CW: Slurs

(Aryalat's notes: since people were commenting on KYIAO that I censor the chapters too much, I'm going to try and leave all the words out in the open, hopefully nothing happens.)

It was an ordinary Wednesday morning, and Alex was uncomfortably standing in the incredibly crowded bus for the last stretch of her 45 minutes ride to university. Normally, she would be feeling quite tired in the morning, but today was a special day and her nerves kept her very awake even if she had had a relatively bad night of sleep. Today was her first day of uni! It had taken her so much effort to be able to maintain her status as the top of her class, keep her grades up and ace the entrance exams, but here she was! About to start the first step for her dream job as a researcher.

She briefly considered all the things that had changed quite recently, in what could be considered the most important summer break of her life. But some things remained just the same, she thought looking at one of them. Sophie, her girlfriend, holding her hand tightly as they both fought to remain properly upright and together for the ride. Sophie was wearing a white anime T-shirt and light blue shorts, due to the remaining summer heat that was absolutely not helped by how warm the damn bus was. Alex, on her part, had decided to wear a nice light pink T-shirt with patterns on her shoulders, and a cute black pleated skirt, giving her a nice schoolgirl look, which she believed was appropriate for a day like this.

Looking at their faces, it was obvious that they were nervous. Many people around them also were, although there were just not that many people they could see from their position. Most people were most likely worried about starting a new chapter of their lives, and of course she was also thinking about that, but there was something else quite important for her today too: today was her first day of school as a girl. Thankfully, her currently default form was indistinguishable from that of a cis girl, so at least she could avoid her classmates learning about her past as she didn’t want them to, unlike many other trans girls, but being treated as a girl also had some issues on their own. She very much feared what would happen if most of her classmates happened to be boys, physics was quite the male dominated field as far as she knew, her experience at the card tournament fresh in her mind. For a second she worried her skirt was too short, but dammit, it was summer still!

She was snapped out of her thoughts as the bus reached the university stop, and people started getting down in a tide. Thankfully, even if it became harder to keep their hands together, they managed to not get separated in the sea of people. They decided to step aside for a couple minutes to allow the mass of people to reduce, before they started walking forward. The university campus was beautiful, full of trees and grass everywhere, with small travel paths connecting the different faculties. Weird statues stood here and there, adding some variety to the scenery in between the multicolored, glass covered faculties. There were some posters here and there, calling for demonstrations and political action, or just announcing future talks and events. Some students were sitting in the grass, and from the smell Alex was sure they were smoking a joint. Both Alex and Sophie couldn’t help but look around all the time, taking in all the new scenarios that would become commonplace for their next 4 years at minimum.

Sadly, the time came at which they had to separate. Holding their hands together, Sophie started speaking.

“Good luck with your first day, dear”. Her eyes were full of love for her girlfriend.

“Same to you, honey. I’ll tell you all about it when we meet later”, Alex responded.

“You better!”, Sophie said back with a bit of a huff, before breaking down laughing. After sharing a long and loving hug, and a kiss on the cheek, Sophie marched to her class, leaving Alex to walk a bit further away to find her faculty and hopefully, her own class.

 

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The first year class was much bigger than what she was normally used to, with rows and rows of desks that could seat, by her very rough estimate, around 120 people. In the front of the classroom, there was a raised podium with a table and of course the blackboard. It seemed that it also contained a rolled screen for a projector. Looking around, she was relieved to find that, while the majority of students were boys, there was like 25% girls, so she would be able to have some girl friends easily enough. She wouldn’t have been really comfortable in a “sausage field” (even if she, technically, owned one herself, which she preferred not even think about).

With a deep breath, she sat down in one of the middle seats, not too close but not too far away, right besides a group of 3 girls that seemed to be chatting. As she looked at them, she started to panic. How did someone make friends again?? She had been going to the same school all her life, she didn’t remember how to make any friends by herself.

“Hi, I’m Sandra, what’s your name?”, the girl closest to her, with long light brown hair, asked her with a smile, snapping her out of her train of thought. She felt strong relief, someone else was going to do the awkward step for her.

“Hi, I’m Alex! Nice to meet you”, she answered smiling back.

“Tina!”, another girl, with long dark brown hair, introduced herself.

“Rachel”, the third girl of the group said, who had quite the impressive set of dark, curly hair.

“OMG, I love your pink strands!”, Tina said to Alex, pointing at her newly colored pink hair.

“Thank you! I did it recently, I was looking for a change. New life, new me and all that, right?”, Alex answered in a casual tone, trying to sound friendly.

“I totally get it, girl”, Sandra said. “I myself have-”

Sandra was cut off by the teacher entering the class, making all the students finally sit and quiet down. He was a middle aged man, coming in in an anime T-shirt, shorts and sandals. It looked like the dress code was rather lax, both for students and teachers alike. He started by introducing the bachelors, and the kind of thing that would be taught to the students over the years.

“...and remember, you’re here because of vocation. Because if it is for money, you have chosen the wrong career”, he said in a dry tone. Alex made an awkward laugh, as did some of her classmates. Teachers here were kind of weird, this was clearly not like highschool at all.

 

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Her first day had worked out pretty nicely in the end. The classes today were quite relaxed, with each teacher simply introducing the subject and the study materials and such. They all promised that they would start in earnest the next day, a phrasing that had left her a bit concerned for the future.

At lunch time, sadly, she had been unable to meet up with Sophie, since their schedules didn’t match. Thus, she had decided to join her three classmates for lunch in the cafeteria. Having to buy food every day was a new experience for her, but it was surprisingly cheap compared to the prices outside uni. Since they had just met, today they were mostly talking about very general topics, like being nervous about the new year, how well they did in their entrance exams and such things. Alex was hoping they could become closer friends as time went by, but today was just the first day after all.

At the end of the day, she had said goodbye to her new friends, but instead of leaving with most other students towards the transportation out of uni, she walked towards another building. She had an extra class to take, unlike most other students. Magic class!

 

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Alex stood in front of a secluded classroom, bent over slightly and trying to stop her panting. She had gotten lost a couple of times in the building trying to find the classroom, and feared she might be late for the first day! Looking at her phone, there were still around 10 minutes left before the class started. The entrance to the class, in the basement floor of a building way too confusing for a first timer, presented two large wooden doors that looked quite heavy to use, with intricate decoration on them. It looked frankly a bit intimidating, there was no way she would be entering the class on her own.

As she was waiting around, reading on her phone, a light brown haired girl appeared, just glancing at her once before entering the class with confidence. She had a toned body, a white tank-top and a jean miniskirt. She looked cool and self-assured, something Alex clearly wasn’t. While she remained transfixed at her new classmate (she assumed), Sophie finally arrived, needing a moment herself to recover.

“Huff, huff… WOW is this place confusing”, she told Alex with a labored breath. “Been waiting… huff… for long?”

“Ah, no, no, dear, I arrived like 5 minutes ago”, she answered trying not to put much focus on her nervousness at cutting it so close. “Let’s go in together, shall we?”

“Sure!”, Sophie answered. “I have something to show you later, I’m sure you’ll wanna know!”, she finished, excitement in her voice, as she grabbed Alex’s hand and dragged her inside the room.

The classroom was quite big, with only the back half of the surface occupied by desks. There was plenty of room for multiple people to stand in the front part. The class was scarcely filled, with a total of 11 students counting them both, but Alex guessed that made sense, magic being rare in the world. All the classmates looked like perfectly normal humans, but… some of them had something to them, Alex was not sure what but there was something.

Sophie took her to a rather front seat, and they sat down together. As she kept squinting to try to figure out what could be wrong with her new classmates, the teacher arrived. She was a middle aged woman, with the symbol of the MoM on her case. Alex accepted that it made sense that the teacher would be a worker of the MoM, this class was a requirement from them after all. She got to the front, and asked everyone to take their seats before starting the class.

“Good evening”, she started. “As you all know, this class is a mandatory requirement to be able to access the magical license in this country. As a result, the first part of the course will be dealing with laws, rules and regulations of magical use and exposure in this country, which I’m sure many of you will find quite dull”.

Alex groaned internally, she had already dealt with something like that for her driver’s license and it was. SO. BORING. Sure, she was smart enough that it was not a complicated affair, but it was indeed super uninteresting for her.

“Regardless, after you take the formal exam around Christmas time, we will begin with the basic magical usage and spell wielding necessary to prove your competency, and also as a starting point for the advanced magic classes that this university offers. I’m told this part is considered more entertaining”, she finished with a wink.

Alex and Sophie looked at each other excitedly. There were advanced magic classes! It sounded amazing.

“But first, let’s introduced ourselves, and our magical abilities!”, she said with a chirpier tone. “Alex and Sophie, their cases are… classified. You’re only allowed to know that Alex is a shifter and Sophie is a human mage”.

Alex and Sophie felt a bit confused at that presentation, but left it at that. They knew the celestial intervention was an extremely classified affair. People kept introducing themselves, with four of their new classmates being like Sophie, human mages, although with some training. They were quite taken aback when two of their classmates, two male cousins, actually morphed into frog people! It seemed that some non-humanoids used concealing magic for themselves in the human world, which was always allowed. Alex wondered if that was the weird thing she could feel from her classmate.

Eventually, it came the turn of a punk looking guy. “Yeah, yeah, my turn I guess”, he said in a bored tone. He clearly didn’t care much at all. “I’m a flame guy, and yeah, it’s as cool as it sounds”. To emphasize his point, he set part of his arm completely on fire. “You can call me Ifrit, losers!”, he finished saying.

“Kevin, no one is going to call you Ifrit. Now calm down and turn that fire off. Or should I remind you of the rules?”, the teacher said to him in a cold tone, a lightning bolt running through her arm for a split second. Kevin sat down straight and tuned his fire off, clearly scared shitless. Note to self, do not anger the teacher.

“My turn now”, the cool girl started talking. At that moment, two long, light pink fox ears sprouted from her head, and an equally light pink fluffy tail started swaying from under her skirt, reaching her bra height from behind. Both ears and tail ended in a patch of white fur. Her regular hair had also turned light pink. She was a foxgirl! Alex fought the urge to pet the surely very soft tail, and stared at her in awe. She was so damn cool.

“So, I’m Suki, and I’m 21. Just moved to this country with my parents, but your stupid regulations require I get a license to use my form or whatever, so here I am. Ugh”, she finished. She looked clearly irritated, but Alex guessed it made sense.

It was time for the final student to speak. “I’m Jim, and I’m a shifter like that girl too”, he said pointing at Alex. Another shifter! Alex could not hold herself back, wanted to know more about her new, sudden species.

“Hi! It’s the first time I’ve met another shifter, do you also have male and female forms?”, she asked enthusiastically.

He scoffed. “What? What do you think I am, some kinda faggot?”, he said. Alex’s heart fell, what a disgusting homophobe. She expected shifters to be much more open about gender stuff, they could literally change bodies!

“I’ll have you know that some shifters have both male and female forms, it’s not that rare”, the teacher answered, trying to control the situation.

“Ahh, so that’s why you asked, you are one of those, huh?”, his tone still quite nasty.

“What is your problem!? Alex just wanted to know…”, Sophie started retorting before he started again.

“Look at the dyke, protecting her tranny girlfriend. Do you use your male form to take a break from all that scissoring, and show your dyke what a good time actually is?”, he finished saying, full of venom.

Alex was dumbfounded, finding herself in a mixture between wanting to shout, wanting to hit him and wanting to cry. Sophie looked like she was going to give him quite the tongue lashing.

“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY, YOU INFERIOR PIECE OF SHIT!?”, they heard a voice shout from the side. Suki was looking at Jim, pink flames slowly coming out from her now clawed hands and mouth. She looked like she was going for the kill.

“ENOUGH!”, the teacher shouted, making everyone look at her. “Sit down, Suki. Jim, I cannot change your opinions, no matter how repulsive they may be, but what I can say is that I won’t allow you to INSULT MY STUDENTS IN MY FUCKING CLASSROOM! Honestly, the lack of respect, self control and knowledge of the magical world makes me wonder if I should just kick you out for creating a hostile environment in the class. Is that what you want? Trapped forever in your birth form, hunted down by us if you dare to use magic? IS THAT IT?”. The teacher’s fury was quite savage. Everybody stared in shock.

The teacher stared at the clock on the wall, and took a deep breath. “Ok, enough for today, next time we will start the course proper”, she said while waving them off. Jim ran away the first one, the damn coward, probably worried Suki would get to him. Their non-humanoid classmates changed back into their hiding forms, and started leaving. Alex and Sophie were still a bit stunned about all the hostility, so they remained for a couple minutes. Eventually, Sophie spoke up.

“Sigh, the moment has been kind of ruined by that… that imbecile. Buuuut there was something I wanted to show you!”, said Sophie before starting to rummage through her backpack. She produced a colorful pamphlet, with a rainbow background.

“This Friday, the queer club is hosting a new term party! Do you want us to go, and meet some other queer people?” Yes. Yes she did. She nodded and smiled at her in response. That sounded like a fun time indeed!