Chapter Four: Best Behavior

While many of the classes that Cassie and I had shared their names, the only one we actually had in common was Physical Conditioning, to be held in the gymnasium in the early afternoon. The first class that either of us had was an hour and a half of 'Best Behavior' class in rooms across the way from one another in Masters Hall. Master's was the main building on the St. Circe's campus for small classes, its thirty classrooms able to accommodate the whole student body if need be. The two of us approached the building together, during which we spotted some of the Bigs and littles from our C-hall unit a bit ahead of us... but neither of us felt like socializing quite yet. Each of us carried a small school-issued backpack containing our individualized rule books and several class-specific texts.

We entered the building - an airy, august, many-windowed building that reminded me of photos of college buildings from the early 20th Century. A few dozen other girls converged on the building - some of them from our own Beginner Student group, as well as various Junior and Advanced students. Masters Hall hosted myriad small classes throughout the day for any subject not requiring special facilities and seemed to be a popular spot in the morning when almost everybody had classes. We followed signage up the stairwell, down a short corridor, and then both of us glanced to our class schedules: Room 202 for me and 203 for Cassie.

"Good luck," she whispered.

"You, too."

My Best Behavior class was headed by Ms. Agnes Sturm, who was exactly the sort of woman you'd expect with a name like that - stern, stentorian, and broad, she might have been Doctor Sauvage's blonder, younger sister, right down to the all-gray clothing, save for accents in white and a few tortoiseshell buttons. And, where Headmistress Lily claimed to derive no frisson of satisfaction from disciplining students, I strongly suspect that Ms. Sturm did so.

My class included eight other students - the other littles from C-wing, it so happened, as well as four other Beginner Girls who required Ms. Sturm's stern tutelage.

"You girls are here because you don't yet understand your place. You are impudent and entitled. The world owes you nothing until you prove yourselves worthy of it, and I will see to it that you are made worthy. Your place is to do as you're told, to obey your betters, and to make the world a brighter, cleaner place. Only in so doing will the world pay dividends back," Ms. Sturm stated.

She then had several of the more inveterate students stand in front of the class and recite little rhyming rules that Ms. Sturm had invented or inherited. When a girl got something a bit wrong, that would earn a 'tut', and a full-on mistake deserved a swat on the behind from the chalk stick that Ms. Sturm marched about the classroom like a switch.

"My place is silent and alert,

to do as I am told,

obey my betters, not assert,

and never to be bold," one of the girls stated - a dark blonde girl significantly smaller and slenderer than even myself, she looked suspiciously young to be in our age group.

"Correct, Michelle," Ms. Sturm said. "If your opinion is wanted, it will be asked of you. Only volunteer information if you're absolutely certain it will be helpful."

With that I felt a warm pulse from behind my desk - I inferred that they'd been fitted with something to turn our classroom material into something more akin to deep conditioning. I took a covert glance around the classroom - the other girls were fully locked in on Ms. Sturm with laser focus. I wondered if I'd become like that after a few classes or sooner - my mind open, malleable to her lessons in meek docility.

"We have a new student today," Ms. Sturm said after the seasoned students had performed to her satisfaction. "Natalie Bryce has joined our ranks to get a better bead on her Best Behavior. Natalie, join me at the front of the class."

I wandered up to the front from my inconspicuous spot near the middle of the classroom. "Um... hello," I said. After my most recent punishment, my voice was very slightly higher and softer than before.

"Do not speak unprompted," Ms. Sturm said. "If your input is needed, it will be requested."

She reached below her desk and produced a nondescript cardboard box. When she opened it, I saw within it a maid's uniform not unlike the one I'd seen one of the littles wearing the day before. Indeed, the girl was in our classroom and wearing it even now: a brief black skirt, a black blouse with sleeves that ended at the shoulders, white accents, white buttons, white collar, white apron, and her hair drawn up into high pigtails.

"Let's see if your service uniform fits," she said.

I blushed, took the box, and started to leave the room. Ms. Sturm stopped me, though, with an imperious clearing of her throat.

"I didn't give you permission to leave, Natalie. Try the uniform on now. You'll learn to live with your embarrassment."

I was equal parts angry and anxious at her pronouncement. Angry that she'd presume to tell me what to do so matter-of-factly, that she'd have me undress in front of a classroom of strange girls and put on a maid's uniform. Angry that she cared so little for how I felt. And anxious that, if I did strip down to my underwear in front of the class, my out-of-place manhood would be on clear display. Anxious that Ms. Sturm could actually enforce her commands. I bit my lip, looking to the teacher and then to my classmates.

"No," I stated. "Please let me go to a closet or something and I'll put it on there."

"You are not permitted an opinion on the matter, Natalie. Put it on now, or I'll have to discipline you."

"I... I can't," I said.

"Very well," Ms. Sturm said with a hint of a smirk. She rubbed her fingers across a little amulet and muttered under her breath. "Bend over my desk," she said.

I did so - I didn't have a choice. My legs moved of their own volition. My torso bent down, just as it had in Headmistress Lily's office, and my face and hands planted themselves against the desk. Well... one hand did. The other hand reached back and flipped the rear of my skirt up. Only then did it join its sister planted upon the desk. There I stood, my pert little rear in its white cotton panties on display to the whole class. Then Ms. Sturm sidled up next to me, placed a firm hand upon one of my ass cheeks, and proceeded to spank me in front of everybody.

"You'll learn to do as you're told," she repeated for each of eight humiliating swats.

Each time, I felt a small pulse of warm energy flow through me. It was less powerful and less transformative than the headmistress's paddling, but there was definitely some magic there. I felt in each tingling pulse some minor twist of transformation and a vague desire to obey. Rather, some creeping instinct that it would feel good to obey, whether I wanted to or not.

When the spanking was done, Ms. Sturm stepped away and left me to flip my skirt back over my sore and rosy bum. I pushed myself off her desk and stood back in front of the class, blushing even more furiously than before.

"Now..." the teacher said, "will you put on the uniform or do I have to break out the paddle?"

"No..."

"No what?"

"No, you don't have to break out the paddle, Ms. Sturm," I said.

I stripped to my panties in front of the class - they'd already seen them, in any case, only turning away so as to preserve the secret of Mr. Warner between my legs. And, of course, everybody got to see my little Collar of Contrition, too, which had been mostly covered by my hair and my navy-blue school blazer. Ms. Sturm either didn't care that I turned away or approved of my keeping the secret, because she didn't reprimand me for that. I stripped to my underwear and pulled the maid uniform over my head. I buttoned the blouse, tightened the apron, and pulled my mass of auburn hair through the collar.

"I'd say that fits just about right. Wouldn't you say so, class?"

"Yes, Ms. Sturm," they repeated in unison.

"Natalie, you may return to your seat. As part of your punishment, you are to wear your service uniform for the rest of the day unless instructed otherwise. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Ms. Sturm," I said.

+++++

In case I haven't made it abundantly clear, St. Circe's isn't a normal school. Beyond the strange magical powers that drive it, the school has an unusual curriculum. To be sure, it has some regular classes for regular studies - after all, most of the girls are actually age-appropriate to the school's stated 10-18 year-old student body. There are classes in mathematics, literature, music, art, and even science. But I wasn't there for education. Of the courses in my study, the only two that approached anything like regular school classes were 'Biology of Reproduction' and 'Voice for Speech and Music".

These latter two classes filled up the middle of the day, a welcome respite from the humiliation of Best Behavior, even if I did have to attend them in my service uniform that first day. And there, I found that my singing voice was high and sweet, and it was interesting to be able to sing the high parts in songs without having to resort to falsetto. I also practiced diction and pronunciation with the girls in the class. I think the teacher of the class, Dr. Clay, suspected something unusual in my background, because after her first few circuits of the room, making minor corrections for the other students, she hovered around me to correct my multiple male habits of speech and pronunciation.

"You're speaking with your chest too much," she said. "Speak higher in your voice system, up toward your head, or else people will think you're mumbling. You want to be heard, don't you?"

"Uh," I said, not sure if it was a trick question. Ms. Sturm would have insisted that I ought not to be heard most of the time.

"The answer is yes!" she said. "Sing and speak bright and clear. You have a beautiful voice, Natalie, but you'll have to learn to use it."

That was a sobering thought - to think that I couldn't even use my voice quite correctly in my current body. If I was going to be stuck this way for the foreseeable future - and this certainly seemed to be the case - I wanted to learn how to pass as well as I could without having compliance forced into me.

My final class of the day was, of course, 'Physical Conditioning', which I thought might be a bit like gym. I stopped by the dormitory (still in my maid's uniform), grabbed a bite to eat from the spread in the common area, grabbed my gym clothes from our room, and made my way to the gymnasium where the class was being held. Cassie stopped by the room while I was there, so we walked over together.

"You're not bringing gym clothes?" I asked.

Cassie shrugged. "Cecilia says it's not that kind of class. It's more like 'Best Behavior' but for how you move instead of manners and conversation and that stuff."

She was right in that - Physical Conditioning consisted of movement and posture drills. Some were moderately strenuous, but it wasn't like gym. I got to keep my maid's uniform on - lucky me! We practiced walking properly, bending properly, sitting properly, and even smiling properly. And, lo and behold, I did each and every one of these things very wrong.

The teacher here was Ms. Law, a slender Asian woman in a black and lavender skirt suit. Beautiful and aloof, she resembled a posture-perfect statue when she wasn't engaged in sinuous movement. If I had to guess, she was around my real age and quite the looker. Dark of hair and lithe of limb, she had a pearl necklace, pearl earrings, and a marble of a diamond on a platinum ring.

"For our new students, the drill is simple - put on the tiara, model your movements after the student who went before you, remove the tiara, and then hand it to the next student in line."

The tiaras were small silver caps that fitted upon the forehead, their little curved edges sliding along the scalp and through the hair. When worn, they pulsed with a palpable energy, delivering soothing warmth when movements were done correctly and a strange sense of chilling wrongness when done poorly. I got a lot of chilling wrongness that first day, though I was definitely improving toward the end of class. The tiaras were a lot like what Doctor Sauvage had used to (mostly unsuccessfully) compel me not to reveal my name or my past, but with the Collar of Contrition on, I took to Ms. Law's lessons like a fish to water.

Ms. Law had a total of four tiaras, and so we formed two queues for each exercise, lining up, taking turns going through the proscribed motions of walking, sitting, waving, smiling, crossing our legs, and so on, before handing the girl-on-deck the tiara and returning to the back of the line. Sometimes, the motions were more complex, such as twirling around to flare our skirts out dramatically but not immodestly. When I did poorly, Ms. Law would correct me, smooth but firm hands directing me at the elbow, at the small of my back, even upon my knee when showing me how to cross my legs. That, in of itself, was a bit distracting for obvious reasons.

"All you do must be natural and fluid, and you must not allow any glimpse above your skirt. The length of your skirt is the length of your modesty - whatever is below it, you invite the world to evaluate, and whatever is above the hem must be respected... but you must also respect yourself. Proper behavior by either party is the cornerstone of respect, and this is why you must be proper in your every movement. If you cannot comport yourself as a queen, no man will treat you as one."

I didn't want to be treated like a queen… but I did want to pick up the tools I'd need in my body, and so I was an apt student. Afterward, Cassie and I returned to our room with perhaps an hour until supper. She watched me carefully as we walked, first taking sidelong glances as we walked side-by-side, and then holding back to watch me as we went. I walked along in my maid's uniform with the little pack of my gym clothes under one arm.

"What?" I asked. I wondered whether she was attracted to me.

"Nothing... it's just funny," she said. "Before you kind of walked like a guy. Not entirely, but with your shoulders squared and your feet kind of plodding on separate tracks. Now you've got Ms. Law's motions down."

"What? No I haven't." I stopped, stuck my arms out around waist level, and turned primly on the balls of my feet, looking down as I did so. It was an undeniably feminine gesture. "Holy shit, you're right," I said.

I squared my shoulders out and tried a manly gait for a few steps before I found myself unconsciously returning to a much more naturally feminine gait.

"I think you're going to be an excellent student," Cassie giggled.

+++++

At the sound of the tone, like Pavlov's dogs, we filed out of C-hall and down to the dining hall, the Bigs chatting excitedly and the littles following meekly behind, whispering and mumbling when they spoke at all. I wondered whether that was because of their time being shaped by Ms. Sturm in our Best Behavior class - whether I would become meek and quiet like that. I hoped not. If they weren't going to punish me for being inquisitive and proactive, I wasn't going to let them change who I was.

"I didn't ask about your classes beyond Best Behavior and Physical Conditioning," I said to Cassie.

"Calculus and Classics," Cassie beamed. "Classes that are actually useful - unlike our brainwashing bullshit..."

"Conditioning. They're trying to condition us," I reminded her. "With, I suppose, some magic thrown in for good measure."

"You think it's magic?"

"Don't you?"

She shrugged. "Maybe. Either that or, like, alien technology." She frowned. "As a future scientist, I don't know which I should be more skeptical about..."

"I'd say the Night Matron summoning dark riders last night put the evidence firmly in the 'magic' camp, wouldn't you?"

Cassie looked to me uncertainly. "You know how there are some things you're not allowed to talk about?"

"Ah," I said. "Say no more."

I didn't want to spook Cassie, but I definitely wanted her to say more. What she'd just said (or not-said) had certain implications. Just as I couldn't reveal facts about my past by virtue of what I wasn't allowed to say, my roommate had just said plenty by omission - she knew something about the power underlying St. Circe's but was forbidden to say anything (at least to me) about it. I didn't want to goad her into trouble, but I certainly wanted to get to the bottom of what had happened and was continuing to happen to me.

When we arrived at the dining hall, Cassie helped herself to one of the large platters of food. She didn't make any indication that it was just for show or politics, nor did she seem awkward or contrite about it. She just helped herself. Fine. At least she didn't expect that I'd meekly serve her... not yet. There were two large platters left, so I helped myself to one of those.

"What the fuck?" Jordan said. "The new little just took one of the big platters."

I turned around to face her... to face the tall, beautiful red-head. She had four or five inches of height on me now, which was a bit intimidating. But she was also still a sixteen year-old girl, which took a bit of the edge off.

"Is it against the rules for me to have a big platter?"

"Yes," Jordan stated, crossing her arms beneath her impressive chest. Another Big, Hailey, stepped in behind her to provide moral (and possibly physical) support.

I shrugged. "Then go tell on me. I won't stop you."

"The big plates are ours," Hailey stated.

Jordan moved to take the platter from me while Hailey flanked to prevent a tactical retreat. The red-head grabbed the sides of the platter and pulled. And, though she was certainly stronger than me, I could offer enough struggle that it set the tray off balance. The metal cover fell off with a clang, sending a tuna steak and some cubes of avocado tumbling to the floor.

"You want it that badly? Fine," I said, grabbing the last remaining small platter from the table. "Enjoy your dinner."

"Hey! I'm not eating floor food!"

I ignored her, stalking over to the little table to avoid further confrontation.

"That was pretty stupid," the girl in the maid uniform said.

I shrugged. "Maybe so. But I'm not going to let some entitled bitch shit all over me just because she wants the big girl dinner that I got to first. I don't see anything in my rulebook about letting 'Bigs' bully me, so..."

"Hey," Cecilia huffed, strutting over to our table. She cocked her hip and looked down with a sneer. Amazingly and to my mild chagrin, she still managed to be pretty hot when she was doing that, what with her pouty lips, ice-blue eyes, and cascade of platinum blonde hair. "What the fuck do you think you're doing, little? You owe Jordan a tuna steak."

I speared my steak with my fork, lifted it from the plate, and gave it a long, deliberate lick. I kept eye contact with Cecilia the whole time. I might have looked like a sixteen year-old girl and been forbidden to talk about my old life, but that didn't mean I didn't have an extra decade of accrued experience under my belt. The dynamics of teenage bullying seemed petty and stupid in retrospect, whereas it had dominated a sizable fraction of my high school's social dynamics (and, despite my generally chill nature, I'd been much closer to the 'bully' archetype than the victim).

"Michelle, give me your tuna," Cecilia said.

The girl in the maid uniform dutifully complied, emptying her soy sauce boat into that of the girl across from hers and then placing the tuna steak on the empty boat for Cecilia to take. The Big blonde turned back toward me.

"Don't think this is over," she said and then stalked back to join the other Bigs. From their side of the table, Cassie made brief eye contact with me and shrugged: not my fault, she seemed to say... but that wasn't quite right. Call me petty, but if she'd let me pick trays first, I'd have been happy to be charitable.

I spent the rest of supper in relative peace with my fellow littles - yes, I was a little, if only because that's how everybody was going to treat me. But I would not become simpering and weak no matter what Rowan Bryce might have paid St. Circe's to accomplish. And, as it so turns out, not all of those littles were weak. They'd just grown wiser about what battles to pick.

I chatted with them intermittently - mostly about the food because, whatever qualms I might have had about my erstwhile school and virtual prison, St. Circe's has excellent chefs, and I never once had a bad meal there. I learned a bit about the littles, too - for instance, Michelle, the slim girl in the maid's uniform, the girl who looked about twelve years old with dirty blonde hair pulled up into high pigtails, was two months from her seventeenth birthday. The Hispanic girl with pink berets and frills everywhere was Helena, a former troublemaker who hadn't warranted a punishment in months. Everybody reckoned she was soon to join the Advanced Girls. And pretty little Emilia "Emi" Rose?

"She used to be a boy," Michelle whispered. "That's what everybody says. But she came here a girl and, since then, she's been getting more and more girly. And, uh..."

"Scatterbrained?" Helena offered.

"Stupid," Michelle stated. "She was pretty smart... now? Not so much."

Emi overheard at least a bit of that. "I'm not a bimbo," she stated, twirling a long lock of golden blonde hair. "I'm, like, ADD and stuff."

For the most part, I can't remember what we talked about beyond introductions. Probably nothing of note, but I could be wrong. My memories of that night are skewed in a different direction - to my horrible experience later that evening.

+++++

After dinner, I made it back to our dormitory room with only a little snide talk and elbow jostling by the Bigs, and I thought that would be the end of it. That they'd absorbed my impertinence and had no real answer for it. I'd forgotten how catty teenage girls can be. For her part, Cassie seemed on-edge about something, and I thought she was just nervous about how my behavior impacted her own status. Not entirely wrong, but that wasn't half of it.

Once back in our room, I heaved a great sigh of relief and begin divesting myself of my clothes, preparing to shower. I turned my back to Cassie but noted her regarding me with something approaching concern.

"Those 'Big' girls are bitches. I can't believe you ate with them," I said.

Cassie shrugged and appeared contrite. "Sorry, but they're my group now."

"Are they? Says who? Why do we have to be 'Bigs' and 'littles'? Because it serves the school - a school whose program, if I'm not mistaken, we're both committed to avoiding? And, what's worse, it's not even an official rule that we be divided like that... it's complicity in our own transformation. Social leverage used against us. Does going along with it seem like a good idea to you?"

"It doesn't," she agreed. "I just..." she paused.

I turned around to regard her - only in my underwear at that point, and preparing to don my robe and plod down to the C-wing shower. Almost immediately, Cassie's gaze fixed upon my incongruous genitals, bulging against the soft cotton of my panties. Cassie's brow knit in confusion and she bit her lip.

"I imagine it's been hard for you," she said after a moment, emphasizing the word 'hard' a bit too much. "You're not like any of the other students here - as strange as this is for me, it's got to be a lot stranger to you... but maybe our time here doesn't have to be all bad?"

Before I could quite process that, Cassie was disrobing down to her underwear, and then donning her own robe before letting her undergarments drop to the floor, soft and flimsy cotton in a little pile. But I'd got a glance at her figure - and, while she wasn't yet as firm or svelte as the other Big girls, the modest changes brought on by her punishment last night made a world of difference. She'd stretched out perhaps an inch and a half, shed perhaps fifteen pounds, and gained just a bit of muscle tone and extra curvature… it was enough to push her from chubby-cute to borderline-hot. Things might have gone very different in the closet last night.

"Let's go shower," she said with a smirk. "I'll let you soap me up."

Cassie approached me and grasped my hand - her hand was a bit bigger than mine now. Overall, she was noticeably larger than me, whereas we'd been about the same size, minus twenty pounds of chub on her. But that was before our ill-starred escape attempt. And, though she probably wasn't much stronger than me at that point, I didn't even offer token resistance as she pulled me toward the shower.

My heart was thudding in my chest - I wasn't allowed to use my very male genitals for sexual gratification, not by the rules of the school, but there was nothing to prevent me from enjoying myself in other ways. Right? Soaping up a nubile 16 year-old seemed like a pretty good side benefit... and, though it might have made me a monstrous pervert to do so, I justified it to myself: I was also in a 16 year-old's body, being treated like a teenager, being subject to strange magical forces, awash with hormones, and perhaps not using my best possible judgment. As we approached the shower, another student emerged - Hailey, I think, based on her height and the glimpse of dark hair I got. I panicked and ducked behind a little alcove in the corridor, and she passed without noticing me.

"The water's just perfect," she said to Cassie. "Happy trails."

Then Cassie grabbed my hand again and pulled me into the shower, jamming the door shut with the doorstop so nobody else could disturb us.

Normally, the showers don't lock - there's a key lock for the bolt, but none of us had the keys. The shower had a door jamb to prop the it open and air the room out if it got too steamy, but it could be used to enforce privacy in a pinch. A girl of average strength could still budge the door open with a good shoulder check, but the sentiment of 'privacy please' that the jamb represented was usually respected. We had the shower area - two small stalls and one large one with two shower nozzles - all to ourselves.

It was already warm and steamy inside. The air had a slight haze about it and the gray slate of the floor was moist against our bare feet. When Cassie turned the water on, the shower was already pleasantly tepid, letting off just a little steam, and she quickly disrobed, shooting a coy 'come hither' look at me. I followed suit and stepped under the water with her.

My cock was at high alert already. It had been at escalating dick-con echelons all along our trek to the shower, and now it was ready for action. Too bad the only action it would get was as a delighted bystander. Cassie squirted shampoo onto her hands and stepped behind me, lathering up my mass of auburn curls, running soapy hands down my back and sides. Her fingertips against my scalp felt heavenly, and I was so engrossed that I almost didn't think to stop her when she ran one hand down my smooth belly.

"Aah!" I gasped, pulling away from her. "We can't... I'm not allowed," I said.

Cassie nodded conspiratorially. "Well I'm allowed to do what I want with my naughty bits. If I can't soap up 'Little Natalie', maybe you can soap up 'Princess Cassie'?"

That sounded good to me. I sudsed up my hands and went to work, starting with Cassie's shoulders, lingering over her breasts, my fingers flitting over sensitive nipples in the warm spray and making her giggle and gasp in appreciation. And when my fingers dipped lower, down her soft belly and to her waiting honeypot, she groaned. I was an experienced hand at this in the literal sense - I'd had plenty of opportunities to dabble in shower sex and remembered well exactly how my partners liked to be touched. Each woman was different, but there was a lot of common ground. And with my smaller, nimbler fingers, I was better at it than ever. Cassie grabbed at my small wrists with iron determination and pressed me harder into her sex, grinding into me.

As she did, her water and soap-slick ass pushed back into me. It was a nice ass - not yet perfect, but something a girl could be proud of, rounded and soft and pushing into my erection. It felt amazing, and it took a monumental effort of will to pull away from her. I only pulled away a bit, though, because my fingers were still anchored at her sex, busily rubbing over the nub of her clit and delving downward for little forays over her vulva. She was definitely enjoying it. She shuddered in enjoyment, and possibly in a minor climax, her whole body shaking as she groaned and ground herself into me.

Then she spun around, a mischievous glint in her eyes and, lathering her hand up with the conditioner still in her hair, she started stroking me. I reached down to stop her, and instead she guided my erection into her. Being the taller of the two of us, she was able to stand on her tiptoes and then lower herself onto me, grabbing me by my cute, pert butt and pulling us together. I struggled to pull free.

"Just let it happen," she whispered. "If I do all the work, it doesn't count."

I had no idea whether that was true, but my rational mind was very much in the back seat here. I nodded dumbly and let her mount me. I ran my hands down her back, running soapy fingers over the smooth swell of her butt as my roommate gyrated into me, making little gasps and moans the whole time. I made little feminine moans of my own - the head of my cock was pulsing and my balls were boiling with pleasure. It felt like a volcano of pleasure lay in my groin, waiting to explode, and when the caldera blew its top, I cried out, my whole body shaking in pleasure as hot cum shot out of me.

With a little 'eep' of surprise, Cassie hopped off of me and used her hands to coax the orgasm out of me, milky-white jets and burbles of cum spurting out of my dick for what felt like hours. When I finally came down from my pleasure, Cassie glanced at me curiously, her eyes wandering down to my slowly-softening dick, before giving her palm an experimental lick and making a little face.

"I always wondered what that tasted like," she said. "Pretty neutral, actually."

She rinsed the rest off of her palm, and the two of us finished our shower, letting the water rinse the sexual fluids, suds, and sweat from our bodies. I dried myself with a fluffy white St. Circe's towel and blow-dried my hair. I noted in the mirror that my punishment from that morning had left me slightly changed - even after showering, my cheeks had a slight natural blush, my eyelashes a bit of darkened fullness, and my lips a plump pink glossiness about them. Even freshly-showered, I looked to have a bit of natural cosmetic coloration about me, as if I'd put seven or eight minutes into looking cute and pretty before stepping out into the world. After a moment, I noticed that Cassie looked quite unhappy.

"What's wrong?" I asked, wondering whether I'd made a horrible mistake.

"I'm sorry," she said, sniffling.

"For what?"

"For that..." she gestured toward my now-flaccid cock. "Hailey and Jordan talked me into it, said it would be my official initiation into the Bigs if I could do my Best Behavior assignment by seducing you."

"What was your assignment?" I asked carefully.

"Bend another student to your will," she said quietly. "It's about being confident and assertive and... well, I was confident and assertive, yeah?"

"Hey, no harm, no foul, right? Just don't tell anybody exactly what we did... as far as anybody knows we just soaped one another up, right?"

"Yeah," she said uncertainly.

We donned our robes, combed our hair, and undid the door jamb. No sooner did we do so, the door pushed open and our Night Matron strode in, followed by a triumphant, strutting Jordan and Hailey wearing a shit-eating grin. The Night Matron waved my book at me and recited my behavior plan:

"Use of male organs for sexual gratification-slash-intercourse shall result in revoked privileges," she said.

"Good job, newbie," Jordan said, mussing Cassie's just-combed hair.

"Thanks," Cassie said, though she still looked pretty conflicted over it.

With that, the Night Matron gripped me by my Collar of Contrition and led me off.

+++++

I'm not sure what the living arrangements are for the faculty at St. Circe's. My impression is that they all live off-campus - hence, the need for the Night Matrons to look after the students after hours rather than an irate and tired Headmistress Lily in the middle of the night. However, in many cases, the staff could make themselves available at a moment's notice, either through some device of magic or simply because they lived nearby. In this case, it was Doctor Sauvage who showed up in a hurry. Ms. Rust (our Night Matron) led me in my robe right out of the dormitory, through the cold night and into the administration building, past Headmistress Lily's office, and into the doctor's office two doors down.

She sat me down in one of two little seats outside the office and waited with me in the corridor, her arms crossed and a stern frown upon her face. I had to tick that as a mark in her favor - Ms. Rust wasn't smug or triumphant about seeing me punished. She didn't get a thrill out of it like Mrs. Sturm did. She just wanted the students at St. Circe's to behave.

"Is it so much to ask to have one night of peace?" she asked. "Two nights, two major infractions, Miss Bryce. Are you trying to get a reputation?"

I thought to say something snarky, but I was also deeply frightened. I had no idea what was about to befall me. Instead, I just shook my head and cowered down in the chair. As I tucked my head down, the Collar of Contrition pressed against my jaw, and I gradually realized how deep the shit I was in might be.

The doctor arrived perhaps fifteen minutes later, clad in a dark gray (of course) rain jacket with visible precipitation on it. She was accompanied by a very tall, very pale gentleman in all black wearing an anachronistically wide-brimmed hat, also dripping with moisture and trailing wet footprints down the hall. Sauvage stood in front of me, staring down impassively and, without breaking her gaze, handed the Night Matron her rain jacket.

"What do you think, Dr. Heirophant?" she asked.

The doctor squatted to bring his face level to mine and peered into my eyes. His own eyes were dark pits in the dim light. "Doable, I should think, Dr. Sauvage. Doubly so at the witching hour."

"That's two hours yet."

"Good. We'll have time to prepare properly."

They had me sit there for another hour as they made preparations in her office and then downstairs. The Night Matron and her student attendant took turns guarding me. I was half-tempted to take my chances and book it, but I remembered what had transpired the night before and wasn't keen on a repeat. 'Misusing' my male organs and escaping in a single night? I had a feeling that such audacity would precipitate a singularly severe punishment. Pretty severe was bad enough. Eventually, the doctors Sauvage and Heirophant shuffled back from downstairs and motioned to Ms. Rust that she could go.

"What are you going to do to me?" I asked in a small voice.

"The punishment earned - no more, no less. The contract is set, and it shall be observed," Heirophant said. I noticed that he had no eyebrows either, nor any hair anywhere that I could see.

"I didn't do anything," I said lamely. "It was Cassie - she jumped me and held me in place..."

"Cassandra broke no rules in her rule book," Doctor Sauvage stated. "You broke one of the biggest in yours. We will discipline Miss Petersen if and when we deem it necessary - that is my job, not yours. You would do best to worry about the best behavior of Natalie Bryce. Now... come."

Sauvage and Heirophant started down the hallway, her at a purposeful strut and him with sinuous shifting. I stood from the chair but couldn't bring myself to follow them. I didn't even intend to run or to be explicitly defiant. I just couldn't bring myself to submit to whatever they had in mind.

"Come," Heirophant barked, his eyes flashing pure-dark for a moment.

I was powerless to resist. With a pulse from my collar, a force flowed through me and my feet started moving of their own accord. I soon caught up with them, my legs taking strange, uncoordinated strides that threatened to bump me into walls and doorframes. Only when I took ownership of my movements did they assume the adroitness of a regular gait.

We went to the end of the administration hallway, down the stairs to a basement level, and down again when Doctor Sauvage unlocked a little hatch. We descended narrow stone stairs into a dark, circular room illuminated only by a few bare light bulbs. In the middle of the room was some sort of altar, which the doctor led me up to before shackling me down. She pulled my robe open, revealing my slender body - my small breasts, taut, narrow belly, and slightly flared hips with my manhood bulging from the center of my otherwise-nubile body. My heart was racing - I was convinced they were going to sacrifice me to some dark god or something similarly extreme.

"Please..." I said. "Please don't."

"The die is cast - each rule has its price, and you will pay for your violation, no more and no less," the doctor said. "All that has transpired thus far, you've brought upon yourself, girl. Now... we should begin."

"Agreed," Doctor Heirophant said.

The two of them stepped away from the altar and proceeded to chant in unison. To be honest, it sounded like garbled nonsense. When somebody is speaking a foreign language, you can generally detect the pattern and prosody of the language, even if the meaning is beyond you. This, though? I couldn't have repeated a single syllable of it if you'd paid me a million dollars to do so. They placed candles about the room, did something noisy with a ritual knife (killed a bird, I think), and cast small bones about the floor. I could feel strange energies pulsing through the altar and into me, running through my shackles like an electrical current. I thrashed against it and cried unapologetically. The tears streamed down my face - and those, too, seemed to invigorate the energy of their terrible spell.

The two doctors approached the altar, both of them sweaty and delirious with a strange mania. Sauvage placed a firm hand on my belly and held my thighs down with a beefy forearm. Then Heirophant reached over and wrapped his long, cold fingers around my cock. Then he started pulling... and pulling. My member stretched out normally, then stretched to a strange elongated shape like it was made of an elastic material. Then I yelped from an instantaneous flash of pain and my cock and balls pulled away from my groin with a wet slurp. The pain immediately vanished, as did all feeling from my genitals. Instead, I felt wetness (blood?) and a strange pulsing sensation from between my legs.

I screamed. It was the sort of long, high-pitched scream that could shatter glass. Dr. Clay in my Speech and Music class would have been proud. As for me? I passed out.