it is because I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” He bit his lip nervously. “And I don’t know if I’ll be enough. I mean, you are a fox.”\n\nThe fox grinned, and her tail swished as she traced a circle through the exposed fur of his stomach with her paw. “Oh wuffie,” she said, stroking the length of his cock with one paw. “I’ll help you be. Let’s make this a day about commitment. So the only thing left that needs to be changed around here, is you.” She looked down at his yiffer as it stiffened under her fingers. “But let’s make sure you’ve done everything you need to first. If you’re always going to be wearing two or three diapers, I would like each set to last for more than ten minutes.” She scooted backward on the bed and resumed nosing at Rian’s crotch. “I can guess at one of your party activities, Mr. Helping Paws. Well, your turn comes last. Let’s make sure you’re good and dry before we change you.”\n\n“It’s official,” the wolf said, leaning back into the pillows as she started licking the length of his shaft, slowly and gently, and he began to feel warm all over, “My life is perfect. What a wonderful decision this has already been.” His eyes gleamed as he reached for Serry’s paws, and he stole a last glance over her, out into the room where all the boys were, before closing his eyes, and concluded, “For everyone.”\n\n*******************\n\n[i]3:30 a.m.\n[/i]\n“There you are! Of all places. Jeez. Come on, Dex,” Twitchy, his pants back on, and Dex’s hanging over his left arm, wrapped his right arm around the slumbering raccoon’s waist. Lifting his boyfriend from his post outside the bedroom door, he hoisted the coon’s left arm over his shoulder, holding his paw to keep him in place. “Let’s get you out of here. I really don’t want you to spend all night like that and wake up to see them doing who knows what. And I don’t want you to start talking either.”\n\nThe bunny looked over his shoulder nervously into the bedroom, which still emitted sounds of giggling and thumping, then stumbled with his heavy cargo over the newspaper-ed and debris-strewn party zone to the front door. He breathed a sigh of relief as soon as he got the coon into the hallway, relaxing as he pushed the door shut behind them.\n\n“Oh, how could Rian pull a stunt like that without talking to me? And in front of half the team. He just can’t take a hint, can he? I tried to tell him. I came as close as I could. You were doing so much better lately, hon. I really thought you’d shook it. But we lost ground tonight, didn’t we, Dex?” the rabbit said to the exhausted coon, who moaned in his sleep as his wet nose rubbed against the bunny’s large, floppy ear.\n\n“I’m ready,” Dex muttered into Twitchy’s shoulder. “Please just lemme do summin for you. Lemme try. ’M good enough, now.”\n\nTwitchy shook his head as he trudged down the corridor toward the stairway. “Look at this mess I’ve waded into. I think Squeak is even mad at me,” the bunny remonstrated with his sleeping traveling companion. “All because I’m trying to help you! He left with Kyle. But it doesn’t matter. I haven’t forgotten everything you went through to rescue me, Dex. And I’ll free you, too.” His eyes narrowed and his whiskers twitched. “I didn’t think it would come to this so soon. But we’ll have to step things up. I swear, if I weren’t still so nervous about . . . Well, I have no choice but to move just as soon as I can. Because I lo—. . .” He hesitated. “Because I care about you. A lot. Whenever we’re together I feel like . . .” He frowned. Like what? “Well music may not swell exactly but large amounts of caring are definitely involved. We’ll break you of this. We will. Give me a few more days. Then I won’t have to pull any punches. I have everything figured out so you two can still be friends and everything will be just how it should be. After all, someone has to do this for you, right?” \n\nHe sighed. “And who else has a shot besides me? I do feel terrible about lying to you. But it’s for your own good!”\n\n“I love you too,” the raccoon unconsciously whimpered into Twitchy’s ear, his nose quivering and his voice thick with sleep, “Rian.”\n\n“Okay, maybe terrible,” said the bunny, gritting his teeth, “is an overstatement.”\n\n*******************\n\n[i]3:45 a.m. Ace’s apartment.\n[/i]\n“Do you think anyone noticed that we were the first to slip out?” Ace asked as he stretched a condom out over his right paw and looked down at the prone puppy, his fellow wilderness team leader, facing away from him.\n\nJax was wearing nothing, at the moment, except his khaki shirt and Boy Scout sash, and was laying face down and bottom up, propped on his elbows, on Ace’s bed, sucking on two of his own fingers. “Nuh,” he said around them. “We are mathters of stelf.” The hound’s tail wagged once.\n\nThe lynx rubbed the condom with his left paw, trying to gauge how lubricated it was. He frowned and opened the drawer of his nightstand, reaching for a bottle inside.\n\nAs he did, he idly remarked, “Hey, I’m going to chalk it up to you being distracted that I’m the one who noticed something like this. But did it bother you a little that Dex and Twitchy, who are allegedly dating, not only didn’t come together, but spent next to nil time with each other during that whole party?”\n\nJax withdrew his fingers from his mouth slowly. Ace turned around with the lube in paw to see the dog sitting up, his rear end resting above his heels and his forepaws gripping his knees.\n\n“Yes,” Jax said in a steely tone. “It did.”\n\nHis large brown eyes glimmered with concern and fixed on a bare spot on the opposite wall.\n\nAce moaned. “Well,” he opened hopefully, “it makes me feel that much luckier that you and I can do so much together. And we can add to that list tonight, puppy . . . ”\n\n“Not puppy now,” the tracking hound said firmly. “I’m thinking.”\n\nThe lynx sighed and dropped the bottle of lube and the condom back into his drawer, looking down at the erection poking through his pants. Oh no, he chided himself, he couldn’t have kept his mouth shut until afterwards. Jax would spend the next 24 hours complaining about how insensitive he was if he pushed now.\n\n“About Dex and Twitch? Oh, it’s probably nothing. Even if it wasn’t, what would we do about it anyway?” the cat asked, collapsing on to his side on the bed with a soft thump.\n\n“What we do,” the scout dog proposed, his gaze slowly beginning to move back down toward his partner. “Recon.”\n\n*******************\n\n[i]9:15 a.m. Empress Calliope’s Academy for Special Boys.\n[/i]\n“Cassie! Where’s the boss lady?” the petite panda clad in a purple sweater demanded as she stepped inside the home economics classroom.\n\nThe sissy Newfoundland, who wore a frilly blue and white shepherdess’ dress and matching blue bonnet, looked up from her needlepoint and gazed at Lin Lin sadly.\n\nPrincess Cassandra was second-in-command of Empress Calliope’s Academy for Special Boys, headquarters of the pink faction devoted to maximizing the spread of sissification among the city’s age-players, and that meant she was currently the highest-ranking team member on the premises.\n\n“Hello, Lin Lin,” the dog said placidly. “Her majesty is working on something important.”\n\nThe panda narrowed her eyes. “I asked where she was, not what she was doing,” she snapped. “Because I’m seeing her no matter what. What’s with all the unexplained adjustments to the Open House schedule? It’s only a week away and all the plans are being changed around! Why am I suddenly on the perimeter? I can’t run building security from there.”\n\nThe Newfoundland smiled gently. “Oh, the mistress didn’t make those changes,” Cassandra said to the panda, returning to her knitting. “She’s far too busy to worry about something like that. I did. I’ll be running security during the Open House. After all, it will be our biggest recruiting event yet. And Baby Blue is probably going to attack us during it.”\n\n“Of course they’re going to attack us during it,” Lin Lin exclaimed, exasperated. “They’d better! That was the whole idea of running supplies through their territory! To provoke them. That’s why I need to be there. I already have a plan.”\n\nThe huge dog made a dainty cross-stitch. “It won’t work,” she said.\n\nLin Lin blinked. “Who showed it to you anyway?” she asked defensively.\n\nCassie bit off a long piece of thread. “Oh I don’t know anything about it,” she said. “But it won’t work.” She smiled at the panda.\n\nLin Lin glared at her. “I’ve been tangling with their strike team in the woods for weeks. Everybody on it. No fur over here knows what the raccoon and the bunny will bring better than I do. And this time once I get those two . . .”\n\nThe Newfoundland just shook her head. “It won’t be them,” she said calmly. “Oh, they’ll probably be there. But we have to be prepared for worse. This time, the main attack may be run by a less linear thinker. In that case, a plan will only get in the way.”\n\nThe panda stared at her dumbfounded. “What,” she said, shaking her head, “the wolf?”\n\n“Let’s hope for that,” Cassie remarked, and displayed her finished needlepoint, an elaborate bed of flowers, proudly.\n\nThen she set it down on her desk and frowned, resting her chin on her palms. “But we may have made a mistake by provoking the boys again so soon after breaking the rules and screening one of them. Two days ago Serafina heard from an old teammate of hers. From before she switched sides. He was contacted after a long silence.” The Newfoundland hesitated. “And he received a message. It apparently followed a script agreed on when he left the team. Our best guess is it included some kind of . . . distress signal. We couldn’t exactly make sense of it. But it’s safe to assume others are being contacted too, for something.”\n\n“A secret network?” the panda said, wrinkling her face up. “You’re joking, right? Am I supposed to be taking this seriously?”\n\nThe dog just shrugged. “Serious or not, Roger has been doing this for a while. He’s kept, and still keeps, the confidences of many furs who have drifted into and out of our scene. You must not assume his resources are limited to his present ground team if he’s decided there’s a genuine state of emergency.”\n\n“Are you telling me that I’m supposed to be scared of the Commander in Crinkles?” she asked skeptically. “I don’t even know what he does over there.”\n\nCassie smiled. “Oh, what leaders do. Whatever the rest of them won’t.”\n\nLin Lin scowled at her. “How helpfully specific. Well you know him. What kind of attack might he run?”\n\nThe Newfoundland opened the knitting basket on her desk and looked inside it. “I have no idea,” she said placidly. “So I’m trying not to think too hard about it.”\n\n“Now I feel better,” the panda remarked, rolling her eyes. “I’m appealing to the headmistress about this. You are not sufficiently prepared to run security in my place. So you have no good reason for putting me on the sidelines.”\n\n“Yes I do, Lin Lin,” the dog said with genuine concern, as she selected a skein of yarn and put it on her desk. “I’m worried about you. You don’t always make it easy—but I like you. And I don’t know if you’re ready for what’s coming.”\n\nThe Newfoundland looked past Lin Lin to the door as an early student, a bear, skipped in in a ballerina’s outfit and curtsied, blushing. “Are we doing crochet today?” the bear asked eagerly, clenching her paws together in front of her tutu.\n\nThe Newfoundland looked at the clock, then at the new arrival appraisingly. “In fifteen minutes,” she said calmly.\n\n“Awww,” the bear whined as she plopped down behind a desk, “I don’t know if I can wait that long.” The bear began doodling hearts with arrows pierced through them on her desk and sighing dreamily. Then she dropped her pencil and plucked at an imaginary flower. “He loves me,” she recited to herself, “he loves me not, he loves me . . .”\n\n“What’s with Muffy?” Lin Lin asked, lowering her voice. “I just caught her with a toy truck Friday.”\n\nThe Newfoundland smiled. “Then it worked,” she said nodding.\n\n“What worked?” The panda shook her head. “I renamed her months ago and it only helped for a week or two.”\n\n“Her re-screening,” Cassie said seriously. “We’ve had too many problems with relapses and false negatives since the Baby Blue boys started spreading rumors about the test that was done on Rian. That kind of preparation just confuses boys who are already struggling to accept themselves and their destiny. Some hard cases need a firmer paw, to be dug out of such very deeply rooted denial—and to admit to themselves what they really want.”\n\nLin Lin looked doubtful. “Muffy?” she asked, turning to the bear. “What did you do this weekend?”\n\n“Lady Lin Lin!” the bear said, sitting up perkily and giggling, as though she had just noticed the panda. “I spent every minute thinking about my boyfriend.” The bear smiled dreamily. “He’s so incredible. And this morning he said I’m finally almost good enough for him.” Then she looked back at her empty paw and began plucking at the air again, sounding worried. “So I hope it says he loves me.”\n\nLin Lin frowned.\n\nCassie tilted her head. “There may still be some issues to iron out. Nothing we can’t fix. Are you all right, Lin Lin?”\n\nThe panda whirled and stared up at her. “What you just said about me is insulting. Worried about me? I’m worried that your Zen master non-approach to this supposed attack that I supposedly can’t stop is to let the academy be razed to the ground to make way for the boys’ latest hideout.”\n\nCassandra took out two long knitting needles and clicked them against each other, poking the yarn with them.\n\n“Don’t be worried,” the Newfoundland explained without raising her voice. “If all else fails, there is a weakness at the core of the current boys’ team, that we will tap at the right time. And don’t be angry. You must just remind yourself, Lin Lin, even if it does feel like you’re, what did you say, on the sidelines: We only know about that weakness,” the Newfoundland said, smiling down at the undersized panda reassuringly, “because of you.”\n\nLin Lin snorted and shook her head. “Great,” she muttered. “More nonsense.”\n\n“Relax. The open house is still a week away. Besides—destiny is on our side,” Cassie said levelly, pointing both her needles at Muffy. “For the moment, though, Lin Lin, we have a new pattern to start today. You can stay and watch if you like.”\n\nThe dog clicked her needles together and added in an unchanged tone as her other students began to file in, “I’m excited about this one.”\n\n*******************\n\n[i]10:45 a.m.\n[/i]\nSerafina steeled herself and entered the auditorium, only to find it empty. Well, almost empty.\n\n“Hi, Serry,” said the beaver, standing up from a seat in the second row and chewing on a pencil. “I thought you’d probably run a little late.”\n\nSerafina looked around nervously. “Where is everyone?” she asked.\n\n“Oh, they’re on stage already,” the beaver said, taking her by the paw and leading her out the door, and down the hallway. “We’re breaking it in today!”\n\n“But . . .” she stumbled after him, confused. “The stage was empty.”\n\nMarty looked back over his shoulder and grinned like a cub in a candy store. “Now why did everyone think,” he said mischievously, “that we were going to have all our shows in the rain space?”\n\nThe beaver opened the back door of the building and led the fox through it into an enclosed yard as Serafina’s eyes readjusted to the sun.\n\nThe taciturn white opossum who usually followed Marty around stood in the center of a large, elevated artificial island of foam boulders and carefully sculpted levels of synthetic grass and flowers, which rose to a small hill in the center. The opossum leaned against a tree on one paw and surveyed his handiwork proudly. With his other, Woody pulled a lever behind a row of shrubs, and one ring just inside the perimeter of the simulated world began turning silently—a conveyor belt, looping up over the hill in the middle of the island.\n\n“And this,” Marty said, beaming as he pointed up to it, “is how we’ll handle all the running around and switching back and forth during the duel scene.”\n\n“Hi, Serry!” shouted the tabby cat in Renaissance costume, running around on the conveyor belt and waving at them gleefully before he hopped off the stage. “What did I tell you? Marty’s ideas always sound so dumb that they can’t possibly work. But somehow,” he tipped his feathered hat to both of them as he approached, “they just do! It’s like he never grew up enough to know any better.”\n\nSerafina released the beaver’s paw and stared at him. “Well, here goes. You aren’t going to say anything to Garrick or Woody once we’ve told them?” she whispered to him nervously. “About last night?”\n\n“What?” the beaver answered, sounding startled, then waved a paw dismissively without looking away from the stage. “Nah. It was my mistake. Besides, this is city theater. There are too few of us left to get worked up about every little misunderstanding or hold stupid grudges. The most important thing here is the team.”\n\nSerry bit her lip and snuffled. “You know, Marty,” she said. “You really do remind me of someone.”\n\nThe director looked over his shoulder at her curiously. “You keep saying that,” he remarked, shaking his head. “Is it supposed to make me feel better?”\n\n“It should,” she said, smiling at him softly. “He’s a hero.”\n\n*******************\n\n[i]12:00 p.m.\n[/i]\nRian, Twitchy, Squeak, and Dex—all still showing the signs of last night’s revelry—sat around the top-secret conference table with their gold crossed safety-pin badges pinned above their breasts. It was a meeting of the Secret Circle—the highest echelon of Baby Blue’s command. Only one fur was missing.\n\nTwitchy opened a laptop and connected it to a projector in the center of the conference table. Dex wore his yellow karate outfit.\n\n“Hey!” Rian remarked as he looked over at the raccoon’s streaked face. “The war paint is back! Are you going for best two out of three with the panda?”\n\n“Huh?” Dex said absently.\n\nRian fidgeted. “Lin Lin? You know, she beat you when you sparred at the academy,” he said, prodding, “but you took her prisoner after an hour-long fight in the woods over spring break, when you took it into the trees? Crouching Coon, Hidden Panda? The ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny? Twitch told everyone about it.”\n\n“Oh,” Dex rolled his eyes. “Right.”\n\nThey were interrupted by Roger’s arrival. The Labrador swung the door open, plopped down in his chair at the head of the table, and propped his feet up on it, regarding his highest-ranking boys curiously. “Well this is a switch!” he said. “I’m not used to being the one summoned to these meetings! What’s up?”\n\nDex stood up first. “Rian and I have compared notes and we have a situation. There’s big trouble coming at the academy.”\n\n“Trouble at the academy?” Roger asked.\n\nDex nodded. “For weeks now, the girls have been rearming—stocking up on chastity devices, in dangerous quantities. My teams have intercepted several shipments in the woods.” He sat down and gestured to Rian.\n\nThe wolf stood up and straightened the green army colonel’s cap on his head. “And when I was inside the academy recently, subbing for Serry,” Rian explained, “you already know that I copied out invitations for their next Open House. I got the date and time. It’s coming up soon, and the list was huge.” The cubby wolf held his paws as far apart as he could, and bit his tongue. “Pages and pages long.” He leaned from side to side to indicate that he would stretch his arms wider if he could.\n\n“So, they’re recruiting a lot more sissies?” Roger asked, nodding. “That’s the trouble?”\n\n“No,” said Dex, who stood back up as Rian sat down. “Twitchy, show us figure one.”\n\nThe rabbit pressed a key and images of two chastity devices appeared on the display screen at the front of the room.\n\n“We’ve analyzed some samples of the new merchandise we intercepted in the woods,” Dex explained. “They’re considerably harder to get out of than the old tubes, but that wasn’t the weird thing. These ones . . . are all being ordered with multiple sets of keys. Which seems counterproductive, right? So I talked to Rian about it.”\n\nRian stood up beside Dex and crossed his arms. “Figure two,” he said, and Twitchy hit another key. A screenshot displaying search results from a profile site appeared. “I recognized some of the names on that invitation list!” Rian asserted, nodding seriously. “So after what Dex said I did some research. The names I recognized weren’t the names of cubs.” His eyes narrowed. “They’re the names of their boyfriends, girlfriends, partners, and caretakers. And I didn’t think much of it at the time but there were rumors going around the school about a new discipline room. Level 5. Whatever it was, if you went there, other furs were being invited into it, too. To watch.” He winced. “Some of the girls even whispered about new furs who had just shown up going straight there with whoever brought them—instead of being brought privately to Callie’s apartment. They said it was something for the weird ones.”\n\nTwitchy tapped his foot against the floor and rose as well, synthesizing for his teammates. “To sum up,” the rabbit proceeded, “we’ve concluded that the girls aren’t just targeting cubs directly any more. They’re going right over our heads. Selling their services to people who want to find sissy partners, or to . . .” the bunny shuddered, “modify the ones they already have, shove them into girlhood, maybe to keep them in line better.”\n\nRian bit his lip and concluded the analysis. “Your sister says that her sissy screening is just a test. But if she puts someone under with that kind of a partner there watching and pushing, it practically takes the boy’s free will out of the equation,” the wolf said with concern. “Why, she’s making regression just like any other form of sexual submission.”\n\nAll the members of the threesome sat down and crossed their arms worriedly.\n\n“Oh,” Roger said after a moment of silence, and his tail, slowly, began wagging as he took his feet off the table. “You meant that trouble at the academy.”\n\nDex blinked. Twitchy’s foot stopped in mid-tap above the floor. Rian tilted his head and looked up at his mentor anxiously.\n\n“I was worried something like this would start to creep in when Serry took a leave of absence after the captivity incident,” Roger said decisively. “She’s usually the voice of moderation over there. Outreach to caretakers. Mother knows best,” he remarked distastefully, making a face. “This is Cassie’s influence, since she’s started doing more and more of the administration. I’m sure of it. Not that she’d ever take credit for having an idea of her own.”\n\nDex cleared his throat and stood up. “Before we do anything, Rog,” the raccoon warned. “I’m not done with the tactical analysis. Those boxes were run through our territory in such quantity we were bound to snatch some of them. Then Rian was accidentally on purpose handed Serry’s mission orders so he would see those invitations. That can’t be a coincidence. I know how their tac team leader thinks. I’ve tangled with Lin Lin enough now. They want us to attack during the Open House. Either it’s a sissification trap for our team, or more likely, given what happened last time,” he eyed Rian, “there’s someone they want to snatch during our attack. To make the centerpiece of their presentation.”\n\nRian looked up at Dex, surprised.\n\nRoger whistled. “Someone’s leveled up since the last time we did this,” he observed approvingly.\n\nDex blushed. “Maybe I’ve been hanging out with smarter furs.” He smiled at Twitchy. The rabbit beamed and gave him two thumbs up. “Fursonally,” the raccoon concluded, crossing his arms. “I’m worried about Jax. Everyone knows he’s sensitive, and now the secret is out about his bird watching hobby. So I drew up a different plan of...”\n\nRoger look at the raccoon thoughtfully and then interrupted him, raising a paw. “We’ll keep it as a Plan B,” he said. “Their regular tac team leader might not be who we’re up against. I have to be ready for someone less . . . flappable. In that case . . . it’s safer not to go anywhere near that place on Open House day. The element of surprise alone won’t get us very far. We need an entirely different kind of plan.”\n\nRian fidgeted and turned the bill of his army hat to face backwards. “But, Rog,” he whined, “you can’t be thinking of deploying that so soon! It’s not ready!”\n\nThe dog nodded and looked concerned. “Well, it’s getting there,” he addressed his sidekick directly. “The supplies are almost all here. The drops are secure. I just inspected all of them myself. And I bumped up the release schedule yesterday morning, too,” he eyed the wolf critically and added, “just in case Serry had heard anything about all this. Now I gave you that piece of silk Callie wanted for your little love mission in exchange for something. How much of her list could you copy?”\n\nRian reached into his pocket, and withdrew the pen-sized digital camera he had borrowed from Twitchy. “Oh,” he said proudly, holding it up, “the whole thing. Mission accomplished! But that’s still not enough. I don’t have any ideas either!”\n\nRoger bit his lip and looked down at the floor gravely. “I know,” he said. “But don’t feel bad. It was my responsibility.”\n\nDex and Twitchy had been staring at each other in bewilderment for the last couple minutes. Finally the raccoon gestured with his paws in frustration and snapped, “What are you two talking about?”\n\n“You see,” Roger said, taking a deep breath, “I was supposed to come up with a suitably cool name for our new counteroffensive before I presented it to the team.” His shoulders slumped down and his tail stopped wagging as he admitted sadly, “But I’ve been too busy.”\n\nThe raccoon and the rabbit both slapped their palms to their foreheads and squeezed their eyes shut simultaneously. “Squeak!” remarked the mouse on the conference table, pulling his knees close to his stomach, burying his head in between them, and rolling his eyes.\n\n“Well,” Roger said with resignation and eyed the camera Rian was holding, “I guess we do have Callie’s entire recruiting list. That seems pretty good. We should probably do something with it.”\n\nThen he reached to his belt and withdrew a squirt gun, with an extended nozzle and an additional water cartridge clipped into it. “You know I looked everywhere for one like this,” he bragged as he pointed it at Dex. “Continuous fire! Once you undo the safety. And then I almost lost it.”\n\nA moment of confused silence ensued.\n\n“Ummm,” Twitchy said uncertainly, his foot beginning to tap again, “that’s really cool, Captain, but I thought you were about to tell us something about your nameless plan.”\n\n“Right!” Roger said. “I was! Sorry, sis, but you’ve put the pawing rights, not to mention free will, of too many boys on the line this time. Now I have no choice but to make compromises I don’t want to.”\n\nHis eyes glinted and he took the camera from his sidekick and slid it across the table to Twitchy. “We’ll crash this party before it ever starts. Twitchy—draw up a roster and start assigning boys to groups of pink team prospects,” he ordered. “Operation ‘Rian-and-I-didn’t-really-go-to-Euro Disney-over-spring-break’ begins . . .”\n\nThe Labrador clicked open the safety on his squirt gun experimentally and grinned as his tail resumed wagging. “Now!”\n\n[b]The End!\n[/b]\n[i]Next Story: Open House! Roger’s pre-emptive strike begins! (If I owe you a cameo, you can look forward to it in this story.) Meanwhile, Twitchy is running an off-the-books undercover mission of his own—but he’s not the only one!\n[/i]\n(If you made it this far, thanks so much for riding with me, especially if you’ve read all these stories! I hope you’ve been enjoying the trip! Comments and the like are welcome and always appreciated.)\n\n", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "24/7!
A Pink and Blue Diaperfur Adventure
Whole Story!
kitncub
kitncub@yahoo.com

General Note: This is an 18+ story. So please be 18+, o gentle reader, or else return to studying very, very hard. It involves furs in diapers, who are not babies (physically), and furs in dresses, who are not girls (biologically). It is an adventure/romance story with these elements rather than a straight regression/sissification piece, so it has an involved plot and stuff. It is part of the Pink and Blue diaperfur series, and may be hard to follow if you have not read any of the other stories. Yadda yadda, et cetera et cetera. Don’t sue me for not saying any of these things, and don’t sue me for anything else, either, because it would make me sad.

Author’s Note on this Story: There are three big Pink and Blue stories left, including this one. I am calling them Season Two since they will lead directly into each other. 24/7 is written in a day-in-the-life, hour-by-hour format (a nod to the fact that this will be the last season of 24).

In brief: Rian is the lupine second-in-command of Baby Blue, a fraternity of AB/DL boys founded to create safe spaces for boyish behavior among the city’s age players and protect them from the feminizing forces of the enemy pink team!

Rian has just made a lifestyle decision. This is the first 24 hours of his new life in diapers. Roger, his Labrador mentor, is the group’s leader and daddy to many of the boys. He is on a secret mission of his own. This will be one of the longest—and crinkliest—days of their lives!

Other (Big) Stories in the Pink and Blue Series:

(Swim through the pool for bonus shorts!)

Newbie  
Operation Baby Blue  
Damsel in Distress  
The Star Attractions  
Serafina’s Big Day  


Season Two Opening: Character Recap!

The Baby Blue Boys

Roger. The leader. This playful black Lab is founder of the team and daddy to the Baby Blue boys, and many of them look to him for guidance and emotional support. He has many good traits but one thing he’s not is organized . . . usually. Likes: His boys. Water balloons. Squirt guns. Comic books. Dislikes: Girls. Telling furs what to do.

Rian. The fun one. Roger’s sidekick, Baby Blue’s co-founder and second-in-command, best friend to Dex, occasional big brother to Twitchy, and boyfriend to the sissy princess fox Serafina, with whom he is deeply in love. Although once shy about his odder preferences, as Roger’s partner-in-crime the wolf has come into his own as a natural extrovert who is generous to a fault. The other boys are sure lucky they have Rian to lean on. Likes: Serafina. Diapers. Accessories. Dislikes: Schoolwork. Contests.

Dex. The serious one. A sensitive raccoon martial artist and the team’s third-in-command and combat leader, Dex is in diapers not by choice but in the aftermath of a traumatic tournament injury, a secret known to only a few of the boys. Roger and Rian coaxed the once apathetic coon back out of his shell. Now he’s dating Twitchy after coming to terms with his regressive tendencies during a mission to rescue the bunny. If only he could do something to pay back the furs who gave him a new lease on life. Likes: Sports. Being outdoors. Feeling useful. Dislikes: Frills. Meat (he’s a vegetarian). Bullies.

Twitchy. The smart one. The nervous, goggle-wearing bunny makes up BB’s tech team at Hideout #4 together with his partner, the pocket-sized mouse and gadget engineer Squeak. The bunny is dating Dex after the raccoon stunned the team—and Twitchy—by coming through for him on a daring solo rescue mission. Twitch can fix anything broken . . . maybe. Likes: LEGOs. Computers. Magic tricks. Dislikes: Lin Lin. Being talked down to. Having to explain things more than once.

The Girl

Serafina. The naughty one. Once a member of Roger’s boy’s team, the red fox defected to the pink team long ago after an abortive tryst with Roger and has since become a feminized sissy who thinks of herself as a vixen first. Unlike some of her pink teammates, though, Serry is a sissy because she likes guys . . . a bit too much to be one herself. She teaches sex education at the sissy team’s feminizing Academy for Special Boys. She’s dating Rian—who treats her like a real princess—and just got a lead role in a local Shakespeare festival production. Likes: Boys in tight diapers. Flowers. Ribbons. Romances. Play-acting. Dislikes: Repression. Overly serious furs. Jealousy.

Now, here goes . . .

\fPart One: The first two hours! 1:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m.

1:00 p.m.

“Somefur looks like a dog on a mission,” the koala waiter remarked as he touched a pencil stub to his notepad. “So . . . pick a poison?”

The Labrador seated at a stool on the counter, who was wearing a black tee shirt and black jeans under a loose-fitting black windbreaker, wagged his tail and let his sunglasses down his muzzle as he looked up over the edge of the menu. He flipped it over in his paws, handed it to the waiter decisively, and rested his elbows on the counter.

“A root beer float, but,” he said in a clipped tone, “with chocolate ice cream.”

A pawful of customers had just begun to filter into the ice cream parlor in the warm spring afternoon; it had only opened at noon.

The koala blinked and he tilted his head, regarding his visitor curiously. “But . . .” the squat grey bear said carefully, as though responding to a prompt, “that will be all muddy.”

“A little mess never stopped me.” The Labrador nodded. “After all—boys are built for playing in the dirt.”

The koala bit his lip and shook his head. “Sorry,” he answered slowly. “We’re all out of chocolate ice cream. I do have strawberry.”

The dog’s eyes flickered from the menu to the ice cream display case behind the counter, and scanned the list of flavors and the full canisters of ice cream it housed suspiciously.

Since chocolate ice cream was, of course, there, one might have expected the canine to protest. Instead, the dog wrinkled his nose, made a distasteful face, and pronounced, as he looked back up at the attendant, “Anything but pink!”

The bear now tilted his head to the opposite side. He could hear crinkling as the dog’s tail wagged; most furs would have assumed it was his windbreaker. “Your name is . . . Roger?” the fuzzy grey counter attendant asked.

The Labrador’s face lit up and he grinned playfully. “Hey!” Roger exclaimed, sounding genuinely surprised. “How did you know that?”

The bear set down his notepad and reached under the counter to press a button, abandoning any pretext of taking Roger’s order. Then he motioned to the opposite end of the counter with his paw.

“Go around back, through the employee entrance,” the bear said, nodding. “The manager is expecting you.”

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

1:15 p.m.

The raccoon let out a disappointed sigh as he watched the last stragglers from an afternoon econ lecture filter out of the building.

He shouldered his backpack and turned to leave—only to stiffen in surprise as he found himself facing a tall, bony red fox wearing a loose-fitting green silk dress, with a small bow on a barette clipped behind one of her ears. She had been standing on the other side of the departing crowd, and her eyes sparkled as she suddenly noticed the raccoon, who was wearing a nondescript blue tee-shirt tucked into his black jeans.

“Dex!” Serafina said, smiling. “I almost didn’t recognize you out of your karate uniform! I was hoping to catch Rian after class and wish him a good start today, since I can’t make the party later on.”

“Ditto,” the raccoon said stiffly, blinking twice. “But it wouldn’t be the first class he’s cut.” Dex shook his head and scanned Serafina. “So it’s true. You two really are going 24/7 with your respective . . . things . . .”—the coon flicked a paw up at the fox, indicating her head-to-toe attire—“on the same day.”

The sissy fox crossed the flagstone path between them looked around furtively, nodding. She was still a bit nervous about crossdressing on the street, but not overly so on campus—nofur at City College would have seen her any other way, anyhow. And she had foregone her diapers, for the time being—making it through the play as a full-time girl would be complicated enough.

“That was our decision. To show solidarity. Besides, yesterday was my last day at the stationery store,” she said. “It never paid that well to begin with and now that the academy gig is pretty steady, between that and the play I’m going to be too busy for anything else anyway. Rehearsals start tonight. But I’m so glad to see you alone for once!”

She threw her arms around the raccoon, who shuddered involuntarily as she gave him a quick, tight squeeze. “Oh, relax,” she said, letting him go and gesturing at the bow on her head. “It’s not catching!”

Dex bit his lip and frowned, his eyes glinting. “What was that for?” he asked suspiciously.

“Oh, I know we never run into each other except at group things, but two things I’ve wanted to tell you,” the fox said. “One, congratulations on your acceptances. I’m sure you’ll just go across town to Twitchy’s school, but it’s cool to have choices, right? And two,” she blushed slightly, and hesitated for a moment before adding, “thank you. Rian tells me you’ve been a good friend to us. I’m sure that can’t have been easy with your teammates. I know, maybe better than you think, how boys can be about this sort of thing. Even Rog, sometimes. So I really appreciate it.”

“A good friend to him, you mean,” Dex corrected her, softly but with a tinge of sternness entering his voice. “I’m Rian’s friend. Let’s not get confused about whose friend I am.”

The sissy fox’s smile faded and she eyed Dex curiously, one of her ears twitching. “Rian’s best friend is my friend too, Dex. I want to prove that to you. You’re so tense. Is everything okay with you and Twitchy?” she asked, sounding concerned. She noticed, when most furs wouldn’t, the blue fabric pet collar peeking out from under the raccoon’s shirt. That would mean Dex was on bottom. That seemed odd. Especially with someone topping who was probably even less experienced than he was. She took a deep breath.

“I know you two just started,” she said carefully, “but if you ever need to talk to somefur, you know . . . off team . . . about anything that might not be, well, things you want the other boys to hear about . . . I troubleshoot all kinds of things with my academy students. I know everyone’s different and, well, it’s not easy, getting started. Sometimes it’s awful, the first couple times. It wasn’t pretty for me. It can still be wonderful after that, though.” She smiled at him. “Really.”

The raccoon’s eyes widened in horror and he stood rooted to the ground, his backpack still hanging loosely over one shoulder and his other paw holding the opposite strap, for a split second that felt to him like five long minutes. Then his eyes narrowed to steely slits.

“Let’s rewind and pretend none of that was said,” he snapped. “I’m glad to see you too. There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you as well. Congrats on your own thing. How long does the play run?”

Serafina frowned and looked down at her footpaws, answering simply, “Through the summer.”

“Sounds like a big commitment,” the raccoon remarked as he settled the loose strap of his backpack over his other shoulder and his posture slackened a bit. “I hope you’re serious about it.”

Serry tugged on her skirt and wrinkled her face up. “What are you getting at, Dex?” she asked distastefully. “What do you think you’re doing?”

The raccoon snorted. “Rebalancing the scales. I heard that you ran out on Roger, when you switched teams, ages ago.”

The fox bristled. “That’s . . . not what happened. There was never any relationship there. More like a misunderstanding. Just ask Rog. He doesn’t hold a grudge.”

“Then someone has to,” the raccoon shot back, the corner of his lip turning up in the start of a scowl, “right?”

Serry glared at Dex, both her paws tightening their grip on the green silk, and said nothing.

The raccoon shook his head. “Well try not to do a repeat performance. Rian’s not the total goofball he’d like everyfur to think he is,” Dex said gravely. “He’s a lot more sensitive than he lets on. I hope you know that. If he wants some alone time before the party it’s probably because he’s getting in touch with his serious side right now. I know you two have an unusually . . . open relationship. But for whatever reason he’s put his whole soul into it. And I for one am sick and tired of hearing him worry about whether he’s good enough for you. You’re the one who ought to prove yourself to him.”

The sissy fox rolled her eyes. “Great,” she said, sighing. “Macho posturing. You really are the bluest boy over there, aren’t you?”

Dex turned to leave. “Have to run,” he said curtly. “If you do see Rian tell him I said good luck and if he needs to reach me I’m tied up until tonight. Male bonding with Ace.”

“Good,” Serry said, relaxing. “Talk things out with your friend. Talk about me, too. You’ll feel better.”

“Ace and I don’t talk,” the raccoon, already walking away, corrected her without turning around.

“Then have fun doing whatever it is you two budding psychotherapists do instead,” she replied dismissively, waving a paw after him.

Dex looked back at the vixen over his shoulder and said matter-of-factly before marching off, “Standing notice: Break my best friend’s heart, and you’ll find out. Full-time or not, you’re still a boy under that dress, by prevailing standards.”

Serry released her grip on her skirt and chewed on her lip, staring after the vanishing coon thoughtfully. “Somefur,” she muttered, “is having more trouble in bed than I thought.”

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

1:30 p.m.

Rian looked down into the hefty white plastic garbage bag full of pale blue briefs and brightly patterned boxers. The words “CLOTHES DONATION” were written on the garbage bag with permanent marker, in a childish block print. He stuck his tongue out at the sack’s contents right before he pulled the drawstrings shut with a flourish. “So long to all of you!” the cubby gray wolf remarked, before turning his back on the bag.

He stripped off his shirt and, leaving it on the floor, plopped down onto the twin bed in his small apartment wearing nothing except two diapers and a pair of blue socks with puffy clouds printed on them. He heard himself crinkle as he did, and smiled up at the green and white wrapping of the unopened pack of X-Plus diapers that stood next to his pillow.

“And hello to you, my friends!” he remarked exuberantly, grabbing the bag and squeezing it to his chest as tight as he could. “My diapers!” he said with satisfaction.

The comforter of his bed had been pulled back, and Rian lay there for a moment on the sheets with his eyes closed. He had sprinkled baby powder copiously over the bed linens after diapering himself, and he let the smell wash over him, hugging the bag of diapers in a fetal position and rocking back and forth.

“Oh, crinklies!” He said to the bag, rubbing the tip of his nose against it and listening to the sounds it made, “I love you so much! You can do anything. Thanks to you I met my wonderful daddy and my beautiful girlfriend and my brave best friend and my smart little brother and all the boys! If I could I would wear six of you and waddle everywhere! If I could I would—I would—” the wolf fidgeted and giggled as he felt his stiffening weewee press outwards against the cushioned inner layer of the pair of diapers he was wearing. “I would wear ten of you and crawl everywhere! Don’t worry about being bundled up though, friends!” he continued excitedly and slowly began to rock his hips back and forth, humping sideways against the air. “I promise I will still use each and every one of you with love!”

He stopped himself, releasing the bag and scooting backwards up onto his knees, and looked all around the room furtively. It was a spartan place, except for the closet and the dresser and overflow wardrobe next to it that contained all of his clothes and cub gear.

Rian was not the sort of fur who spent very much time at home—at least, he hadn’t been ever since he had met Roger and they had founded Baby Blue, a fraternity of diaper-loving boys devoted to promoting boyish behavior among the city’s ageplayers and protecting them from unwilling sissification by the enemy pink team, currently headquartered at Empress Calliope’s feminizing Academy for Special Boys.

If the wolf wasn’t in class—and, let’s face it, that was pretty often—he was usually visiting Roger or one of the boys, supervising a Baby Blue team, organizing a party, combing the mall and thrift stores for cub gear and team supplies, or, increasingly, spending time with the one sissy he loved, and thought of without hesitation, boy parts under her panties or no, as a vixen and his girlfriend, Serafina.

“It’s okay,” Rian whispered to the bag of diapers, his eyes darting from wall to wall and ceiling to floor, as he ripped it open, his excitement mounting. “We’re all alone. Let’s have our own little pre-party!”

He began removing diapers from the bag and kicked his pillows off the bed. They fell to the floor with a soft thud. Rian carefully laid out and unfolded one diaper after another, scooting backwards to make more space as he completed each row. Soon he reached the foot of his bed, and hopped backwards on to the floor.

Rian grinned at the surface of the mattress, which was now entirely overlaid with a layer of soft, absorbent cushioning, and reached down next to his dresser to snatch up another full bag of diapers. He tossed it gently to where the pillows had been. Then, from the top of his dresser, he took one bottle of powder in each paw, and, walking around the bed, shook both bottles vigorously, liberally powdering all the unfolded diapers and sending clouds of sweet-smelling talcum up into the air. The cubby wolf shut his eyes, blissfully taking in the scent, and, the diapers he was wearing drawn taut, dove onto the bed.

Rian kept his eyes closed and heard the whole surface crinkle as he landed on it. More powder wafted up into the air around him, and he rolled back and forth on his bed, flattening his ears and listening to the magnifying crinkling of his own diapers and the unfolded rows he rolled over. He felt like he was riding on a cloud, far above the world—a soft, cottony, protected place where nofur could see anything he did.

“Can’t move wiffout crinkling!” he said to himself with a giggle.

Reaching down, he pulled out the front of the diapers he wore and lowered them just a bit, letting his erect yiffer pop out over the top, without taking them off. Ah, that was a relief. It had been getting hot and sweaty, and a tiny bit sticky with precum, in there.

The wolf slid the unopened bag of diapers he had substituted for his pillow under his chest and rested his torso on it and his left paw next to it, keeping himself elevated a few inches over the bed. The base of his cock rubbed against the waistbands of the diapers he was wearing, and its tip just brushed against the soft cushioning of the diapers on the bed as he moved it back and forth. Each time it did, he felt a tingle under his fur. His right paw made its way to the base of his shaft and gripped his weewee loosely, gently and skillfully applying, and then withdrawing, pressure, as he began humping.

His nose also inclined downward to the bed and brushed against the soft cushioning of another diaper, and he started snuffling involuntarily at the overwhelming scent of powder. “I love you I love you I love you I love you,” he kept whispering into the diaper near his muzzle as he pumped away. “Would wear five of you ten of you twelve of you twenny of you thirty of you . . .”

Then he exploded. His whole body shook and a thick, warm, sticky white puddle poured out of the tip of his cock into the comfortable, welcoming cushioning of an unfolded bulky diaper. He flopped over on to his side, shivering, and hugged the unopened bag of diapers into his chest, whimpering, “I love you!” into it. He lay there trembling for several minutes. Eventually, his cock feeling shorter, but still stiff, he repositioned the diaper bag-support, resting on it to crouch over another open diaper—and began the process again, except this time, feeling hardly able to string words together, he just whined joyously until, after what might have been fifteen or twenty minutes, he really wasn’t sure, he achieved a second release, and opened his eyes, looking sideways across the room, panting. Everything looked fuzzy. He couldn’t make out the time on his clock.

With his vision blurry and his sense of smell dulled by the clouds of powder that his humping had thrown up into the air, the wolf’s hearing was momentarily sharpened. He could hear every crinkle, every creak in his hallway. He heard a nervous tapping from right outside, then there was a cautious knock on the door. He smiled softly and rolled off the bed, making no effort to clean anything up, got to his feet, and tucked his slackening yiffer back into the front of his diapers. A thin layer of talcum adhered to his fur. “Just a . . . minute,” he called out, his voice wavering. He opened his closet, pulled out the first bathrobe he found and slipped his arms into it, letting it hang open loosely as he staggered to the door. It was a white terrycloth robe covered with colorful blue and brown pawprints.

Rian unlocked the door, cracking it open and tilting his head as he smiled up at the bunny in the hallway. He opened it wide and motioned for him to come in. “What’s up,” the wolf asked unsteadily, “Twitch?”

The white rabbit fidgeted with the safety goggles settled on his forehead as he hopped into the room. His large ears flicked. “Commander?” he said uncertainly. “I . . . umm . . . got your e-mail . . . and I wanted to talk to you before the party. Not on the phone. But is this a good time?” Twitchy looked around the room quizzically. “Is Serry in the bathroom? I heard a lot of voices and . . . stuff . . . and I thought maybe I should just go . . .”

He sneezed at the onslaught of powder and his eyes flicked from the bed to Rian. The wolf had a dazed smile on his face and rested one paw on Twitchy’s shoulder as he pushed the door shut behind the rabbit with the other. “That’s sweet,” the wolf said dreamily. “You’re a good friend.”

Twitchy, who spent most of his time outside Baby Blue in labs, disassembling electronic devices, or doing homework, pawed a good deal less than most of the boys, but he could certainly recognize that his friend was in the afterglow of multiple orgasms.

“Umm. . . Rian,” Twitchy bit his lip and phrased his question euphemistically as he stared at the bed. “Were you . . . talking to . . . your diapers?”

Rian laughed and hugged the bunny tight. “Aww, don’t worry, Twitchy!” he said happily, reaching behind the rabbit with one paw and patting the bunny’s cushioned rear, which crinkled slightly, beneath his cottonball tail. He concluded reassuringly, “I’m sure yours are cute too!”

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

2:05 p.m.

“Hey!” the lion next to Roger in the elevator snapped as Roger pressed the floor 12 and floor 14 buttons at the same time. “Make up your mind where you’re going! Some of us have meetings to get to.”

“Ooo!” the Labrador remarked as the elevator doors slid shut. “I have one of those too!” He glanced at his watch, frowning. “And I think I might be late for it. Little hand is minutes. . .” he bit his lip and calculated in his head, then nodded decisively. “Yup,” he concluded. “I’m five minutes late.”

The cat raised an eyebrow. “Umm,” he asked tentatively, “do you know which company it’s at? Maybe I can tell you which floor it’s on and save you a little time.”

“Huh?” Roger asked as the elevator carriage lifted, then glanced from the panel to the business-suited lion. “Oh, you don’t know! Don’t worry! It will only stop once!”

The lion blinked as the number on the floor counter blinked past 12 and settled on 13 and the doors slid open with a ding. His eyes widened as Roger stepped out of the elevator on to the floor that, officially, didn’t exist.

The Labrador turned around to look back the puzzled cat, grinning, as the elevator doors began to shut.

“Don’t tell anyone though!” Roger added good-naturedly, pushing his sunglasses back up his muzzle with one finger, right before he vanished from sight. “I think it’s supposed to be a secret!”

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

2:10 p.m.

Serafina sat on the edge of the stage and swung her feet idly as the tabby cat playing Orsino struggled to get on his not-yet-broken-in leather boots.

She was watching a beaver and a white opossum curiously as their paws flew about and they conducted a rapid, incomprehensible argument. Eventually, the beaver cocked the beret on his head triumphantly, and the marsupial settled into a despairing posture, burying his face into his forepaws and shaking his head. He trudged along behind the beaver, emitting loud sighs periodically, as both approached the scattered crew of half-dressed actors. The beaver, whose shirt pocket was stuffed with pencils, withdrew one and began chewing on it thoughtfully as he surveyed the stage.

“What’s the deal with those two anyway?” she whispered to the tabby cat. “Are they always together? Who are we supposed to listen to?”

The feline blinked. “Oh right,” the actor said, smiling. “I forgot! You’re a newbie. Well, Marty”—he gestured at the beaver—“is the director and Woody”—he gestured at the opossum—“ is the producer, but he’s sort of like a sidekick, I guess. Woody will actually spend most of the rehearsals looking tortured and muttering into his paws just like that. But at some point Marty will get too carried away and there will be some insurmountable problem with money or staging, something technical, and he’ll snap into action. This is my fourth show with them and it’s always the same thing.” He shrugged and smiled. “They’re good guys, really. I’d do all my work with them if it paid better.”

Serry bit her lip and eyed the beaver. With a start, she realized that the tabby cat was reaching over her legs for a canteen on the other side of her, and she jerked herself backward, one paw reaching up to shield the chest padding under her dress.

The orange cat raised an eyebrow. “Honey,” he said with a laugh, shaking his head as he picked up the canteen and leaned back, “Relax. Unless it’s in the script, I never touch girls with my paws. Don’t worry that anyone around here is going to feel you up or anything. Well, maybe the tigress playing Olivia. She’s a strange one. Now if you were a boy,” he added with a sparkle in his eye, “you might have a spot of trouble.”

Serafina bit her lip and scanned the crew nervously. The beaver spread his arms wide. The opossum peeked out from between his fingers.

“Okay, gents, and—” Marty looked over the actors already on stage, noting Serafina — “lady. I asked you few to come early because this is the first day on board for you lot. For technical reasons we were only working on the Malvolio plot yesterday. Now some of you know Woody and me and some of you don’t—yet—so the first thing I want to say is congratulations and—” He grinned broadly and thumped his tail against the floor as the spotlights on the opposite side of the auditorium clicked on, momentarily blinding all the furs on stage. “Welcome to the family!”

The beaver reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a pair of sunglasses, which he unfolded carefully and put on with one paw as he kept chewing on his pencil.

“Umm . . .” Serafina asked cautiously as her eyes adjusted to the light. “What are you doing with those? We’re indoors.”

The beaver thumped his tail against the floor again and tilted the beret on his head back. “What am I doing?” Marty asked rhetorically. “Why, the same thing as all of you. Getting into character!” He glowered at Serry, trying to appear villainous. “Hope you’re resting up, young lady! Because after this you’ll be on your feet until I’m convinced you know your lines backwards and forwards!” He nibbled on his eraser, then added, “And sideways!”

Woody the opossum, still next to him, lowered his head again and let out a contemptuous groan.

The tabby cat chuckled and leaned over to Serafina’s shoulder. “I hope you’re ready too!” he whispered in good-humored warning. “Marty runs quite a show, but he is one of a kind.”

The sissy fox looked up at the beaver as his beady eyes as he raised his pencil into the air and began motioning to the lighting crew energetically.

“Actually,” she mused, as much to herself as to the tabby cat, her eyes fixed on the beaver, “this all feels a bit familiar.”

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

2:15 p.m.

“Umm, don’t sit on that one!” Rian warned Twitchy as he slid one of the sticky diapers off his bed into his wastebasket. “There you go! Make yourself comfortable.” The rabbit didn’t move, except to fidget in place. “Twitch?” Rian asked, tilting his head and looking up into his friend’s face as he felt himself drop down a little closer to earth. “Is everything all right?”

The rabbit bit his lip and remained silent, but his foot began tapping as he thought about what, and how much, to say.

“This isn’t about Kyle, is it?” Rian asked sternly, collecting himself and waving a paw at the bunny.

“What? No!” Twitchy answered, then let out a sigh. “Although to be honest having him hanging around at Hideout #4 doesn’t help. He can’t do anything without step-by-step instructions! And I don’t even keep the user manuals to most things. Engineering requires a little bit more . . . thought and flexibility than that.”

“Look,” Rian said, crossing his arms seriously. “I already told you, you asked for him to stay posted there. So he’s with you until he asks for a new assignment, and you’ll find stuff for him to do. I know he’s not a rocket scientist. Just find a way to make him feel important. It’s bad enough he knows that Ace wanted him off the combat team. That happened when I was gone or it would have been handled better. We are not having a last fur picked situation. Not on my team. No one is being frozen out like that. We’ve all had it hard enough, outside.”

Twitchy’s foot stopped tapping. “We all have, huh?” he asked pointedly, then pressed ahead without explaining himself. “Don’t worry about K. I’ll figure something out. And stop changing the subject! You know perfectly well what I came here to talk about. I want to know why it’s so important that I make sure Dex goes to your party.”

Rian frowned. “He’s my best friend! And our third-in-command. It would be weird if he wasn’t there.”

Twitchy tapped his foot. “Well he may be your friend but he’s my . . .” the rabbit bit his lip, as though unsure what word to use next. “Well he and I are dating,” he concluded lamely after a moment’s hesitation. “Dex doesn’t have a choice about those—” the rabbit pointed to all the diapers spread out on Rian’s bed—“like the rest of us do. And he bends over backwards to make sure not everyfur knows that, because he doesn’t want the whole team to feel sorry for him. Did you think the occasion of your party might be a little weird for him, maybe?”

The wolf sighed. “Yes,” he admitted. “That’s why I asked you to make sure he didn’t make an excuse and slink off to the dojo or something. But it won’t be awkward once you just get him there.”

He grabbed the rabbit’s paws anxiously. “I promise! He needs to be there. Or else it just won’t be the same.” A sneaky twinkle entered his eyes. “Just tell him I need his support. That will get him to come. This is a big decision for me, you know. It’s as important to me to know that Dex is on board with it as Serry and Rog, and you. I don’t want him to feel like his approval doesn’t matter, or to be weirded out about it and start avoiding me.”

Twitchy eyed his friend warily. “Is that really all? You aren’t going to give him anything super expensive in front of everyfur or anything like that, are you?”

“Huh?” Rian blinked, knotting his paws together behind his back nervously. “What makes you think that?”

The rabbit let out a long breath and looked down at his feet. “You’re very generous, Commander, to me as much as anyone, but to speak freely, I wish you’d think more about the effect your gestures can have on people.”

Rian stared at the rabbit, perplexed. “What’s this about, Twitch?” he asked. “Is this why you’ve been avoiding me since spring break? I didn’t want to say anything, I mean I thought you were just miffed after I said you couldn’t transfer Kyle.” He furrowed his brow thoughtfully. “And come to think of it I haven’t changed you in forever, have I? Are we okay?”

The bunny fidgeted with the goggles on his forehead and avoided the question. “Look, he might be your best friend still, and I’d never want to get in the way of that, but just don’t give Dex anything big and expensive in front of everyfur at the party. It would be weird. I know you don’t realize it, but it’s like you’re always throwing around how much more money you have than the rest of us. With your outfits, and all your diapers.” He gestured at the bed. “I mean, Byron had three jobs until last night. Dex works at the dojo, he doesn’t just train there. I’m on a merit scholarship. You just — do school, sort of, and Baby Blue stuff.”

“Hey!” Rian puffed himself up. “How do you know I’m not on a merit thingamajig too?”

Twitchy raised an eyebrow and stared at his friend without saying anything.

Rian let the air out of his chest and waved a paw dismissively. “Yeah, all right, I’m not,” he admitted, with a giggle. “Allowance, boarding school, City College — My dad would write a check for any amount sooner than say more than hello and goodbye to me. I’ve spent more time with Rog in the last couple years than I have with him in my entire life.”

Twitchy frowned and started to say something, but Rian cut him off cheerily. “Anyway,” the wolf said, grinning, “stop being so paranoid! I promise I didn’t buy him anything. The reason you need to get Dex to my party is just because—” the wolf threw his arms wide and bounced up and down on his heels as he concluded in a self-satisfied tone, “it is going to rock!”

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

2:45 p.m.

“And all those sayings will I overswear,” said the sissy fox, with a nervous tinge in her voice, looking back over her shoulder, then back to the tabby cat dressed as a Duke, biting her lip nervously. “And those swearings keep as true in soul, As doth that orbed continent the fire, That severs day from night.”

She shifted her weight from one footpaw to the other and looked up at the orange feline expectantly.

The tabby cat threw his paws up and moaned theatrically.

“Cut!” The beaver, chewing on his second pencil, shouted and raised a paw in the air. “What’s the problem now?” he asked. “Why did you stop?”

“I just don’t think she should keep looking over her shoulder at Sebastian,” the tabby cat said to Marty petulantly, flicking a paw at Serafina and straightening his doublet. “It’s distracting me. She finds him, hugs him, whatever, then she moves on and leaves with me at the end of the play. I’m supposed to make a love speech to her when she’s looking at another guy? It’s weird.”

The beaver tilted his beret on his head and looked down at the pocket-sized notepad in his paw, flipping between two pages and wrinkling his nose. “Looking back wasn’t in my notes,” he said musingly. “And she does go off with Orsino. Serry? Is there something with the lights, or with Sebastian’s costume?”

The fox bit her lip. “What, is she supposed to forget about him?” she asked the tabby cat directly, sounding annoyed. “Sebastian’s her brother! It’s not like Orsino’s going to be the only man she ever speaks to from now on.”

“Of course not,” the feline crossed his arms, “but focus on the scene, will you? This is a love story! And I’m the lover! The spotlight is going to be on the two of us.”

The cross-dressing fox shook her head. “It’s not a story about one kind of love,” she said. “It never is. You’d think gay guys might understand women a little better, but without fail you’re even worse than the straight ones. Besides,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “this is Viola we’re talking about. She has options if she wants them. You shouldn’t carry yourself as so sure of yourself from the minute you say ‘I love you’ to her. You should be a little bit nervous, too, maybe.”

The beaver returned his notepad to his shirt pocket. “That’s different than any staging I’ve seen,” he said, beginning to chew on his pencil. The opossum standing next to him stood on his tiptoes and whispered something inaudible, which the beaver leaned over to hear.

“That’s what I’m saying,” whined the tabby cat. “ I’m not taking rewrites from some amateur. Say something, Marty. You’re the director!”

“That’s right! I am!” The beaver remarked happily, twirling his chewed-up pencil a few circles in his right paw. He eyed Serafina appraisingly and fidgeted with his beret for a moment. Then he smiled at her and added, “But she’s the girl!”

The surprised fox, who had been bracing herself for a reprimand, smiled back at him—and blushed.

Next time: 3:00 p.m.–Nightfall: In the final hours before Rian’s party, Roger is thrown off schedule, Serry squirms when her cover is blown, Twitchy faces an unexpected challenge, and the wolf completes a very important mission!

\f

Part Two: The first afternoon! 3 p.m.–Nightfall

3:00 p.m.

“Ka-why . . . desu . . . ne,” Roger read off the postcard in his paw, then flipped it over and set it back down on the counter. “That’s cute, isn’t it?” he translated. “See, I told you I can read some of those squiggly things!”

The tanuki behind the glass display counter frowned up at him. The walls around them were covered with monitors, streaming demos of various soon-to-be-released games in various stages of beta testing. The glass cases were filled with consoles and accessory equipment.

“Kawaii is cute,” the tanuki, who still spoke English with a Japanese accent, corrected his pronunciation sternly. “Kauai is an island in Hawaii.”

“Well,” Roger said, smiling,“it was cute when I was there. Lots of blue!”

The raccoon dog stiffened, bit his lip, and held up one finger as he turned his eyes to the computer screen in front of him as though checking something. Then he looked back up at Roger. “Number 119856?” he asked cryptically.

The dog frowned and counted on his fingers—when he reached the end of them, he started again, but after two tries, shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, shrugging.

The tanuki turned the screen, which was mounted on a pivot, around so Roger could see. “Hawaii — Blue,” the tanuki pointed at the header at the top of the screen. “Are you the one who placed this order?”

“Oh!” the Labrador answered, his tail beginning to wag when he saw the list that was still scrolling down the monitor. “You meant that order!”

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

4:00 p.m.

“Serry, I wanted to talk to you about the duel scene,” the beaver said without looking up from the memo book in his paw as the dressing room door swung open. “I don’t like all the running around and shouting. It’s confusing.”

The sissy fox gasped and spun around, startled, covering her chest with both quivering paws. “Some of the locks are broken, sorry,” Marty continued without looking up from his notes. “Woody called the building about it. I’ll knock next time. My paws are usually full, so sometimes I forget. I thought we might try using some kind of . . . escalator-elevator type thing. See, I drew a picture with all of you on it! And I wrote up . . .” He raised his head slowly when Serafina didn’t say anything. Her back was to him, but she had just realized, too late, he could see her reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall, and the reflection of the padded brassiere lying in front of her on the counter, and whimpered fearfully.

The beaver’s eyes narrowed and he withdrew a pencil from behind his ear, looking back down at his notepad and scribbling something. “So . . . You’re a boy . . . dressed as a girl . . . playing a girl . . . dressed as a boy,” he said thoughtfully after a moment, then seemed absorbed in writing.

“Look, Marty, I’m sorry,” she said, sadly, her ears drooping. “It was fun for a couple hours. I’ll get my things and go. At least this happened early, right? You have plenty of time to recast.”

The beaver finished scribbling, clicked his tongue, and looked back up at the quailing fox. “Will it cause you any trouble if I put what I just said in the press kit?” he asked, smiling.

Serafina blinked and slowly raised her eyes from the ground and slowly lowered her arms from her chest.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening before,” the beaver said when she didn’t answer him. “Did you ask me something?”

“Marty,” she said, slowly raising her eyes to look at the beaver’s reflection in the mirror. “Half your ideas are . . . Putting an escalator onstage is the stupidest thing I ever heard. You’re a total goofball. But you’re also . . . not.”

Marty blinked and slid his sunglasses back up his muzzle. “Well I don’t know what to make of that,” he remarked in a chipper tone. “So I’ll take it as an okay about your bio?”

The corner of her lip turned up, cautiously, in a smile. “Yes. It’s fine, it’s no problem for me. You just . . .” She eyed the beaver’s reflection in the mirror from head to toe, shivering again, but not, this time, from fear. “You just remind me of someone I used to spend more time with.”

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

4:05 p.m.

Jay, I’m sorry, but you can come to one after your 18th. Don’t worry—we’ll save the best for then. Until then I can’t give out locations but we’re always glad to see you in the gaming group at the store, and talk about whatever.

Roger finished typing and pressed send. Then he returned to his inbox and thumbed through the other text messages on his phone. When he had finished he grinned up at the otter who owned the coffee shop. “Can you put an extra shot in that?” the black Lab said cheerily. “I’ve been running around town all day. Totally forgot I’m hosting a party tonight! Which reminds me that I need to pick up a whole bunch of garbage bags.”

The otter looked at him quizzically and shrugged. Roger was a regular, and he had long since stopped trying to make sense of the dog’s non sequiturs.

“The extra shot is on the house. If you promise not to tell me again that it’s not as good as it used to be,” he said. “It’s your own fault. You cost me my best cappuccino maker.”

The lab shrugged. “My loss too. But it couldn’t be helped. Dex is meant for bigger things. Oh! You can give me a newspaper too. Actually,” the dog said, wagging his tail and fishing for his wallet, “I’ll take like ten newspapers.”

The otter blinked and started to ask a question, but then thought better of it, shook his head, and rang up the sale while Roger collected the papers from the stand and tucked them under his arm.

In five minutes the dog was sitting at a table, resting his elbow on the stack of papers, and blowing on his cappuccino, when his cell phone rang. He eyed the number curiously and flipped it open.

“Hi, Roddy,” he said into the phone, stirring his drink. “What’s up?”

The lab’s ears pricked and his eyes widened slightly as he listened.

“Okay,” he said quietly. “It happens. Stay cool, and don’t beat yourself up about it. I know it seems like the worst thing right now, but it’s really not the end of all days. All of us make mistakes sometimes. I’ll put Kyle in touch with you. He had a similar . . . mishap a few months ago, and came out of it okay. Whatever they’re saying right off, remember, at least in your case, that they do love you. Keep a low profile and give them a day or two to deal with it though without . . . What?” The dog looked at his watch and gritted his teeth. “No, no, please don’t do that! I’m really busy right now and it’s also just a very bad idea! I don’t even know what you think I could . . .”

The dog winced at a burst of noise from the cell phone and sighed, slumping down on the stack of newspapers in despair.

“Hello,” he said into the receiver in a resigned tone, “Mrs. Jensen.”

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

4:30 p.m.

Rian stood fearfully outside the thrift store, his knees knocking, clutching the large garbage bag in both his paws. It wasn’t the store that scared him—he visited it and several others regularly, combing the racks for supplies and any cast-offs that might be useful for himself or his Baby Blue friends, and whatever purchases he made had never raised eyebrows.

But he was suddenly overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he was about to do. He rehearsed the rules he had made in his head: he would still use the bathroom for messing, except on weekends; take chlorophyll every day with his vitamins; bring a bottle of water in his backpack everywhere and keep drinking from it; never leave home without at least two spares, wipes, and a spare pair of rubber pants; always have plastic bags with him since he couldn’t know the disposal situation everywhere he might go; don’t spend much time alone, which he preferred not to do anyway; and spread the burden of changing out between as many furs as he could. Roger, Serry, Twitchy, and Dex had all volunteered to help, and he was sure others would when he asked at the party.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and, not able to reach around the garbage bag to the door, advanced clumsily, stumbling forward, the entrance to the store swinging open as he staggered through it and over to the clothes donation bin.

Taking a deep breath, the wolf hoisted the bag with all his strength, and watched all the grown-up underwear he owned thud limply on top of a high pile of donated baby clothes.

“Mission,” he said to himself with relief as his knees stopped knocking, “accomplished!” He turned around, wiping his paws against each other briskly, and marched to the counter. “I need a receipt please!” he said with pride. It wouldn’t be much of a tax deduction, but he would present it to Roger as proof of a job well done, and put it in his scrapbook.

The cashier smiled at the shrimpy wolf, who was wearing a polo shirt and loose-fitting jeans. “Oh hello, Rian,” she said. “I almost didn’t recognize you. Not wearing anything cute today?”

“Oh!” Rian said, grinning broadly and wagging his tail, giving off a slight crinkle audible only to himself, “But I am!!”

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

5:30 p.m.

The genet, sitting in a tree overlooking his vineyard, watched the sun set with satisfaction. The slight mountain cat blinked in surprise as a black Labrador clambered up the trunk and hoisted himself onto the wide, spreading branch beside him. “Sorry I was not down there,” the cat remarked in accented English. “I had given up on you!”

“Je m’excuse mille fois, je sais bien que je suis très en retard,” Roger said gesturing apologetically. He unzipped his black windbreaker and slid his sunglasses back up his nose, then reached inside his jacket. “Quand même j’ai apporté tous les preuves nécessaires de retirer nos articles. Est-ce que ces tous sont arrivés?”

“Tu parles français maintenant?” the petite spotted mountain cat asked, raising an eyebrow. “Roger?” he switched back to English. “When did you learn to do that? You told me that you never would.”

“Did I say that in French?” Roger asked, tilting his head and smiling. “That was weird! Because I don’t know any French!”

The genet pointed up and Roger raised his head slowly to look up at the porch of a tree house about six feet above them. From this branch on upwards, wooden grips were nailed into the thick trunk of the tree, making it an easy climb from where they were sitting to the tree house entrance.

“All in there,” the spotted mountain cat explained. “Since you impressed the need for absolute security, I did not want to keep them on the ground. I will follow you. You will need two combinations to get in.”

“Ooh, this is the best one yet!” Roger exclaimed. “Gênial!”

The cat looked confused. “I thought you said you didn’t . . .”

“I don’t!” Roger said over his shoulder as he began climbing. “Je viens toutefois de lire tous les numéros d’Astérix,” he remarked offhandedly, wagging his tail. “Maybe it’s that!”

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

6:00 p.m.

The opossum had fallen asleep leaning against the trunk of a cardboard tree.

“When we get it right, people!” the beaver shouted waving his arms above his head. “That’s when we can go to the next scene!” He spun and pointed straight at a cougar who was about to say something in protest. The cat bit his tongue and muttered something under his breath. “Finally!” Marty exclaimed, twirling a pencil in his paw and thumping his tail against the stage. “Our Malvolio is starting to look angry!”

He took a deep breath as other members of the crew started to grumble as well. His marsupial partner began snoring loudly. “All right,” the director said reluctantly, holding up all the digits on both paws. “Ten minutes!”

“Someone’s fiery tonight,” the tabby cat, who was sitting cross-legged on the sidelines, remarked, looking up at the beaver as most of the actors wandered backstage.

“Serry?” the beaver said, looking down at him. “She’ll turn out to be a find I think. I take full credit for that. Woody didn’t want to do it.”

The orange feline licked at his forewpaws, grooming. “Not the newbie,” he said. “Though I’ll admit she’s all right. You.” He tilted his head and eyed his director curiously. “You don’t have a new boy, do you, Marty?”

“Don’t be silly,” Marty snapped, then began chewing on his pencil. “It’s just the material. The play is hard not to be excited about.”

“Fine, be that way,” the cat purred, flicking his tail against the stage. “You always keep the good ones to yourself.”

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

6:30 p.m.

The bell jangled as the door to the comic shop swung open and Roger stepped inside. A malamute sitting behind the counter and dozing over an open comic book sat up with a start.

“Hi, Byron,” the older dog said cheerily. “Did anyfur come by with anything?”

The sled dog bit his lip and looked up with a dazed expression, still blinking himself awake.

Roger groaned. “Did anyfur walk out with anything?” he asked despairingly.

The malamute stared down at the floor ashamed and Roger shook his head. “Forget it, go get ready for the party,” he said, clapping the dog on the shoulder. “I know last night was your last night at the restaurant. Better you nod off here than as a lifeguard. Can you just turn on the heat in the back room and shake out the sleeping bag? I think Roddy might need a place to sleep for a couple nights and it’s better if it’s not my apartment.”

The malamute stood up, crinkling, and nuzzled at Roger’s paw before padding off drowsily. Roger was starting to close up shop when he noticed an adult gray wolf in a denim jacket standing at one of the shelves and rocking on his heels.

“We’re closing,” Roger announced. “Can I help you with something?”

The lupine selected a book, adding it to the three under his arm, and turned to face Roger, who caught sight of a gold earring in his right ear.

“Sleeping bag, huh? That sounds comfy. You know, in eighteenth-century Britain,” the wolf remarked vaguely as he approached the counter and held out his choices for Roger’s inspection, “booksellers used to do a lot of small, but important favors for their loyal customers. Receiving mail for people, that was a big one, when they were traveling, or just in the name of privacy — postal offices couldn’t be trusted to hold things yet.”

“Huh?” Roger blinked. “Why did you say that?” he asked suspiciously.

The wolf shrugged. “You sell books here, among other things. I thought you might find it interesting.”

“You have both a boy and a girl, I guess,” Roger remarked, changing the subject, as he looked over the lupine’s selections and rang up the sale. “Did you find everything you were looking for?”

“Oh yes.” The wolf smiled. “A couple Christmases ago.”

The Labrador looked at him oddly. “Do I know you from somewhere?” he asked. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t really look or sound like you belong here.”

The wolf frowned and rubbed his thumb back and forth against the inside of his fingers thoughtfully. “I get that a lot. They eventually said the same thing at Trinity College. We’re just in town on a layover. Missed a connection because of a security hold-up.” He held up a finger and shook it at Roger in warning. “I don’t know where else is on your list, but do not ever visit Cambodia. Once that’s on your passport you have problems at every airport. Government conspiracy, I’m sure.”

“I . . . wasn’t planning on it,” Roger blinked and took the strange wolf’s credit card and swiped it. “Do you need any advice on how to pass the time while you’re in town?”

“Nah,” the wolf chuckled. “I’ve seen enough to think anything I did in this place would probably be superfluous. Oh, I almost forgot why I came to this store, though.”

He reached into the pocket of his jacket with one paw as he took his card back in the other, and produced a water pistol with an extended nozzle and an attachable water cartridge, setting it on the counter. “Is this yours? My boyfriend picked it up on our last stop. Based on where, I guess you dropped it from an overlook. It’s monogrammed with a name and address, so I thought, maybe it’s a keepsake, or something, and well—next thing you know we’re here,” he shrugged. “Might as well make it for a reason.”

Roger looked down at the squirt gun and took it in his paw. “Hey! I did drop this . . .” he looked up, but the bell jangled as the door swung shut behind the wolf, who was already gone. The Lab concluded, puzzled, “A really, really long way away from here. And you forgot your receipt . . .”

Byron trudged back into the front of the store, yawning and rubbing his eyes with the back of both paws. “I brought you a coffee, By,” Roger said gently. “You don’t want to sleep through the party. And if you’re planning on it, trust me, Rian won’t let you. Can you do one last thing while I close up?”

The malamute tilted his head.

“Find some cardboard and markers and make a temporary sign for the back room,” Roger proposed. “It should say something like . . . ‘Bag check and package deliveries.’”

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

Nightfall

“Hey Ace, hey Jax!” Kyle the Dalmatian waved to the approaching cat and dog pair. The team’s two wilderness patrol leaders fell into step with the group. Jax, a tracking hound wearing his Boy Scout sash over his clothes, waved, and Ace, a lynx in a Safari outfit, who was leaning on his partner’s shoulder and walking stiff-legged, almost as though he were waddling, just muttered something.

Kyle turned back to the wolf. The two were at the center of a small knot of boys making their way through the street together toward Roger’s apartment; some had set out with buddies, and others had fallen into the group as it slowly made its way across town.

“How about you, Rian?” the dog asked. “Will you go back home for Memorial Day or just the Fourth of July?”

The wolf’s ears drooped slightly. “Oh,” he said uncertainly, “I’m spending Memorial Day with Roger! There’ll be so much clean up to do after all the School’s Out games and celebrations! I’m still trying to sell him on adding a You’re Not Graduating from Diapers ceremony to the schedule. He definitely won’t be able to do without me! But for the Fourth everyfur is gone and Serry will be performing the whole weekend so I’ll probably see one of her shows and then I’ll just be. . .”

“He’ll be driving out with me to my folks’,” interrupted the raccoon in his karate uniform as he fell into step with them. He clapped a paw on the shrimpy wolf’s shoulder. “I had to fight to maneuver him out there. But what can you do? It’s not easy to get on Mr. Popular’s calendar these days.”

When Rian looked back over his shoulder, Dex smiled down at the shorter fur and added, “Yo,” belatedly. There were paintball splatters on Dex’s uniform, and his headfur and whiskers looked a bit frazzled, with a few leaves clinging to his ears.

“Dex!” Rian exclaimed, his eyes swelling up. “I didn’t know if you were going to come to the party with Ace and Jax or not!”

“I wasn’t going to,” the coon said nonchalantly. “Too many financial aid forms to fill out still. But . . . ” he paused, blushing a little, before concluding softly, “But Twitch said you needed me around.”

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

7:00 p.m.

“Twitchy!” said Roger, looking out of the kitchen and pointing one finger on each paw at the rabbit as the door swung shut behind him. “I have no food. Byron ran to the grocery store to get some chips and soda.”

“What?” the rabbit exclaimed. “How could you let that happen!”

“Squeak!” echoed the pocket-sized mouse on Twitchy’s shoulder, shaking his head.

Roger frowned. “I’ve been busy!” he said defensively, then vanished into the kitchen. Twitchy heard the sound of cabinet doors opening and closing at random. As he listened, he looked down at the open newspapers spread out on the floor around the couch—they covered almost the entire carpet.

After several minutes the Labrador reappeared with boxes clutched in his arms.

“I have mixes for stuff!” He listed them as he tossed the boxes to the rabbit, who fumbled and hopped around to catch each of them. “Angel food bars. Sponge cake. Vanilla frosting. Sugar cookies. What do you think? Considering the occasion, I thought it would be fun to have a lot of white, fluffy foods.”

Twitchy, his arms full, stared up at his commanding officer apprehensively. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked, his foot beginning to tap. “Isn’t this the sort of thing you can run next door and ask your sister for help with?”

Roger shuddered involuntarily and clapped his paws over his stomach. “Trust me, that,” he said, holding one paw up and wagging it at the rabbit, “is a really bad idea. Besides, you work with lab equipment and stuff . . .” The dog’s eyes narrowed and he stared at the bunny, as though daring him, “Don’t you?”

“Right,” Twitchy took a deep breath and, managing to get one paw loose, reached up for the goggles settled on his forehead, gritted his teeth, and—something he only did on his most dangerous assignments—snapped them down over his eyes. “How hard could this be?”

“Squeeeak,” said the mouse seated on his shoulder nervously.

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

7:45 p.m. Backstage.

“What is it now, Woody?” The beaver fidgeted with his beret as he turned away from the mirror, then started as he faced the door. “Serry!” he frowned. “Go eat pizza and mingle with the others. You’re not scared of Garrick, are you?” He waved a paw. “Don’t be! This is my fourth show with him and it’s always the same. He’s only fighting with you because he likes you enough to think you can take it. It means he’ll really hash through the lines with you on stage. He doesn’t do that often—” The beaver looked at her meaningfully. “With a girl. Speaking of which, we will have to tell the others eventually. We’re all a family, for the length of the show anyway. I’ll follow your lead, but sooner is better.”

The fox moved her footpaw in a circle and clasped her forepaws behind her back. “I’ll do it tomorrow. I just wanted to say thanks,” she said hesitantly. “For being understanding about me.”

The beaver reached for a pencil and turned back to the stage diagram he had been doodling. “You’re welcome,” he answered.

“I think you and I are . . . a good team.” Serafina said. “I used to work with someone a lot like you. I miss it, sometimes. I’ll always wonder if that could have turned out differently.”

The beaver, who was trying to ignore her, kept scribbling and reached backward over his shoulder to wave a paw shooing her away. “I’ll come by with notes for you after we’re all finished,” he said, sounding distracted. “I like what you did with the ending. But you play the shipwreck at the start too melodramatic. You need to give people a chance to ease into the world a little bit. I’m still thinking about the rest. Right now your pizza’s getting cold.”

“You don’t have a bad side, do you, Marty?” she asked. “You aren’t going to put your sunglasses back on after we wrap up for the night and press me for some sort of . . . special favor? In return for keeping me on?”

The beaver raised his eyes to look at her reflection in the mirror, and saw the flush in the sissy fox’s cheeks. He furrowed his brow in confusion.

“Why?” he said cautiously. “Do you want me to?”

Next time: T minus zero . . . Rian’s 24/7 party begins! The wolf is determined to make it a celebration everyone will remember.

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

\fPart Three: Celebration!

T minus zero. Rian’s 24/7 Party.

The coat rack behind the door was filled with pants, and others were laid folded up on the floor nearby. “You know the rules tonight!” Rian, wearing his polo shirt and three layered diapers under a pair of plastic pants with ponies on them, said, with his arms crossed, to the latest entrant. He pointed at the pile of folded jeans and slacks in the corner. “Rule one: Any pants that aren’t plastic get checked at the door!”

“Being a lousy employee isn’t the same, Byron,” the crinkling Dalmatian whined to the malamute standing over him. The spotted dog was crawling on all fours on the newspaper experimentally. “You’re still our best swimmer. I’m not our best anything. I think I’m slowing Twitch down more than I’m helping. What’s worse is I don’t think I’m getting the hang of this tech support stuff. It’s like housebreaking all over again. Whenever I made progress at home it was off to sitting around all night and all weekend in a restaurant kitchen where you always have to let other furs go first to use a one-toilet bathroom.”

The spotted dog turned his head around the room and sniffed curiously as he crawled in a circle. “Where are my teammates anyway?” he asked. “Twitch and Squeak came straight from the hideout so they should have beat me here.”

Dex was sitting on the couch and shifting his weight around a little uncomfortably. He wore the top of his karate outfit over red plastic pants that covered three layered cloth diapers fastened carefully with safety pins. Jax sat beside him on the sofa, eying the coon while sucking noisily on three of Ace’s fingers.

The lynx was standing behind the couch, one paw surrendered to the nursing dog’s muzzle and the other resting on his head, while he faced away from the couch, absorbed in heated debate with a civet.

“I can’t believe we’re still having this argument,” the small, cat-like fur protested insistently. “Our government is not tyrannical! Just take my word for it, I know it has issues, but it just isn’t. Is not. Have you heard of Stalinist Russia? Nazi Germany maybe? I bet you’ve seen that one in movies.”

Ace snorted. “So I guess we should wait until we do elect a fascist government, and ask nicely for it to restore our Second Amendment rights, afterwards,” he snapped.

The civet rolled his eyes and sighed, looking up at the ceiling. “But making carrying weapons a fundamental right undermines democracy from the start. It sends everyone a message that violence is a legitimate response to social problems! The world has changed for the better since this country was founded, you know . . . And to prove it I will make you see reason if I have to stand right here arguing until one or both of us get a rash,” he pouted, crossing his arms. “Then when you break down and start begging for a change first you’ll have no choice but to admit that I’m right and all conflicts can be resolved through peaceful discussion.”

The trailblazing lynx’s eyes glinted and he grinned. “Diaper rash, ooh scary!” he said. “Had poison ivy recently?”

Roger waved both his paws in the air and stood in the center of the room near the bowls of chips and bottles of soda on the coffee table. As the designated caregiver, if anyone needed one, he was the only one wearing his pants, although he had removed his belt and let them hang loose so that his waistband poked out quite visibly.

“Okay, everyfur!” Roger said to the room of about twenty boys. “You know what you came here to celebrate. If you’re here, you’re for it. Are you for it?”

Rian, from his vantage point near the door, shifted his weight back and forth uncertainly, crinkling audibly as he did—but then, so was almost everyfur around him, excepting the small group of cloth-wearers that had been growing lately around Dex, Ace, and Jax. There was scattered applause. Roger beckoned to Rian, who made his way carefully through the crowd to his mentor’s side.

Everyfur stood aside and smiled at him as he passed, some patting him on the back, some clapping him on the shoulder, and some tussling the fur on his head. By the time he made it to Roger’s side, he was beaming and beginning to relax. He tugged on the Lab’s waistband, and Rog bent over to listen to him.

“They all seem to think it’s cool. It’s not something they’re going to laugh at afterwards is it? It’s really important that if anyfur said it was weird or looked at me weirdishly you tell me now. Do they think it’s cool?” the wolf whispered anxiously, tugging on the hem of his shirt, which wouldn’t quite come down to his waistband.

“Of course they do,” Roger reassured the wolf, patting his head with one paw. “Or they wouldn’t have come to the party. You asked them all before they came here if they were really comfortable, didn’t you? And we made clear that there was no obligation, right? That this was never envisioned as a whole group thing? It’s your personal party, not a BB event.”

Rian bit his lip and nodded as the Lab straightened up and continued speaking. “Rian has worked hard and talked to a lot of us to come up with rules that will make his big decision manageable and responsible for everyfur. And we’ll go through those and put them up on an easel a little later. But for now, we’re here to have fun, and show support for my sidekick’s scary but exciting decision to try being Baby Blue’s first 24/7 diaper player.” Roger tussled Rian’s headfur. “Congratulations on your transition,” he said, “little buddy.”

“Actually,” Rian cleared his throat and released Roger’s waist, suddenly confident, “I just copied most of those rules from someone else in this room.” He wagged his tail and looked up at Roger quickly, but didn’t give the older fur a chance to interrupt before he set his master plan for the night into motion.

“And you meant to say,” the wolf said, beaming, “second 24/7 wearer. He just doesn’t like to brag about it, or make any of us feel inferior, especially because,” Rian tugged at his plastic waist band guiltily, “he’s so reluctant to damage the environment for his own hobby, but I only have the confidence in myself to do what I’m doing . . .”

Rian gestured across the room, toward the sofa. Every fur listening slowly turned their heads to look at Dex, who was blushing furiously and staring at the floor, as the wolf concluded triumphantly, “Because of my best friend.”

Kyle, however, was not listening. The Dalmatian had followed his nose, and his ears, into the kitchen, and when he could see into it he stood up and steadied himself against the wall with one paw, tugging up the front of his single Secure X-Plus diaper with the other.

“Squueeeeeaaaaaaak!” cried the dizzy mouse, who was holding onto the whirling propellers of an electric mixer and being whipped around. Twitchy, oblivious to his friend’s plight, his goggles and the front of his overalls covered with flour, stared into a mixing bowl critically and tapped his foot. An open bag of flour, and containers of baking soda, baking powder, and sugar were open next to him, as were a series of spray cans.

His eyes flickered from the ingredients to the instructions on the back of several mix boxes, which were facing him, and the open pages of two cookbooks.

The Dalmatian caught the mouse in one paw and turned off the mixer. The rabbit looked up at him with a start, knocking two of the boxes over, and a carton of milk sideways, sending it spilling into the mixing bowl. “Kyle!” he cried fearfully. “Don’t touch anything!” Wincing as he heard the edge in his own voice, the rabbit added, unconvincingly, “Umm, you might get hurt.”

“Squeak,” the dazed mouse said as he collapsed on to his back in the Dalmatian’s palm and smiled up at the dog in relief.

“Squeak? Twitch?” The Dalmatian stared at the chief engineer of Hideout #4, dumbfounded. “What are you two doing?”

“We’re making a cake!” Twitchy exclaimed, then bit his lip and stared down into the bowl, righting the container of milk and squinting at the mixture critically. “I think,” he added, frowning.

The dog shook his head. “But what . . .” he asked in disbelief, gesturing at the boxes and books, “are all those for?”

Twitchy narrowed his eyes as he scanned the back-of-the-box instructions and cookbooks. “None of them say what kind of grease to grease a cake pan with,” the rabbit observed suspiciously. “Or how greasy it should be.”

The usually clumsy Dalmatian set Squeak down carefully on the counter and groaned. He leaned over Twitchy’s shoulder and snatched one of the mixes and the mixing bowl, and marched purposefully toward the sink.

“What else is in the refrigerator?” he asked brusquely.

Twitchy blinked. “We already took out everything on the ingredients list,” the bunny explained, gesturing at the cluttered counter. “If we had it. And if we didn’t, well, we’ll just have to skip that recipe, I guess.”

The Dalmatian looked back at him sternly as he dumped out the soupy cake mixture into the sink and turned the water on. “For goodness’ sake, Twitch,” the dog scolded the bunny, shaking his head in exasperation. “This takes thought and a little flexibility. You can’t just follow the instructions!”

The rabbit shrugged and opened the fridge. Kyle couldn’t do any worse, he mused, than he had been. As the noise of the blender died down, the rabbit’s ears flicked and he heard a second, louder round of applause from the crowded main room.

“What’s going on out there, K?” the bunny asked idly as he scanned the sparse contents of Roger’s refrigerator. “Did the party start already? Is Dex here yet?” He chewed on his lip. “He didn’t seem too sulky about being dragged out, did he? Because I told him I’d make it up to him later.”

In the main room, the raccoon, who was now sitting on the newspaper-covered floor, had wrapped both his arms about Jax’s leg, and was nuzzling it contentedly. The dog, still nursing on Ace’s paw, scratched behind his raccoon friend’s ears, and occasionally Dex would purr a little. About ten boys were seated on the floor in a small ring around Dex, and some shook his muzzle or patted him on the head, while others regarded him admiringly and asked questions. “What do you eat?” asked one of the boys. “Can you eat whatever you want or is it a big hassle?”

“What do you do on overnight trips, Dex?” asked another. “Don’t you camp out in the woods? And do you shave off any of your fur . . . you know?”

“What chlorophyll do you use?” asked a third. “You must know the best kind. Cuz I just took some for the first time and it makes me feel funny. Is that normal?”

“Have you ever been caught in a restroom?” asked a fourth, nervous-looking one.

“One at a time, one at a time,” Roger admonished the group, crouching behind them and patting their shoulders. “Give Dex a little room.”

The raccoon smiled shyly from behind Jax’s leg. “It’s okay,” he said quietly, and addressed some of the questioners directly. “I wouldn’t shave everything off,” he said to one. “But I trim my coat down there a little bit with scissors. Something that helps me with that,” he said, nodding seriously to the furs surrounding him, “ is if you start taking baths once a week or so, and do it after those.”

Rian was standing in the middle of another small group of boys and glowering down at Byron, who was seated on the floor with his arms crossed. “What do you mean you haven’t used your diapers yet?” the wolf asked the malamute in disbelief, throwing his paws up in the air. “What’s wrong with you?”

Rian fell on to his knees, resting them on the sleepy dog’s lap, so that his muzzle lay an inch or so above the larger canid’s and he looked down into his face. “Well you’re going to use them tonight. No changes, for you, until tomorrow morning, either.”

The black dog quailed fearfully. “You don’t mean,” he asked with trepidation, “both ways?”

Rian’s eyes glinted and he held up a paw, and three fingers, in front of the canine’s face, grinning. “I mean all three ways,” he said.

Dex, still clinging to Jax’s leg, continued answering questions. “I’m already a vegetarian,” he was explaining, “so, no, I don’t think that’s such a big problem, really. You shouldn’t be eating so much fast food, anyway.”

“Dex?” asked another of the boys, who leaned over and grabbed onto the raccoon’s toes with both paws.

Dex regarded him curiously, waiting for a question. “You’re cool,” the boy said simply, grinning at him.

The raccoon blushed and flicked his tail against the floor. His eyes wandered to his lupine friend across the room. When had he decided, he wondered, what would happen at this party? Was it a split second impulse? Or had the whole idea been to pull out of the group only the boys who would be curious about full-time diaper use? Either way, he had turned everything around for one night. Dex worried about most of the boys knowing he needed to wear diapers because he didn’t want them to take pity on him, so when possible he hid the signs of his heavier-than-recreational diaper use. But choice or not wasn’t even coming up. Every fur at the party who didn’t know better believed what Rian had said. Why wouldn’t they, when he had just announced he was going 24/7 himself? For the moment at least, they all looked up to Dex, some for precisely the things that the raccoon usually tried to hide. Dex teared up involuntarily.

“Sugar cookies?” Twitchy asked, coming up behind Roger and holding out a cookie tin to the group at the foot of the couch. “Squeak and I made them. Umm, there’s milk too, but there aren’t a lot of glasses . . .”

Roger stood up, wagging his tail. “Oh!” he exclaimed, dashing off. “I forgot! There are sippy cups and bottles, in the cabinet above the refrigerator. I’ll get them!”

“Twitchy!” Dex exclaimed, his tail flicking against the floor, grinning widely as he looked up at his frazzled, flour-covered boyfriend. “Hon,” he blushed. “Big bro. You are here! You’re the one who told me to come. I’m so glad you did! Were you in on this surprise?”

The rabbit’s ears drooped sadly as he surveyed the boys clustered around Dex and took in the raccoon’s blissful expression, and heard the rustling as Dex involuntarily wriggled his bottom increasingly against the floor, the front of his cloth diapers becoming warmer and tighter.

Twitchy’s pupils darted to the corner of his eyes and, without turning his head, he regarded Rian suspiciously. The wolf had pinned a spread-eagled, giggling malamute to the floor, and was tickling him mercilessly.

“What surprise?” the rabbit asked Dex, an edge creeping into his voice.

Ace, still absorbed in argument with the civet, reached over Jax’s head with his free paw to take one of the proffered cookies, and Dex also reached up to take one before answering. The lynx bit into it—and coughed. The civet started to reach for one too, but Ace, his back to Twitchy, made a warning face at him.

Dex bit into his cookie, swallowed, and frowned. “What kind of cookies did you say these were?” he asked, sticking his tongue out and trying to pick mouse hairs off of it.

“Sugar cookies,” Twitch said, observing the raccoon’s reaction. “But you shouldn’t have too many of these anyway! There’s more stuff coming. We’re even making a cake.”

“Oh,” Dex smiled up at his partner uneasily. “Sounds exciting.”

Rian licked Byron’s muzzle and increased the pace of his tickling. The malamute’s right leg kicked into the air involuntarily. “Sttoooooooop!” the dog whined between convulsive giggles. “I’m gonna . . . I’m gonna . . . . piiddle . . . ”

Rian frowned as a trickle ran down the dog’s inner thigh and a puddle spread out under his legs. The wolf shook his head. “Somefur shouldn’t be putting on his own diapers yet,” he observed critically, slowing the pace of his ticking as the malamute whimpered. “It’s a good thing we spread out all these newspapers.”

Twitch hopped back into the kitchen, having deposited the cookie tin on the coffee table, to observe his pocket-sized mouse partner, sitting at the edge of the sink, swinging his small feet idly as Kyle opened the oven and peeked inside. Then he shut it and returned his attention to the mixer, turning it off and sticking one finger into the frosting. He stuck it in his muzzle, nodded approvingly, and wagged his tail.

“Squeak?” the mouse said to Twitchy, and shrugged, holding his palms paws out to both sides, questioningly.

“Umm, K,” Twitchy asked uncertainly, unsnapping his goggles and raising them back to his forehead. “Any . . .” The bunny took a deep breath and swallowed his pride, “orders? You’re running the Hideout #4 team tonight. Anything your teammates can do to help?”

The Dalmatian tapped a spatula against the mixing bowl and looked at both of them thoughtfully. “Yes. You two can go on oatmeal duty! It’s a super-important job,” he suggested, then turning around, muttered, half to himself, “And no fur will be eating that.”

Roger stumbled through the room, stepping over and around boys who were sitting, crawling, or cuddling, distributing sippy cups and bottles of milk to those who wanted them. He stopped midstream as he felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket and answered it. “Oh, hi, Roddy,” he said into the phone, as he made his way to the bedroom. “No, I can make a few. Let me get to somewhere quiet. Where are you? Are things settling down at home?”

Dex, who was on Cloud 9, let himself drift into a state of deepening regression and visibly mounting arousal as the questions subsided.

“I diden know you could regress to an oral stage Jax,” he remarked as he hugged the black and brown mottled tracking hound’s leg tighter and looked up at him.

Jax, still sucking on Ace’s paw, looked down at Dex with his wide, soulful brown eyes and nodded, since he wasn’t exactly in a position to talk.

Dex giggled and rubbed his nose against the dog’s leg, flicking his tail against the floor as his vocabulary slowly deteriorated. “I wegress too s’times didja know dat?”

Jax nodded at him patiently.

“We shudd do a dubba date!” The raccoon proposed, starting to get excited. “Twith and me and you and Ace! I can be a kitten you know. Whadda ya fink?”

Jax bit down gently and tugged on Ace’s fingers with his teeth. The lynx turned his attention away from his political standoff for a moment and looked down at his partner curiously, following Jax’s gaze down to Dex. “Huh, what is it, puppy?” the lynx asked.

Jax whined and muttered something around his fingers and the lynx smiled at the two of them. “Of course Dex can come over to play. He’s our friend,” he said reassuringly, then returned his attention to relatively grown-up things.

Dex flicked his tail against the floor and his eyes twinkled. “And you can chase me around and we can play tug of war wiff chew toys an’ twy to hepp feed each other and we can boff do our bestest for our big brothers.” The coon bit his lip poutily. “Well,” he added, whining a little, “you can. I bet you’s weal good. Nah me. Twith keep thayin’ I’s not ready. We haffen done anyfin yet an ith all my fault. Mebbe you ca’ show me fings ta do.”

Jax’s eyes glimmered and he regarded his coon friend curiously.

“Umm, lemon angel food bars? They’re light and white and puffy and soft. Just like, well . . . you know,” Twitchy offered as he reappeared next to the group, holding out a tin. “Kyle made these.”

No one moved. Dex, seeing his boyfriend’s ears fall, reached up for one apprehensively. Jax tugged on Ace’s paw with his mouth again, and the lynx looked back over his shoulder. He rolled his eyes and reached for one politely.

The lynx, standing on the other side of the couch, and the raccoon, sitting on the floor, looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes and bit into them simultaneously. They chewed, and swallowed.

“Hey,” Dex remarked, surprised, flicking his tail against the floor. “These are good!”

Jax, seeing Ace swallow, tugged on his boyfriend’s paw with his mouth again, trying to flash him a warning glance before he said anything tactless, but the lynx had already asked hopefully, “Is Kyle the one making the cake?”

Rian, who had been massaging the front of Byron’s diaper in a circular motion with his right paw, withdrew it suddenly and licked the quivering malamute’s nose as the dog’s erection came to a peak. With his left paw, the wolf guided Byron’s own forepaw to the front of his padding and pressed it against the plastic. “And you can leave it right there out front, but I don’t want to see it moving,” he said gently. “This is as far as you go for now.”

The dog had wet heavily, so even with the leakage, the inside of his diaper clung to his front as a warm, sodden mass, and had come partially detached from the thin layer of plastic that now slid back and forth over the inside of the diaper and crinkled loudly like a poncho. Combined with the effect of Rian’s pawing, the heat pressing against the canine’s crotch began to feel unbearable. Byron whimpered and thumped one foot against the floor, but Rian shook his head. “I know someone who can’t fasten his own diapers on tight can’t be old enough to count very high,” the wolf in the polo shirt whispered to him, holding up his fingers again, “but I think we both know that number 3 comes after number 2.”

He grinned evilly and added, “Now wouldn’t letting go in your pants in front of everyone like the little baby you are just be a tremendous—” he flicked his fingers against the still-tightening front of Byron’s diaper, tickling the desperately whining dog’s shaft through the crinkly, absorbent layer of plastic it strained against—“relief?”

The dog kicked both his legs in the air and moaned.

Roger returned from the bedroom in a moment and moved from group to group, checking on things, looking at his watch, and peering into the kitchen. He grinned with satisfaction at the reconfigured Hideout #4 team, as Twitchy, stirring a saucepan of oatmeal, every so often stole glances at Kyle to try to figure out what the suddenly self-assured Dalmatian was doing.

“Looks like you’re at the most important station, Twitch! Rian and Dex should cut the cake when it’s ready,” the Labrador leader whispered to the group, wagging his tail. “But I can get the first serving of oatmeal, right?” He scratched his head. “Wait a minute, where’s . . .?”

“Squeak squeak!” the mouse who had crawled up Dex’s shoulder whispered into the raccoon’s ear, gesturing frantically and flashing his fingers in front of the bemused coon’s nose. The rodent’s beady eyes darted back to the kitchen and he knitted his paws together and stared at his feet worriedly. “Squeak squeak squeak,” he said.

“What? Be careful? With Twitchy? Oh! You’re too late, Squeak!” the raccoon said, giggling. “I already ate the cookies. A bunch of them even. Someone had to, so he wouldn’t feel too bad. Poor guy. Thanks, though.”

The mouse shook his head and started gesturing more expansively. Dex blinked, still looking blissfully dazed. “Ah, I’m sorry,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t understand you. But I’m sure I’ll get better at it. After all, we’re going to be spending a lot more time together if everything goes through so I can switch to Twitch’s school.” The raccoon yawned, then smiled at his small visitor and patted him on the head. “Tell him I’m grateful he got me out tonight. And I hope I’ll be able to show him how much soon. I’m working on it.”

The mouse looked up at Dex with wide eyes, and said, “Squeak,” sadly. Then he scampered off down the coon’s arm, threading his way back across the increasingly cluttered floor to the kitchen.

He ran right by a distracted Twitchy. The bunny came out of the kitchen first, fumbling with a large mixing bowl full of oatmeal and a turkey baster, which he was pumping in the oatmeal uncertainly.

Rian waved to the bunny and pointed, sternly, down at the pinned malamute, who he was still holding, with his left paw planted firmly above the malamute’s over the front of his diaper, right on the brink of release. The dog shivered as Rian took the turkey baster from Twitch in his right paw and slipped it under him, into his diaper, and under his tail, pressing it between his cheeks but slanting the point downward so it wouldn’t release into his sphincter directly.

“Here,” he said gently to the whimpering canine as he discharged a warm mass of oatmeal right between his cheeks and under the base of his tail. “Now I’ll show you what it feels like to get you started,” Rian whispered. “Does that help babykins any?” Rian handed the baster back to Twitchy, who snatched it back a little too quickly.

The dog gasped as his diaper expanded—and then felt his stomach heave as it kept on expanding, getting warmer and squishier underneath him. At the very moment it did, Rian, who could tell the dog’s bowels had just come loose, began squeezing the malamute’s pinned paw open and shut over the bulge in the front of his diaper. “What a baby,” the wolf teased. “Betcha can’t help but make a sticky mess in the front of your diapers next . . .”

Twitchy shook his head and wiped the baster clean with a diaper wipe before moving on, without saying anything, to Dex’s group.

“Now listen,” Rian whispered to the malamute as he stroked his head and ears, “as long as you’re still learning to count, honey, you’re always going to use your diapers in this one-two-three order, aintcha?” He licked the heaving canine’s warm wet nose.

“I bet a baby like you is gonna like that new routine. Gonna learn to count past two finally? Yeah, buuut,” Rian released the dog’s paw so he could finish the job himself and patted his crotch, wrapped in warm, wet plastic, as he added, “too bad you’re an uncommonly slow learner. I have a feeling you’ll need a whole lot of practice. In fact, I don’t think you should be doing number three at all outside your diapers for quite a while. It’d just make everything sooo confusing. What does mister puppy-pants think?”

“Uh . . . uh . . . huh,” the black dog managed to get out, nodding, in between heavy breaths; he was mostly pretty busy humping against the air and his own paws frantically.

The lights clicked off and everyone started—including Byron, who spasmed uncontrollably, moaning and discharging into the already sodden front of his diaper, as Rian stood up and released him. The other boys gathered around and bent over the dazed malamute, nosing at his ears and licking at his muzzle in congratulations. Roger and Kyle entered from the kitchen carrying a fluffy sponge cake, layered with vanilla, marshmallow, and coconut frostings, between them.

The cake was covered with sparking trick candles. The knots of boys broke apart and pushed Rian and Dex together, toward the center of the room. Dex grinned at his friend and blushed. The wolf rested his arm around the raccoon’s shoulder. “Happy very belated, Dex,” he whispered. “I knew you wouldn’t want a big deal around your birthday. This was the best I could do. I hope it was okay.” He added, hesitantly, “And now you can be a little less careful with everyone, maybe? With this announcement and now that I’m also...”

Dex seized his friend impulsively in a bone-crushing hug. “It’s one of the weirdest but also . . . also the most perfect things ever,” the coon said quietly, gulping. “Rian. Only you could think of this. I’m sorry that I thought . . . while you were gone, things happened, strange things, and I almost forgot what you were really like. How generous you are. But no one knows that better than me. I wish I could pay you back for this. For everything.”

“Oh, Dex, don’t be silly,” Rian said casually, wagging his tail. “I’m just paying you back. You’ve already done the most importantest thing I could ever ask anyfur to do for me,” he said, squeezing the raccoon tightly, and Dex’s slow descent back to Earth began as Rian whispered, smiling, “You’ve been so supportive of me and Serry.”

Next time: Into the morning! Serafina makes a fateful decision as Rian’s first 24 hours in diapers winds down. The boys recover from their celebration (what is a hangover compared to a full diaper pail?), and Roger’s mission comes to a head.

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

\fPart Four: Into the Morning!

2:00 a.m. Backstage. Marty’s dressing room.

Marty stood leaning on his elbows against the back of a chair in front of the fox, with his belt undone, and his pants unsnapped, but not yet unzipped.

“Or I can take the sunglasses off,” the beaver said to the trembling sissy fox, on her knees on the floor, “if that makes it easier. I mean, Serry,” he said gently, “how many takes do you need? We’re both all grown-up, we’re on the same page: This sort of thing is just about fun, right?”

“Who sent you roses, Marty?” Serafina asked, digging her forepaws into the floor and looking past the beaver up to the red roses on his dressing room table.

“What?” Marty blinked, looking over his shoulder and blushing. “Oh! My mother did. She sends them at the start of every production. Why, did you think — look, I’m not married.” He waved a paw and laughed. “Not civilly or anything. Really. Woody’s only my creative partner.”

“That’s not what I was thinking.” Serafina bit her lip and loosened her grip on the floorboards. “I was just thinking that . . . I’ve always liked white ones. I’m sure I never told him that. But somehow he—” She broke off, took a deep breath and stood up slowly, grabbing her dress with her paws, “I’m sorry, again,” she said. “I got carried away. You’re an unusually nice guy. I’m not married either. But I am taken.”

“You?” Marty blinked. “Really?”

“Well don’t sound so surprised,” she snapped indignantly, releasing her skirt at once.

“No, no,” the beaver grimaced and fumbled with his beret, “I didn’t mean it to sound like that. It’s just . . . given how you were talking and . . . everything, I just, I didn’t think you worked that way.”

The sissy fox gulped. “I never have before,” she said, still surprised at herself. “I just . . . decided.” She looked at him uncertainly. “Is that how acting will be when I’ve rehearsed something enough? All of a sudden it just doesn’t feel like pretend any more?”

“Well if that ever happens,” the beaver said doubtfully, snapping his pants up and fastening his belt, “I’m a better director than I thought.” He took off his sunglasses and put them back in his shirt pocket, turning to face the mirror. “Tell him congratulations.” He shrugged. “Or her. Whatever works for you.”

Serafina opened her muzzle, closed it, and taking a deep breath, walked to the dressing room door without saying anything.

“Serry?” She turned back to see the beaver looking over his shoulder with a good-natured grin, and a pencil gripped in his paw.

“I hope we’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. “I already drew you and Garrick in on all the stage plans.”

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

2:30 a.m. Roger’s apartment, post-party.

In the living room and kitchen, those boys who hadn’t already left were sprawled across the newspaper-covered floor, or the couch, dozing contentedly, each of their diapers filled with oatmeal—at least. Roger was in the kitchen with Kyle and Twitchy, washing dishes. Every so often, a boy woke up, and crawled or stumbled around for a bit, usually because he needed to go, and couldn’t release in his sleep. He would crawl around in a circle until he wet his already puffy diaper, trickling onto the newspapers spread over the floor, and then flop back over, cuddling up to his nearest teammate and sucking on his paw as often as not.

Dex, who wasn’t asleep, stepped gingerly over the collapsed malamute, whose rear was puffy with more than oatmeal and who kept fidgeting in his loaded diaper in his sleep.

The raccoon made his way to the bedroom, where he peeked through the half-open door. “I just wanted to say good night. And thanks one more time . . .” he began in a whisper, but cut off and smiled softly at what he saw.

Rian lay lengthwise across the head of Roger’s queen-sized mattress, which he was just short enough to do if he kept his knees bent. The diaper bag he had come with was on the floor next to the bed, and its side compartment open. A lamp on the night table cast a small pool of light over the wolf’s head and shoulders. He was wearing only his polo shirt and diapers, silently reading a battered blue children’s book with a worn image of a knight on a charger on its cover.

Dex reached up and pulled the door almost shut, then leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms. “I was right after all. I knew you’d carry that around with you your first day,” the raccoon said to himself. “See? Everyfur thinks I’m happy because of the silly party stuff. But it’s because I saw the real you again today. The one I’ve known since you brought me a root beer float and we all shared secrets during that first sleepover, right here in this apartment. Our first Circle meeting.” Dex yawned contentedly. “Don’t worry, Rian. I’ll make sure you two have some time alone together.”

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

3:00 a.m.

“Hi, Serry,” said Roger softly, yawning, as he unlatched and opened the door. He tilted his head to look at the fox, still wearing her loose-fitting green dress and chest padding, curiously, “Is everything okay?”

The fox avoided the question. “Rog. I hope I didn’t . . .”

Roger shook his head, “Nah, a few of us are still awake for a bit.” He grinned at her. “Someone has to take out some of the garbage tonight, or it will really stink in here come morning.”

Then he took her by the paw, and led her in, saying, as he pushed the door shut behind her, “The little guy’s on my bed. He’s still up. I think we’ll all be sleeping in tomorrow.”

“ This is a special group, isn’t it?” he remarked, scanning the room. “Even by our standards. So many stories here. Some really complicated,” he looked down at Dex, who had eventually fallen asleep leaning against the doorframe and slid down on his rear, his head resting sideways on his crossed arms. “And some,” the dog added, pointing into the bedroom, and letting go of her, “really simple.”

Serry started for the door as Roger padded off, but first she paused, smiled, and reached down to the raccoon, patting his head. “Hello again, Dex,” she whispered. “And thank you for the nudge. You have nothing to worry about.”

Inside the bedroom, Rian was looking at the inside cover of his book, smiling, his paw resting on an inscription that read, For my little hero.

“Did you see how happy everyone was today? Like I said, my diapers can do anything,” he was saying to himself dreamily. “I knew ever since they helped me remember you, in my dreams at night . . .” The wolf took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut—“Mom. I wish you could meet her. I know you would understand about us.” He bit his lip. “Well, okay,” he qualified himself, “not everything. And not at first. I know that. But eventually. You understood about me before anyone, I think.”

Rian looked up from his reverie with a start as the door opened and the fox stepped inside. “Serry?” he blinked. “Did I just fall asleep? I thought you were busy until next weekend.”

The sissy fox hopped up on to the foot of the bed, on all fours, and smiled at him gently. “I am. I just needed to see you for five minutes, to make sure your first day went okay— even just to peek in if you were sleeping. But I’m glad you’re not. I’m a bit . . . pent up. Your friend fell asleep standing guard outside,” she said, jerking her muzzle toward the door. “He really cares about you.”

Rian looked past her, through the open door. “Dex,” he smiled and said to his girlfriend absently, “I wish you two would talk sometime. I think you’d really like each other. I know you think he’s uptight but—he always looks out for me. Just like a real brother.” Through the door, Rian saw Roger moving around, checking the other boys. All of them his friends. No, the wolf corrected himself. More than his friends. More than his team. His pack. His family.

Serry tilted her head and crawled toward Rian, nuzzling at the sodden front of his diaper. “Did everything go okay?” she said. “You look a little sad.”

The wolf closed his book and set it face down on the nightstand. “What do I have to be sad about?” he asked, grinning goofily. “I just wish we could all stay just like this, forever.” He shivered, momentarily cold, as the sissy fox undid the tapes of his diapers, and folding the front down, nuzzled his package gently.

Serry paused and rested her muzzle on the exposed gray fur of his stomach, looking up at him. “There might be one thing worth changing,” she suggested. “We’re going 24/7 together. Why don’t we go 24/7, on each other? I mean, go steady?”

Rian looked confused. “Go steady? How do you mean? We do both have . . . ” He took a deep breath and looked out the door, at the shadowy forms of Dex and the others. “Jobs. A lot of those boys only . . . only ever came into their own because of me. They’re my whole world. Besides Rog, and you. Aaand your students need your help, too.” He furrowed his brow, remembering the fumbling blow job he’d received at the academy. “Like really,” he added.

“Of course,” she said, giggling, “The team stuff goes without saying. I know who you are. You know who I am. But I don’t want to . . . want anyone besides you any more. If that makes any sense.  It’s one thing I’ve never tried. Being owned. Being someone’s...”

Rian cut her off and rested a paw lightly on the top of her head. “Don’t you dare say anything mean about yourself,” he said in gentle warning. “That’s maybe the only thing I’ll never, ever let you do. You’re my princess. And my sweetheart. And I’ve been yours since I laid eyes on you. Just like Callie’s tea leaves said. The only reason I haven’t sworn to it is because I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” He bit his lip nervously. “And I don’t know if I’ll be enough. I mean, you are a fox.”

The fox grinned, and her tail swished as she traced a circle through the exposed fur of his stomach with her paw. “Oh wuffie,” she said, stroking the length of his cock with one paw. “I’ll help you be. Let’s make this a day about commitment. So the only thing left that needs to be changed around here, is you.” She looked down at his yiffer as it stiffened under her fingers. “But let’s make sure you’ve done everything you need to first. If you’re always going to be wearing two or three diapers, I would like each set to last for more than ten minutes.” She scooted backward on the bed and resumed nosing at Rian’s crotch. “I can guess at one of your party activities, Mr. Helping Paws. Well, your turn comes last. Let’s make sure you’re good and dry before we change you.”

“It’s official,” the wolf said, leaning back into the pillows as she started licking the length of his shaft, slowly and gently, and he began to feel warm all over, “My life is perfect. What a wonderful decision this has already been.” His eyes gleamed as he reached for Serry’s paws, and he stole a last glance over her, out into the room where all the boys were, before closing his eyes, and concluded, “For everyone.”

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

3:30 a.m.

“There you are! Of all places. Jeez. Come on, Dex,” Twitchy, his pants back on, and Dex’s hanging over his left arm, wrapped his right arm around the slumbering raccoon’s waist. Lifting his boyfriend from his post outside the bedroom door, he hoisted the coon’s left arm over his shoulder, holding his paw to keep him in place. “Let’s get you out of here. I really don’t want you to spend all night like that and wake up to see them doing who knows what. And I don’t want you to start talking either.”

The bunny looked over his shoulder nervously into the bedroom, which still emitted sounds of giggling and thumping, then stumbled with his heavy cargo over the newspaper-ed and debris-strewn party zone to the front door. He breathed a sigh of relief as soon as he got the coon into the hallway, relaxing as he pushed the door shut behind them.

“Oh, how could Rian pull a stunt like that without talking to me? And in front of half the team. He just can’t take a hint, can he? I tried to tell him. I came as close as I could. You were doing so much better lately, hon. I really thought you’d shook it. But we lost ground tonight, didn’t we, Dex?” the rabbit said to the exhausted coon, who moaned in his sleep as his wet nose rubbed against the bunny’s large, floppy ear.

“I’m ready,” Dex muttered into Twitchy’s shoulder. “Please just lemme do summin for you. Lemme try. ’M good enough, now.”

Twitchy shook his head as he trudged down the corridor toward the stairway. “Look at this mess I’ve waded into. I think Squeak is even mad at me,” the bunny remonstrated with his sleeping traveling companion. “All because I’m trying to help you! He left with Kyle. But it doesn’t matter. I haven’t forgotten everything you went through to rescue me, Dex. And I’ll free you, too.” His eyes narrowed and his whiskers twitched. “I didn’t think it would come to this so soon. But we’ll have to step things up. I swear, if I weren’t still so nervous about . . . Well, I have no choice but to move just as soon as I can. Because I lo—. . .” He hesitated. “Because I care about you. A lot. Whenever we’re together I feel like . . .” He frowned. Like what? “Well music may not swell exactly but large amounts of caring are definitely involved. We’ll break you of this. We will. Give me a few more days. Then I won’t have to pull any punches. I have everything figured out so you two can still be friends and everything will be just how it should be. After all, someone has to do this for you, right?”

He sighed. “And who else has a shot besides me? I do feel terrible about lying to you. But it’s for your own good!”

“I love you too,” the raccoon unconsciously whimpered into Twitchy’s ear, his nose quivering and his voice thick with sleep, “Rian.”

“Okay, maybe terrible,” said the bunny, gritting his teeth, “is an overstatement.”

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

3:45 a.m. Ace’s apartment.

“Do you think anyone noticed that we were the first to slip out?” Ace asked as he stretched a condom out over his right paw and looked down at the prone puppy, his fellow wilderness team leader, facing away from him.

Jax was wearing nothing, at the moment, except his khaki shirt and Boy Scout sash, and was laying face down and bottom up, propped on his elbows, on Ace’s bed, sucking on two of his own fingers. “Nuh,” he said around them. “We are mathters of stelf.” The hound’s tail wagged once.

The lynx rubbed the condom with his left paw, trying to gauge how lubricated it was. He frowned and opened the drawer of his nightstand, reaching for a bottle inside.

As he did, he idly remarked, “Hey, I’m going to chalk it up to you being distracted that I’m the one who noticed something like this. But did it bother you a little that Dex and Twitchy, who are allegedly dating, not only didn’t come together, but spent next to nil time with each other during that whole party?”

Jax withdrew his fingers from his mouth slowly. Ace turned around with the lube in paw to see the dog sitting up, his rear end resting above his heels and his forepaws gripping his knees.

“Yes,” Jax said in a steely tone. “It did.”

His large brown eyes glimmered with concern and fixed on a bare spot on the opposite wall.

Ace moaned. “Well,” he opened hopefully, “it makes me feel that much luckier that you and I can do so much together. And we can add to that list tonight, puppy . . . ”

“Not puppy now,” the tracking hound said firmly. “I’m thinking.”

The lynx sighed and dropped the bottle of lube and the condom back into his drawer, looking down at the erection poking through his pants. Oh no, he chided himself, he couldn’t have kept his mouth shut until afterwards. Jax would spend the next 24 hours complaining about how insensitive he was if he pushed now.

“About Dex and Twitch? Oh, it’s probably nothing. Even if it wasn’t, what would we do about it anyway?” the cat asked, collapsing on to his side on the bed with a soft thump.

“What we do,” the scout dog proposed, his gaze slowly beginning to move back down toward his partner. “Recon.”

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

9:15 a.m. Empress Calliope’s Academy for Special Boys.

“Cassie! Where’s the boss lady?” the petite panda clad in a purple sweater demanded as she stepped inside the home economics classroom.

The sissy Newfoundland, who wore a frilly blue and white shepherdess’ dress and matching blue bonnet, looked up from her needlepoint and gazed at Lin Lin sadly.

Princess Cassandra was second-in-command of Empress Calliope’s Academy for Special Boys, headquarters of the pink faction devoted to maximizing the spread of sissification among the city’s age-players, and that meant she was currently the highest-ranking team member on the premises.

“Hello, Lin Lin,” the dog said placidly. “Her majesty is working on something important.”

The panda narrowed her eyes. “I asked where she was, not what she was doing,” she snapped. “Because I’m seeing her no matter what. What’s with all the unexplained adjustments to the Open House schedule? It’s only a week away and all the plans are being changed around! Why am I suddenly on the perimeter? I can’t run building security from there.”

The Newfoundland smiled gently. “Oh, the mistress didn’t make those changes,” Cassandra said to the panda, returning to her knitting. “She’s far too busy to worry about something like that. I did. I’ll be running security during the Open House. After all, it will be our biggest recruiting event yet. And Baby Blue is probably going to attack us during it.”

“Of course they’re going to attack us during it,” Lin Lin exclaimed, exasperated. “They’d better! That was the whole idea of running supplies through their territory! To provoke them. That’s why I need to be there. I already have a plan.”

The huge dog made a dainty cross-stitch. “It won’t work,” she said.

Lin Lin blinked. “Who showed it to you anyway?” she asked defensively.

Cassie bit off a long piece of thread. “Oh I don’t know anything about it,” she said. “But it won’t work.” She smiled at the panda.

Lin Lin glared at her. “I’ve been tangling with their strike team in the woods for weeks. Everybody on it. No fur over here knows what the raccoon and the bunny will bring better than I do. And this time once I get those two . . .”

The Newfoundland just shook her head. “It won’t be them,” she said calmly. “Oh, they’ll probably be there. But we have to be prepared for worse. This time, the main attack may be run by a less linear thinker. In that case, a plan will only get in the way.”

The panda stared at her dumbfounded. “What,” she said, shaking her head, “the wolf?”

“Let’s hope for that,” Cassie remarked, and displayed her finished needlepoint, an elaborate bed of flowers, proudly.

Then she set it down on her desk and frowned, resting her chin on her palms. “But we may have made a mistake by provoking the boys again so soon after breaking the rules and screening one of them. Two days ago Serafina heard from an old teammate of hers. From before she switched sides. He was contacted after a long silence.” The Newfoundland hesitated. “And he received a message. It apparently followed a script agreed on when he left the team. Our best guess is it included some kind of . . . distress signal. We couldn’t exactly make sense of it. But it’s safe to assume others are being contacted too, for something.”

“A secret network?” the panda said, wrinkling her face up. “You’re joking, right? Am I supposed to be taking this seriously?”

The dog just shrugged. “Serious or not, Roger has been doing this for a while. He’s kept, and still keeps, the confidences of many furs who have drifted into and out of our scene. You must not assume his resources are limited to his present ground team if he’s decided there’s a genuine state of emergency.”

“Are you telling me that I’m supposed to be scared of the Commander in Crinkles?” she asked skeptically. “I don’t even know what he does over there.”

Cassie smiled. “Oh, what leaders do. Whatever the rest of them won’t.”

Lin Lin scowled at her. “How helpfully specific. Well you know him. What kind of attack might he run?”

The Newfoundland opened the knitting basket on her desk and looked inside it. “I have no idea,” she said placidly. “So I’m trying not to think too hard about it.”

“Now I feel better,” the panda remarked, rolling her eyes. “I’m appealing to the headmistress about this. You are not sufficiently prepared to run security in my place. So you have no good reason for putting me on the sidelines.”

“Yes I do, Lin Lin,” the dog said with genuine concern, as she selected a skein of yarn and put it on her desk. “I’m worried about you. You don’t always make it easy—but I like you. And I don’t know if you’re ready for what’s coming.”

The Newfoundland looked past Lin Lin to the door as an early student, a bear, skipped in in a ballerina’s outfit and curtsied, blushing. “Are we doing crochet today?” the bear asked eagerly, clenching her paws together in front of her tutu.

The Newfoundland looked at the clock, then at the new arrival appraisingly. “In fifteen minutes,” she said calmly.

“Awww,” the bear whined as she plopped down behind a desk, “I don’t know if I can wait that long.” The bear began doodling hearts with arrows pierced through them on her desk and sighing dreamily. Then she dropped her pencil and plucked at an imaginary flower. “He loves me,” she recited to herself, “he loves me not, he loves me . . .”

“What’s with Muffy?” Lin Lin asked, lowering her voice. “I just caught her with a toy truck Friday.”

The Newfoundland smiled. “Then it worked,” she said nodding.

“What worked?” The panda shook her head. “I renamed her months ago and it only helped for a week or two.”

“Her re-screening,” Cassie said seriously. “We’ve had too many problems with relapses and false negatives since the Baby Blue boys started spreading rumors about the test that was done on Rian. That kind of preparation just confuses boys who are already struggling to accept themselves and their destiny. Some hard cases need a firmer paw, to be dug out of such very deeply rooted denial—and to admit to themselves what they really want.”

Lin Lin looked doubtful. “Muffy?” she asked, turning to the bear. “What did you do this weekend?”

“Lady Lin Lin!” the bear said, sitting up perkily and giggling, as though she had just noticed the panda. “I spent every minute thinking about my boyfriend.” The bear smiled dreamily. “He’s so incredible. And this morning he said I’m finally almost good enough for him.” Then she looked back at her empty paw and began plucking at the air again, sounding worried. “So I hope it says he loves me.”

Lin Lin frowned.

Cassie tilted her head. “There may still be some issues to iron out. Nothing we can’t fix. Are you all right, Lin Lin?”

The panda whirled and stared up at her. “What you just said about me is insulting. Worried about me? I’m worried that your Zen master non-approach to this supposed attack that I supposedly can’t stop is to let the academy be razed to the ground to make way for the boys’ latest hideout.”

Cassandra took out two long knitting needles and clicked them against each other, poking the yarn with them.

“Don’t be worried,” the Newfoundland explained without raising her voice. “If all else fails, there is a weakness at the core of the current boys’ team, that we will tap at the right time. And don’t be angry. You must just remind yourself, Lin Lin, even if it does feel like you’re, what did you say, on the sidelines: We only know about that weakness,” the Newfoundland said, smiling down at the undersized panda reassuringly, “because of you.”

Lin Lin snorted and shook her head. “Great,” she muttered. “More nonsense.”

“Relax. The open house is still a week away. Besides—destiny is on our side,” Cassie said levelly, pointing both her needles at Muffy. “For the moment, though, Lin Lin, we have a new pattern to start today. You can stay and watch if you like.”

The dog clicked her needles together and added in an unchanged tone as her other students began to file in, “I’m excited about this one.”

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

10:45 a.m.

Serafina steeled herself and entered the auditorium, only to find it empty. Well, almost empty.

“Hi, Serry,” said the beaver, standing up from a seat in the second row and chewing on a pencil. “I thought you’d probably run a little late.”

Serafina looked around nervously. “Where is everyone?” she asked.

“Oh, they’re on stage already,” the beaver said, taking her by the paw and leading her out the door, and down the hallway. “We’re breaking it in today!”

“But . . .” she stumbled after him, confused. “The stage was empty.”

Marty looked back over his shoulder and grinned like a cub in a candy store. “Now why did everyone think,” he said mischievously, “that we were going to have all our shows in the rain space?”

The beaver opened the back door of the building and led the fox through it into an enclosed yard as Serafina’s eyes readjusted to the sun.

The taciturn white opossum who usually followed Marty around stood in the center of a large, elevated artificial island of foam boulders and carefully sculpted levels of synthetic grass and flowers, which rose to a small hill in the center. The opossum leaned against a tree on one paw and surveyed his handiwork proudly. With his other, Woody pulled a lever behind a row of shrubs, and one ring just inside the perimeter of the simulated world began turning silently—a conveyor belt, looping up over the hill in the middle of the island.

“And this,” Marty said, beaming as he pointed up to it, “is how we’ll handle all the running around and switching back and forth during the duel scene.”

“Hi, Serry!” shouted the tabby cat in Renaissance costume, running around on the conveyor belt and waving at them gleefully before he hopped off the stage. “What did I tell you? Marty’s ideas always sound so dumb that they can’t possibly work. But somehow,” he tipped his feathered hat to both of them as he approached, “they just do! It’s like he never grew up enough to know any better.”

Serafina released the beaver’s paw and stared at him. “Well, here goes. You aren’t going to say anything to Garrick or Woody once we’ve told them?” she whispered to him nervously. “About last night?”

“What?” the beaver answered, sounding startled, then waved a paw dismissively without looking away from the stage. “Nah. It was my mistake. Besides, this is city theater. There are too few of us left to get worked up about every little misunderstanding or hold stupid grudges. The most important thing here is the team.”

Serry bit her lip and snuffled. “You know, Marty,” she said. “You really do remind me of someone.”

The director looked over his shoulder at her curiously. “You keep saying that,” he remarked, shaking his head. “Is it supposed to make me feel better?”

“It should,” she said, smiling at him softly. “He’s a hero.”

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

12:00 p.m.

Rian, Twitchy, Squeak, and Dex—all still showing the signs of last night’s revelry—sat around the top-secret conference table with their gold crossed safety-pin badges pinned above their breasts. It was a meeting of the Secret Circle—the highest echelon of Baby Blue’s command. Only one fur was missing.

Twitchy opened a laptop and connected it to a projector in the center of the conference table. Dex wore his yellow karate outfit.

“Hey!” Rian remarked as he looked over at the raccoon’s streaked face. “The war paint is back! Are you going for best two out of three with the panda?”

“Huh?” Dex said absently.

Rian fidgeted. “Lin Lin? You know, she beat you when you sparred at the academy,” he said, prodding, “but you took her prisoner after an hour-long fight in the woods over spring break, when you took it into the trees? Crouching Coon, Hidden Panda? The ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny? Twitch told everyone about it.”

“Oh,” Dex rolled his eyes. “Right.”

They were interrupted by Roger’s arrival. The Labrador swung the door open, plopped down in his chair at the head of the table, and propped his feet up on it, regarding his highest-ranking boys curiously. “Well this is a switch!” he said. “I’m not used to being the one summoned to these meetings! What’s up?”

Dex stood up first. “Rian and I have compared notes and we have a situation. There’s big trouble coming at the academy.”

“Trouble at the academy?” Roger asked.

Dex nodded. “For weeks now, the girls have been rearming—stocking up on chastity devices, in dangerous quantities. My teams have intercepted several shipments in the woods.” He sat down and gestured to Rian.

The wolf stood up and straightened the green army colonel’s cap on his head. “And when I was inside the academy recently, subbing for Serry,” Rian explained, “you already know that I copied out invitations for their next Open House. I got the date and time. It’s coming up soon, and the list was huge.” The cubby wolf held his paws as far apart as he could, and bit his tongue. “Pages and pages long.” He leaned from side to side to indicate that he would stretch his arms wider if he could.

“So, they’re recruiting a lot more sissies?” Roger asked, nodding. “That’s the trouble?”

“No,” said Dex, who stood back up as Rian sat down. “Twitchy, show us figure one.”

The rabbit pressed a key and images of two chastity devices appeared on the display screen at the front of the room.

“We’ve analyzed some samples of the new merchandise we intercepted in the woods,” Dex explained. “They’re considerably harder to get out of than the old tubes, but that wasn’t the weird thing. These ones . . . are all being ordered with multiple sets of keys. Which seems counterproductive, right? So I talked to Rian about it.”

Rian stood up beside Dex and crossed his arms. “Figure two,” he said, and Twitchy hit another key. A screenshot displaying search results from a profile site appeared. “I recognized some of the names on that invitation list!” Rian asserted, nodding seriously. “So after what Dex said I did some research. The names I recognized weren’t the names of cubs.” His eyes narrowed. “They’re the names of their boyfriends, girlfriends, partners, and caretakers. And I didn’t think much of it at the time but there were rumors going around the school about a new discipline room. Level 5. Whatever it was, if you went there, other furs were being invited into it, too. To watch.” He winced. “Some of the girls even whispered about new furs who had just shown up going straight there with whoever brought them—instead of being brought privately to Callie’s apartment. They said it was something for the weird ones.”

Twitchy tapped his foot against the floor and rose as well, synthesizing for his teammates. “To sum up,” the rabbit proceeded, “we’ve concluded that the girls aren’t just targeting cubs directly any more. They’re going right over our heads. Selling their services to people who want to find sissy partners, or to . . .” the bunny shuddered, “modify the ones they already have, shove them into girlhood, maybe to keep them in line better.”

Rian bit his lip and concluded the analysis. “Your sister says that her sissy screening is just a test. But if she puts someone under with that kind of a partner there watching and pushing, it practically takes the boy’s free will out of the equation,” the wolf said with concern. “Why, she’s making regression just like any other form of sexual submission.”

All the members of the threesome sat down and crossed their arms worriedly.

“Oh,” Roger said after a moment of silence, and his tail, slowly, began wagging as he took his feet off the table. “You meant that trouble at the academy.”

Dex blinked. Twitchy’s foot stopped in mid-tap above the floor. Rian tilted his head and looked up at his mentor anxiously.

“I was worried something like this would start to creep in when Serry took a leave of absence after the captivity incident,” Roger said decisively. “She’s usually the voice of moderation over there. Outreach to caretakers. Mother knows best,” he remarked distastefully, making a face. “This is Cassie’s influence, since she’s started doing more and more of the administration. I’m sure of it. Not that she’d ever take credit for having an idea of her own.”

Dex cleared his throat and stood up. “Before we do anything, Rog,” the raccoon warned. “I’m not done with the tactical analysis. Those boxes were run through our territory in such quantity we were bound to snatch some of them. Then Rian was accidentally on purpose handed Serry’s mission orders so he would see those invitations. That can’t be a coincidence. I know how their tac team leader thinks. I’ve tangled with Lin Lin enough now. They want us to attack during the Open House. Either it’s a sissification trap for our team, or more likely, given what happened last time,” he eyed Rian, “there’s someone they want to snatch during our attack. To make the centerpiece of their presentation.”

Rian looked up at Dex, surprised.

Roger whistled. “Someone’s leveled up since the last time we did this,” he observed approvingly.

Dex blushed. “Maybe I’ve been hanging out with smarter furs.” He smiled at Twitchy. The rabbit beamed and gave him two thumbs up. “Fursonally,” the raccoon concluded, crossing his arms. “I’m worried about Jax. Everyone knows he’s sensitive, and now the secret is out about his bird watching hobby. So I drew up a different plan of...”

Roger look at the raccoon thoughtfully and then interrupted him, raising a paw. “We’ll keep it as a Plan B,” he said. “Their regular tac team leader might not be who we’re up against. I have to be ready for someone less . . . flappable. In that case . . . it’s safer not to go anywhere near that place on Open House day. The element of surprise alone won’t get us very far. We need an entirely different kind of plan.”

Rian fidgeted and turned the bill of his army hat to face backwards. “But, Rog,” he whined, “you can’t be thinking of deploying that so soon! It’s not ready!”

The dog nodded and looked concerned. “Well, it’s getting there,” he addressed his sidekick directly. “The supplies are almost all here. The drops are secure. I just inspected all of them myself. And I bumped up the release schedule yesterday morning, too,” he eyed the wolf critically and added, “just in case Serry had heard anything about all this. Now I gave you that piece of silk Callie wanted for your little love mission in exchange for something. How much of her list could you copy?”

Rian reached into his pocket, and withdrew the pen-sized digital camera he had borrowed from Twitchy. “Oh,” he said proudly, holding it up, “the whole thing. Mission accomplished! But that’s still not enough. I don’t have any ideas either!”

Roger bit his lip and looked down at the floor gravely. “I know,” he said. “But don’t feel bad. It was my responsibility.”

Dex and Twitchy had been staring at each other in bewilderment for the last couple minutes. Finally the raccoon gestured with his paws in frustration and snapped, “What are you two talking about?”

“You see,” Roger said, taking a deep breath, “I was supposed to come up with a suitably cool name for our new counteroffensive before I presented it to the team.” His shoulders slumped down and his tail stopped wagging as he admitted sadly, “But I’ve been too busy.”

The raccoon and the rabbit both slapped their palms to their foreheads and squeezed their eyes shut simultaneously. “Squeak!” remarked the mouse on the conference table, pulling his knees close to his stomach, burying his head in between them, and rolling his eyes.

“Well,” Roger said with resignation and eyed the camera Rian was holding, “I guess we do have Callie’s entire recruiting list. That seems pretty good. We should probably do something with it.”

Then he reached to his belt and withdrew a squirt gun, with an extended nozzle and an additional water cartridge clipped into it. “You know I looked everywhere for one like this,” he bragged as he pointed it at Dex. “Continuous fire! Once you undo the safety. And then I almost lost it.”

A moment of confused silence ensued.

“Ummm,” Twitchy said uncertainly, his foot beginning to tap again, “that’s really cool, Captain, but I thought you were about to tell us something about your nameless plan.”

“Right!” Roger said. “I was! Sorry, sis, but you’ve put the pawing rights, not to mention free will, of too many boys on the line this time. Now I have no choice but to make compromises I don’t want to.”

His eyes glinted and he took the camera from his sidekick and slid it across the table to Twitchy. “We’ll crash this party before it ever starts. Twitchy—draw up a roster and start assigning boys to groups of pink team prospects,” he ordered. “Operation ‘Rian-and-I-didn’t-really-go-to-Euro Disney-over-spring-break’ begins . . .”

The Labrador clicked open the safety on his squirt gun experimentally and grinned as his tail resumed wagging. “Now!”

The End!

Next Story: Open House! Roger’s pre-emptive strike begins! (If I owe you a cameo, you can look forward to it in this story.) Meanwhile, Twitchy is running an off-the-books undercover mission of his own—but he’s not the only one!

(If you made it this far, thanks so much for riding with me, especially if you’ve read all these stories! I hope you’ve been enjoying the trip! Comments and the like are welcome and always appreciated.)

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