Kayla: Time Forgotten Flower

In the 28th century, the technology of rejuvenation allows for immortality. While this device is used for sentencing criminals to start a highly strict and disciplined life anew, being paroled; a Completatas; was like starting anew again. (Story Sixty-Five)

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Concept by Lurking Dragon

Kayla and story by Professor Bob

More Kayla Stuff!: www.Professor-Bob.net

Higher education for rejuvenated adults had been whittled down to a science by most developed worlds, turning any subject into a fun, engaging curriculum for a young mind to be able to learn. Such treatment made the lessons easier for elementary school aged rejuves to absorb and focus upon, but not any less ‘adult’ in difficulty at times, as Kayla had come to discover once she chose her elective course for the new semester. Talented as she was with matters of intellect, she wasn’t at all used to struggling with her schoolwork to the degree that ‘Business Law’ was making her. It was for the sake of Ackart Enterprises, but as she leaned upon a paw and made a face at her desk’s computer screen, she counted her Completatas blessings that she’d no longer be badly paddled in front of the class and at home for the ‘C-’ that she’d just scored on her first real test. Not yet entirely understanding how the world worked made legal procedure that much harder to grasp, but as the clock struck eleven and everyone’s desks chimed in unison, that boon of being a free fox allowed her to get up while every Penitatas remained seated for their punitive ‘Ethics and Morals’ class period.

Unlike their education, the daily “curriculum” from the Penitatas Justice Department was formulated into obnoxiously tedious assignments, and culminated by being made to write lines within the period’s time limit. It forced them to buckle down and eventually head to lunch with sore hands, but the only thing Kayla had to do these days was visit Miss Chester’s desk with Jacob for her leisure-period hall pass. They pinned their privileged badges to their shirts, and with a discreet wave to their friends the two younger rejuves were headed out the door, stretching their tails in the hallway after they’d been forced to dangle motionlessly for so long.

“I’m glad to be out of there. I just learned the hard way that I’m not cut out to handle contract agreements on my own. If I’m going to be relying on my dad’s help for the next forever, I should hire and actually pay him.”, Kayla grumped in defeat; the pair walking the empty corridor alone while the rest of the classes remained in session.

“He’d never accept credits for helping you. I think you gave him enough of a heart attack by getting him a car for Christmas.”, Jacob nearly chuckled, placing his paws behind his back.

“I’m going to give him another heart attack when he sees the grade I got on my ‘Business Law’ test.”, the fox’s ears fell back with a groaning little sigh, “How do normal ‘not-penny’ kids explain this stuff to their parents without getting in trouble?”

“You promise to study next time, and then actually study.”, her mate answered with a touch of emphasis, getting a drawn out, despondent whine in response. Apparently it was just that obvious that she didn’t, and chose to play console games instead. Jacob knew her like a book, and so did Alex and Emily, if they were to decide to take her controller away.

In the midst of rubbing the fur atop her head, they began to come up along a stretch of windows that looked out over the school’s playground. They both made a surprised face nearly in unison, stopping to watch the unexpected flurry of snowflakes that greeted them mere steps away from the exit they intended to use to go outside.

“Whoa.”, Kayla casually blurted at the small mound of powder that had already accumulated on the swings’ seats in the distance, “Welcome to Calleet. Cloudy one minute – snowing like crazy the next. I like getting my fur all snowy, but that shirt isn’t going to do much for your scales.”, she wiggled a claw at his polo’s sleeve.

“Maybe we could just have our walk here then, where it’s warm? I did have something I wanted to talk to you about.”, Jacob cheerfully pitched with his elder sort of enthusiasm, not minding the loss of the playground for what he had in mind. Sounding just like the boy she fell in love with, endlessly chatting on strolls around Lory Rich’s garden, Kayla joined him in step.

“I’m all ears!”, was quite literal coming from her, and earned a smirk from her mate.

“I’ve been thinking about the current state of rejuvenatory medicine in my field. Portable rejuvenators have been at a developmental standstill for well over a hundred years now. We’ve made them lighter and more reliable over time, but they still knock their would-be Medicalos to an age far younger than puberty, and without any chromosomal control. Having to use a full-sized rejuvenator booth afterward to restore them back to their identified gender makes them even younger, disrupting all of their lives that much more. It’s a sorry process, for the amount of advancement we’ve managed to make in the other fields of medical science.”, the good doctor prefaced as to what he’d been mulling over, tucking his fingers warmly into his trouser pockets to keep them toasty.

“That’s what happened to Za`kira, the tactical officer I met in Starfleet Headquarters’ gardens after you left. She ended up younger than most pennies just to be a girl again after what Richter did to her.”, Kayla sympathetically recalled of the drake, hoping that she was doing okay.

“The same thing would have happened to me if the crystal inside our radiation lab’s portable rejuvenator hadn’t crumbled to pieces from the accident. Cameron did try to use it. If she rejuvenated me twice with it like she had to for my radiation poisoning, I’d have ended up a four year old girl – maybe even three, as inaccurate as they can be over multiple age jumps. There would have been no way for me to rejuvenate a third time to be male again, being that young.”, he was able to unfortunately relate with, having nearly been stuck a different gender for years, “I’m sure you wouldn’t have minded that I was a girl, but I can’t imagine you would have been quite as attracted to someone so little.”

“If you were still a charming, smart forty-something-year-old in that playful little toddler head, dropping the same, err-… ‘comments’ about me being nice to be with and look at, I probably would have been blistered raw for having a girlfriend.”, Kayla gladly replied. She didn’t at all expect Jacob to pause his train of thought at her sentiment, looking outright bashful with the loving smile he had across his scaly snout. It obviously meant a lot to be told that he’d still be her chosen partner, even under circumstances that would have effectively stolen much of his dignified maturity.

“You’re hard not to like! Don’t let me sidetrack you though!”, the fox had to laugh a tad, waving her paws. Never ceasing their slow walk of the white floored, spacious school hallway, Jacob gathered his words in good humor.

“Well, see, the problem with portable rejuvenators comes down to their lack of power, with just one rejuvenator crystal and a limited energy source. Full-sized units get to use a sophisticated series of reactive programs to attenuate its radiation per patient, and that’s how we would normally be able to inject instructions like chromosomes to control the process of rejuvenation in a living body where a simpler unit can’t. We haven’t had any luck with designing a unit powerful enough to have those control sequences and still be something you can pick up, but what if we could get there by making a rejuvenator more efficient, instead of just more powerful? Maybe that future unit could use a new medical researcher, an engineer who’s used to working with limited resources, and-… ”, Jacobs paw tipped toward Kayla, “a programmer to code more lightweight control sequences for it?”

Not having expected one of their profession-oriented chats to go that direction, the fox’s ears curiously perked along with her brows, “I’m not sure I’ve got what it takes to compile a rejuvenator’s core, but I love the idea of a group pet-project!”

“Even if we weren’t able to get far or make anything, we might still learn something helpful we could share with the medical community. I feel like it’s about time I wrote a research paper again like I used to, and I’d really like to get Zach’s name on it, to help him out.”, Jacob glowed with altruistic enthusiasm, wanting to return to dabbling in medical science and lend a paw to his friend at the same time. Surely being part of a well-made paper would be a big merit boon with the justice department for a Penitatas! Kayla could see that being the case, but her maw crooked a tad.

“He keeps telling me that he wants to be more like Richter, and do something good like that. Even knowing what he means, I still sometimes want to grab him by the ear spank those words out of his mouth.”, sighed out of her muzzle, trying not to sound too bitter over the nerve Zachary struck.

“From what he tells me, it sounds like the two of them really respect each other. They seem pretty tightly knit friends already, if they’re going to let him go all the way to England for a visit.”, Jacob tried smoothing over for she and Zachary both, having a fair idea of how much the former Velius meant to him. Kayla was still trying to process that continental trip as well, wondering if it was yet another something that she’d never have been given as a Penitatas, but thankfully Jacob had more to share. “Apparently Richter went and offered to perform community service for other planets, by the way. That might have something to do with why they’re being allowed. He wants to clean up the mess of bot-nets he left behind, and I guess try dabbling in the sort of things that you do.”

“I’m sure there’s some smaller jobs out there that I’m missing. Probably a few worlds that would rather have a penny they could boss around and pressure, too.”, Kayla’s tone of voice relented, not really envying the position he was putting himself in with that one. Still, her vulpine muzzle found itself making a face again, sighing out of her ebony nose at the swirl of white dusting the darkened skylight above them. “He’s starting to make even me feel like I was a bad Penitatas, doing all of the stuff he’s doing. At least he’s making himself out to be a surprisingly decent role model. I can tell that Zach’s been trying harder.”

“You know, we could peek in on him if you’d like. I look through the gap in the blinds next to his classroom’s door sometimes, just to make sure he’s at his desk and not against a wall somewhere.”, Jacob turned partway around in stride to suggest, considering they had just sauntered past Miss Rembrandt’s first-grade class.

Intrigued by the cheeky idea and even more tickled that it came from Jacob, Kayla hastily crept over to the tall, narrow hallway window and leaned in to try and get a look inside the class. A thin gap between its red frame and the blinds within let her see the familiar colors of desks, and with a little bit of young wiggling about she caught glimpse of Zachary’s orange and black fur in the middle row; his paw diligently writing upon the display built into its surface. He really did seem less annoyed than he usually would from the times she’d seen him write lines as part of his homework, grumpy as the little engineer could be when things weren’t all sunshine and games, but the appearance of brown between she and him had her moving her head around to decipher what it was – and boy did her pupil curiously widen once that image took form.

The unfamiliar figure’s thin, silken brown fur shined like nothing she’d seen before, highlighting all of the smooth feminine curves that shaped her naturally flowing little body. Naked from her long, soft whiskers and back-length hair to the socks that peeked out from her pink shoes, the otter-like girl wiped at her icy blue-gray eyes beside a desk that must have been her own. Once her lithe, webbed paws took hold of a sky-blue sundress left upon her seat, Kayla realized why she had become entirely bare in the middle of class. It was a dress’ unfortunate side effect when a disciplinarian wanted a toasty-red penny backside on display, showing off flat-chested nipples that would normally never see the light of the school otherwise. Usually one would pull their panties back up once they were freed from the wall after a spanking too, but as Kayla rather intently watched the otter dress herself, the embarrassing act of having to lift her legs and step into her underwear with her shoes on set off a butterfly within the fox’s belly, bashfully excited as she was to have caught a fleeting, lucky glimpse of such an attractive lass’ crease between her legs. The stark black ‘P’s on the backs of her paws well explained why Miss Rembrandt had added that uncharacteristic sting to her paddling, leaving her in nothing but her footwear, and it let Kayla feel at least slightly less bad for staring.

“Jacob! She’s so pretty! What is she?”, her whisper dripped with curious wonder.

“She’s a Whyslian. They’re practically a staple of warm climate beaches here in the quadrant.”, he quietly answered from where he crouched, trying to peer through the same gap in the blinds from below, “They’re built for water, so they tend to stick close to places where they can still swim and dive. I wouldn’t have expected to see one this far up North.”

“I mean, it sucks to see her cry, but I wish I could have seen her over the front of Miss Rembrandt’s desk with her tail up. She’s the really good looking kind of beautiful. I totally know what I’m searching for on my pad when I get home.”, Kayla playfully gushed her review of curvy-figured otter girls against the window, catching Jacob’s widened eyes from below at how candid she was being with that little bit of lewdness.

“Be sure to take your underwear off first so your mother doesn’t have to ask any embarrassing questions when she goes to do your laundry.”, he slightly more sheepishly wisecracked to that randiness in order to point it out, having a fair idea of where her young imagination had wandered with the way she was smacking him with her wagging tail. There was a Whyslian woman saying “Yes ma’am” somewhere in her head for sure, and Kayla didn’t hide it well with the shier, downright bashful smile that crept across her muzzle.

“Speaking of which… I think I’ve got an embarrassing question to ask.”, she traipsed into, pushing herself off the frame of the window to stand up properly; her tail not knowing where it wanted to go, “While it’s kind of ‘out there’, umm… do you think it’d be okay if I had sex with a girl, if I ever got to?”

Such a timid question coming out of left field, even for the sexually ignorant and innocent fox, Jacob’s floored reaction to her bluntness had Kayla waving her paws with a corrective addendum, “The friendly, just for fun kind! Not the love-y kind!”

Well, that did take the edge off of things as Jacob stood back up, but only because having a casual fling described to him in such a manner made his reddening snout snicker. He found it surprisingly hard to even feel jealous at the thought of it, understanding Kayla’s inner need to keep sex safe, humorous, and fun after the deep scars she’d suffered. It’s not like she meant anything but respect with her question, considering she wanted his okay first, and asked with wholly upright ears. Kayla had reclaimed her own sexuality with the help of his love and support, and it seemed her curious adventure had more places to explore.

“We’re only kids right now. Kids do things – even rejuves. Just tell me a fun story about it afterward!”, Doctor Vasse happily, if not still a little shamefacedly welcomed of her quest for self and discovery. That rosy smile, simply glad for her, made Kayla gleefully squeal and snatch him in a hug.

“Do you happen to know any good beaches? Or what kind of bathing suit I might be able to hook a cute Whyslian with?”, her inclination toward being sly and funny in bed came out in the middle of the school hallway, grinning at Jacob’s further reddening face as he tried so hard to stifle his need to chuckle. Purposely sounding overly excited, Kayla cracked out a joyful, open muzzled gasp.

“Oh! Maybe I could play the Packet-Storm card! Hey, I’m rich and saved the world once, could I buy you a drink? The private afternoon that comes with it is free! By the way, do you need any help carrying those?”, her paws cupped in gesture upon her chest, bringing about a whole mess of muffled snickers and giggles from she and Jacob both, practically leaning over with their paws over their muzzles to muffle the whole thing.

“You’re charming as hell, you don’t need any help catching anyone’s attention!”, spurt from Jacob’s maw, following Kayla once she’d spun away and resumed their social leisure stroll; spirited and confident.

There wasn’t much time to come down from their moment before they were already talking about new things, coming upon the final hallway intersection they would turn around at, considering they weren’t going to lunch just yet. With the guidance of her keen hearing, Kayla naturally turned her head as soon as they got to the corner to see Mister Yami walking up with an unfamiliar woman tagging along at his side. The same vulpine ears that had caught the faint sound of their footsteps bent slightly, seeing the Japanese man’s face droop with a sort of disappointment.

“Don’t tell me it was the two of you carrying on like that down there.”, he questioned with the tone of surprise.

“Sorry. I thought we were being quiet.”, Kayla folded her ears back to express her embarrassment, while Jacob merely humbled himself.

“Ruckus tends to carry in these halls. It helps me catch pennies up to mischief.”, Mister Yami casually shared, earning a disapproving look from the woman that was with him.

“More importantly… ”, she sternly cut in with seasoned prowess, crossing her arms over her tightly clothed chest, “Those hall passes are for moving from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’. Where exactly are you going with them?”

“I’ve got this, Dahlia.”, the older man dismissively waved a hand.

“It’s our free period. We were out for a walk. It’s too cold for him to go outside without something heavier for his scales, so we’re just trying to stay warm is all. I can make sure we’re quieter.”, Kayla assured them both, motioning a paw toward Jacob and the blustery skylight above.

“If you couldn’t head to the recess grounds, then you belonged in the library – not wandering the hallways. I’ll be taking those from you if you can’t be bothered to follow the rules and use them appropriately.”, the interloping woman proved herself to be a haughty one with her unexpectedly sharp reprimand, shocking Kayla and Jacob, but Mister Yami kept her from stepping forward.

“Now, now. The two of them don’t need anything more than the mildest scold. It’s an excusable misunderstanding. They’re honored members of the community, and far from troublemakers.”, he openly pardoned, explaining why his reaction to their infraction had been so relaxed.

“Having a party in the hallway isn’t causing trouble?”, the tall woman mumbled to him with a far more informal tone, complete with a questioning brow and pearly fang-tip.

Against his expressed wishes, she broke from his side and made a beeline for the bright red hall pass pinned beneath the collar of Jacob’s polo. Her purposeful approach and nerve-racking means of conducting herself had the young doctor on guard, and as soon as she reached for his chest, Jacob hastily backed away, slapping a paw over the pass to protect it.

“Excuse you?!”, she snapped at the willful defiance, rattling and agitating Kayla, but Jacob’s old soul didn’t blink.

“Please stop this. You need to listen to Principal Yami.”, he pushed back as the voice of reason against what she was doing, and her big, heavy rear-swept ears jerked with the immediate upturn of her broad nose.

“I need? You’re going to be so disrespectful as to give an adult orders? The decision as to what to do with you is mine. Little Miss Ackart didn’t have that great of an excuse for either of you, but acting like you’re above the rules takes the cake, Vasse.”, slammed a boulder’s weight upon the air, wiping any semblance of collected, Commander-like confidence off of the Karrian’s snout once she’d cut him down with the familiar use of his own surname – the reaction of any child, no matter how old at heart. Before he could even second-guess anything he’d said, or Kayla could stop looking like she’d been slapped, the woman sharply turned with an authoritative point of a claw down the hallway she’d come from.

“You can clutch your hall passes right on down to Administration, and step into the office that now says Principal Montgomery on the door – and I do mean the both of you.”, the crimson-eyed hare demanded.

Eyes that had fretfully followed the sheen of her claw flung over to Mister Yami in dire need of clarification, pleading that those words were surely not so. To their shock, the strong-bodied Japanese man who’d been the face of their elementary school frowned like he was just as hamstrung as they were in the moment, and not the figure of authority that he typically was; in no place to override this Dahlia Montgomery, much less make her accept his call. When he begrudgingly lifted an open hand in the direction the Parsia had ordered them to march, telling them that they had no choice, all the wounded pair of rejuves could do was begin their walk of shame toward the Principal’s Office with their escort trailing closely behind. They couldn’t imagine being any more blindsided, stewing over how unfair it felt for their innocent walk to be so misconstrued when no harm had been done.

“Go easy on them.”, quickly carried on the air to Kayla’s sensitive ears, nearly giving away that she heard the beseeching whisper with their instinctive pivot to eavesdrop.

“I was! All I was going to do was send them back to class!”, whispered back in a fluster; Kayla eyeballing to her side to see Jacob unable to hear the faint syllables following them, “Which one of us was Principal right now doesn’t matter. I could have been a cafeteria attendant for all he knew. Being insubordinate to any member of this staff is out of line, and I know you’d never tolerate it either.”

“No. He should have argued his point only after complying with you, but that doesn’t change that this started over a misunderstanding. You already know who they are.”, firmed up in their defense.

“I do… and they’re going to lead by example.”, rasped sternly enough to wilt Kayla’s expression, especially after catching Mister Yami’s rebuke of Jacob when he was just trying to call for calm. She didn’t agree, and certainly didn’t fault him.

The seasoned fox gave a little crook-mawed wave to the administrative secretary as she walked by, as familiar with this section of the building as all Penitatas came to be, and left the woman looking extremely puzzled as she and Jacob of all people were ushered into the Principal’s Office. All the signs of Mister Yami’s impending departure were present, finding a half-barren office with most of its personal effects gathered neatly into a box. All that remained upon the walls was the school’s vast plethora of corporal punishment implements, propped or hanging from their pegs in wait for a naughty Penitatas of any potential age. It was saddening to see, but the young rejuves weren’t given time to process the loss of their Principal before the new one stepped in front of them. Wearing an usually tight blouse and pencil-style skirt like a mistress from another era, the tall, imposing hare leaned her hip against the front of what was to be her desk, crossing her arms against the natural bulge of her constrained breasts; all business, and yet so calm and casual about it. Her huge hare-like ears were swept back literal feet behind her, and not far below the soft, desert colored shades of fur atop her head, her whiskers gave way to a Parsia’s carnivorous show of teeth when she began to speak.

“Since you couldn’t make it to the assembly we’re going to have for me to introduce myself, I’m Miss Montgomery. I’ll be your Principal, as of today. Newstat Elementary has been my school for a very long time, and Mister Yami oversees it for me whenever the cycles of life have me away. I would have much rather met the two of you under different circumstances, but here we are.”, she more soberly delivered; her tone rife with the institutionalized platitudes of one who’d long since been a figure of authority.

“Now, does anyone have anything to say for themselves, ending up here like this?”, she looked down upon them with a gesture of her paw around the office, gauging the discomfort slathered across Kayla and Jacob’s faces.

“I thought you were just ignoring Mister Yami. It wasn’t my intention to be disrespectful.”, the young Karrian apologetically assured.

“Well, you were.”, Miss Montgomery let that be the end of his defense, leaving the once playful-feeling, happy doctor wilting where he stood.

“I’m sorry. We’d never want to cause trouble.”, was the honest truth, and he gave it as heartfelt as he could. It was easy considering how out of hand their mistake had gotten; Kayla listening helplessly, assuming the look she was getting from Mister Yami to be a silent urging for her to not argue.

“I don’t know what you’ve become accustomed to, but let it be known that there won’t be any further preferential treatment. No one is above the rules, and I expect Newstat’s best to set a better example for others.”, the Parsia lectured plainly, ensuring that her highest profile students grasped why she stepped away from the desk with her short snout trained upon a short rattan cane upon the wall, graded for use upon eight year olds, “And you’re going to start setting that example right now.”

“Dahlia!”, Mister Yami jumped the millisecond Miss Montgomery placed a single finger upon the cane, shocked and outraged while the vicing of the two rejuves’ chests stole their breath; Jacob immediately shrinking with a fretful frown.

“Please, don’t do that to him!”, Kayla sharply pleaded, flailing her vulpine tail in upset. It promptly earned the hare’s attention, but it came in the form of a briskly raised finger once the cane had come off the wall.

“Now that we’re in this office, I’m afraid you’re going to have to set an example too, little Miss Ackart. You have the boy next to you to thank. Pants down and touch your toes, the both of you. You’re not pennies – you keep your underwear.”, she so sentenced and condemned them to, as a disciplinarian for all of Newstat Elementary’s youngest.

Jacob stole back the directional pivot of Kayla’s ears by making a sad, frustrated whimper toward the floor with a paw upon his face. It was the U.S.S Capitol’s warp core all over again. She never got him into trouble, but once again she was going to be punished because of something he’d done. Kayla absolutely didn’t think that way, holding no blame for him doing what she saw as the right thing, but seeing him guiltily reaching for the button of his trousers hurt her bad enough to flatten her vulpine ears against her faintly boyish head-fur.

“I’ll be correcting Mister Vasse for his insubordination. You can take her.”, Miss Montgomery spoke over Kayla’s head with an open paw toward her, who’s digits shakily darted to the button above her tail in thinking that she was dawdling.

“I don’t at all approve of this. Don’t look at me to help you.”, Mister Yami stunningly barked from the fox’s opposite side. Unfazed, all it earned was a smirk from the hare; her long ears draping down her back with the haughty lift of her lapine nose.

“Suits yourself, Koichi. I figured you would have appreciated the opportunity to use a light hand, and be softer on her than I would be.”, she teased with a great deal of personal familiarity, sounding a whole different kind of confident – one that made the follicles of Kayla’s fur crawl, feeling as if this woman was openly enjoying what she was doing.

By then Jacob’s trousers had been wiggled all the way down to his shoes, making him lean forward awkwardly to hide the embarrassing young bulge in the front of his briefs. He would have cupped his paws over the hump of white cotton like anyone else, feeling such shame, but he needed them to discreetly garner Mister Yami’s attention while Kayla was busy pulling her jeans down her legs. Balling them against his chest in his upset, Jacob silently begged the man to accept the hare’s offer and be the one to discipline Kayla if he could spare her any pain. The poor lad’s eyes looked like they stung already, eating himself up with guilt, and the sad, intense plea from a Medicalos cut deeply enough into Mister Yami that he almost immediately turned his head to the wall of implements at his side to choose something merciful to spank the poor fox with.

“Down. Tail up.”, broke the silence; the ‘Mistress of Fur’ pressing her cane between Jacob’s shoulder blades to bend him over into a proper position, “Five strokes. That should be fair enough for a boy with your letters.”

“And five for you as well, Kayla.”, Yami Koichi helplessly followed against his own will. As she reached down for the tips of her shoes and threw the bushy bulk of her tail to the sky, the running, playing foxes printed upon the seat of her panties were treated to a few informative pats from what the man had swept off the wall, letting her know that it was a thin, lightweight synth-wood paddle, as surely any experienced Penitatas could decipher. Subtly, and without a word, he was telling her not to fret.

Standing fully bent over in place with their tails tipped toward their backs was innately uncomfortable and extremely exposing, leaving no need for imagination as to the shapes of their bottoms beneath the thin veil of their underwear. The cool air of the office brushing against their backsides through the fabric, muzzles pointed to the floor, Kayla and Jacob peered to their sides at one another. The look on Jacob’s face was so nervous and apprehensive after their blindsiding, far removed from the happy old soul he’d been mere minutes ago, but no sooner than they reached out to the other with the comfort of their gaze was it broken by the whip-crack of rattan. His eyes snapping shut, Jacob’s snout gnashed into a powerful wince with a shrill, boyish squeal of razor-sharp pain, nearly leaping clear out of his position at the scale-cutting welt that lashed so high across his rear that it crossed the very base of his tail; a bright streak of red appearing where his briefs hugged its underside. It wasn’t a terribly hard smack of the cane at all, but it didn’t need to be when in such a skilled, worldly paw. Before he could reflexively throw himself upright, arching his tail, the rod shoved itself against his back again to catch him.

“Easy, now.”, Montgomery guided him back down with, tensely whimpering with a quiver to his muzzle’s lip, “I know the Karrians’ methods of including the tail in their discipline. There will be no more of those, but I expect you to hold your ankles if you’re not the sort of boy to stay down.”

Jacob wiggled and swung his tail like a Kindern would their hand after it’d been rapped by a ruler, trying to swallow down that unfamiliar, though surely cultural sting that she’d branded into the scales and muscles that would move with his thick reptilian tail. He hadn’t been the sort of youth to ever discover what a Karrian tail-strap felt like, and the kiss of the cane made him hardly able to stay still; his eyes abashedly watering at the child-like weakness he was showing. It sank Kayla’s heart deep into her feet to see her special someone in such a hurt, sorrowful state, reaching for his ankles to try and take his other licks as quietly as he could. She cracked her maw open to try and whisper him something, feeling her eyes burn, but the sudden clap of a paddle against her panty-clad backside made it her turn to wince – and boy did she, having been too distracted to process the warning tap Mister Yami had given her.

“M-mff!”, she grunted out like a boy, but with an underlying feminine whine to the heated sting she wasn’t quite ready for. Thankfully the swat was incredibly mild, sounding louder than it actually hurt upon the rear-end of a ex-penny tough-girl, and all the fox had to do was plaster her ears back and grit her vulpine teeth to the slow, steady smacks that followed for a typical rejuve.

The simultaneous snap of rattan against cotton made Kayla realize that Mister Yami was trying to distract her from Jacob’s caning, hearing her sweet Karrian’s seething, whimpering yelp in reply. She could tell even with her ears folded back that the hare’s strokes were coming without much force, far from penny-class, but they had each made a sharp, whippy ‘thwap!’ against his thinly clothed scale from how briskly she must have been able to flick her wrist, making the cane faster on impact. It made for a rich, unique sting that was intolerable to the unaccustomed; a fresh, fine line of concentrated pain erupting across the very peaks of his boyish bottom, bringing about a hushed, pathetically despondent yowl. Kayla’s eyes cracked back open from the piling burn of the paddle to catch Jacob’s heavy flinch, squeezing his ankles in a shoe-stepping squirm, but quickly winced them back shut to the biting jolt that came with getting paddled for her fifth and final time. Not being a Penitatas, the fox flung herself upright to brusquely rub the little cartoon foxes leaping around the markedly hotter seat of her underpants, grimacing with bared vulpine teeth like the tomboy she was. Mister Yami’s spanking was only bad enough to make her eyes water, even at eight years old, but the real ache came from looking down at her side to see how hard Jacob was taking his own.

Beneath the short, tidily dignified cut of his black hair, the poor Karrian’s jaw quivered from his sharply painful dressing down; a wet trail down the scales of his snout ending with the bead of a tear upon its dangling tip, shimmering in the bright light of the office. He braced himself with the faintest of high pitched whines from his burning throat, fighting not to cry, but the blur of light brown rattan in the corner of Kayla’s eye brought the arch of Jacob’s back to stiffen with the whap against his backside.

“Ow!”, his teary voice wobbled, bending his knees with but a single thrash of his tail into the air from the biting, raising welt that was already stretching his scales tight at the crease of where his bottom met his thighs. A blubber broke the vicing lock of his jaw, and with the slip of the tearful sound, he sobbed through his teeth, flaying Kayla’s emotions past what she was willing to stomach.

Lifting enough of her muzzle’s lip to wrinkle her snout and show the tips of her fangs, she swung her head around to the snobbish, foreign-species hare that would do this to him, but was beaten to the punch by the last precision, masterful swish of the child’s rattan cane. It ‘thwap!’ed heartily against the white of Jacob’s underwear in the middle of his whimpering, leaving behind a straight-lined wrinkle and a fifth smoldering, cutting stripe across what would normally be his smoothest, most shapely of scales. He’d been fretfully anticipating the final lick of the cane like any non-penny rejuve, and bolted away from the source of venomous sting as soon as he’d taken it; eliciting nothing more than a pained squeak that time before his hasty stumble with his pants around his ankles turned into a fervent, clutching grip of his backside. Dolefully, small as an ant, Jacob quietly tried to stifle his hiccups, running his fingertips over the scratchy mark upon the base of his aching tail, as rough and irritating as the hem of his briefs was against it.

A dusty-hued, pad-less paw came beneath his hurt, humiliated haze of tears toward the floor, “Your hall pass, if you’d please.”

Never lifting his head to make eye contact, the good doctor drooped and sniffled without a word. He slowly eased a paw away from the burning stripes he was left to nurse and plucked the red hall pass from its place beneath his collar, placing it into her waiting palm without further resistance.

“I see the rod adjusted your attitude. That better matches what I expected from your reputation, Mister Vasse.”, sounded a lot less stern coming from the Parsia, even if she was the same pompous hardliner. Accepting Jacob’s meek, disciplined obedience as a good answer, Miss Montgomery managed to look a little empathetic of his sorry sight, setting the rattan cane back upon its pegs on the wall. “Since I seem to have made my point, I’m going to forgo taking away your free period privileges. You’ll have to go back to class for today and use the penny’s correctional time as a study hall, but you’ll be able to ask for a hall pass again come tomorrow. Just remember – point ‘A’ to point ‘B’, quietly. Understood?”

“… Yes ma’am.”, he muttered tearfully, raising his dampened snout only once Kayla had shuffled over and put her arm around him.

“Very good. Mister Yami can walk you back to your classroom.”, the woman summarily dismissed of him with the matter settled, taking a seat behind the Principal’s desk, “As for you Kayla, you’ll be staying here to spend the rest of this period with your nose in the corner. I’m only excusing Jacob from the wall out of Medicalos privilege. You remember how this works, I’m sure. Keep the pants down, and that tail up.”

The fox was already feeling feisty and bothered, and being told that she’d be losing the whole rest of their free period made her huff in frustration. She wanted to be there for Jacob after what had just happened, but the touch of Mister Yami’s hand to her shoulder and stare of stark crimson eyes had her waddling over to one of the office’s front corners, tail swung in silent protest with her jeans bunched around her ankles.

“Come. We’ll stop by a restroom for you to wash up and get composed.”, Mister Yami apologetically guided Jacob to the door in her wake, unwilling to sully any more of the doctor’s dignity.

There was a deep reptilian sniffle right before the office’s door slid back shut, and with its disappearance, Kayla suddenly felt a lot more alone. Settling into her corner, she threw her tail up high and straightened her posture the way she was once required as a Penitatas, just to ensure that the hard-nosed hare behind her would keep her mouth shut until the moment she was allowed to leave. Being trapped in the crease of two walls was by far nothing new, standing motionless with the playful cartoon foxes upon the seat of her panties in full view, but it still felt painfully dull at her age to have no stimulus beyond Miss Montgomery typing at her desk. Not being able to see or do anything had her imagining what the mean-spirited woman must have been writing about she and Jacob, filing some stupid report about their so-called infractions to put in their records. Surely the school would be notifying their parents of them, too. It ate her up to think of how unfair and unconscionable it was to come down on Jacob of all people like such a sack of bricks when he was only trying to stick up for himself, and all of those intrusive thoughts left the fox fuming heated breaths into the corner up until the point her ears sharply pivoted to a sound.

“You know, Ackart… every time I look over at you, I’m forced to imagine myself wearing underpants with little bunny rabbits on them. I can’t decide if it would be endearing, or embarrassing.”, the Parsia nonchalantly commented about Kayla’s favorite panties, leaving her to feel humiliated; muzzle stiffening into the dim light of her own shadow.

“Probably the latter if somebody had my skirt around my ankles.”, she inevitably determined based on the example displayed in her corner, and the smirk that Kayla could hear drew out the tips of her fangs.

“You didn’t have to do that to Jacob.”, she hesitantly shot back, sharing an anxious criticism of her own if she was going to be spoken to while in the corner. Without delay, the hare coolly ‘hrmph’ed.

“As I’ve always had to remind my students – rules are rules. You’d think after four hundred years of me saying it I’d have given up eventually, but I don’t think I’m asking too much of you. Certainly not as much as I ask of the pennies. Even Newstat’s Starfleet hero and hacker heroine should be able to follow basic rules without getting defiant.”, rolled off her tongue calmly, and yet so strange compared to most authority figures, as offhandedly Miss Montgomery seemed to speak. Hearing how long the woman had been around shocked Kayla almost to the point of speechlessness, telling her rather clearly what bygone era this woman hailed from, but that brief spell of silence was broken by a sigh.

“You were paroled far earlier than I would have approved of. That judge of yours should have at least made you finish your first cycle and serve your hard time. We’ve always believed in punishing our criminals, and it cheapens the system to not have seen that punishment through – just like other notable Penitatas were made to before getting their clemency.”, was a belief that she’d held since the day Kayla received her silver ‘C’s, and the disappointed tone that came with it made the fox’s ears burn with agitation. She relived that harsh, tear-filled life in the blink of an eye, being told that she still rightfully deserved to be suffering it.

“… I’m lucky I lived to even be paroled.”, she retorted after the moment she needed to unclench her teeth; quieter, but markedly snappier.

“Oh, I haven’t forgotten about you putting an end to Velius’ day of terror. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t react to it with as much awe as others these days, now that I know how incredibly... neurodivergent Saccard is. It’s difficult to take him seriously.”, Montgomery casually quipped about with a low, feminine chuckle, bringing Kayla to squint at the walls in offended confusion, having difficulty figuring out what that was even supposed to mean.

“You used to be the ‘golden penny’ that certain officials in the department would always bring up for their little parenting discussions. Would you believe they’re doing that with him now? Richter this and that, like he didn’t nearly slaughter us all last summer.”, she went on with dismissive waggle of her paw, even though Kayla could by no means see it – just as the woman couldn’t see Kayla’s startled reaction to her words, grasping what she meant when she wasn’t supposed to.

“The Masters. If you know what they’re talking about, then… you’re a Master?”, Kayla muffled into her corner, making sense of the woman’s access to their administrative forums. It explained an awful lot, like her strong opinions and seemingly broad knowledge.

“No, no… ”, the Parsia unexpectedly denied, however, “thankfully no. My full title is ‘Councilwoman Montgomery of the Fourth Seat’. I’m with the Corrections Council.”

The fur on the back of Kayla’s neck visibly bristled against the collar of her shirt, standing on end all the way down her spine. Her muzzle curled into a wild vulpine snarl that quickly came into the office’s light once her snout was thrown over her shoulder, glaring a single contentious blue eye at the hare that had apparently darkened more than just one of her days. Miss Montgomery hastily changed her expression from aloof to authoritative like she’d damn near flinched at being caught looking that way behind the Principal’s desk, and just as she began to bark at Kayla’s lack of permission to turn around, the fiery fox was pushed the last little bit she needed.

“No! Don’t you even start! I’m done with this!”, she spun right out of the corner with the point of her finger.

“You’re going to talk to me like I’m a forty-three year old adult, and tell me why the council thought I deserved to be punished for what I was made to do when I was kidnapped! Why would you do that to me after I went through something so horrible and was left to die?!”, her infuriated shouting demanded the councilwoman answer for, snatching her jeans to pull them up in her storm toward the desk, “Do any of you have any idea how much you hurt me? How much you hurt my mom and dad, making that my ‘welcome home’? Waking me up with a cane when I was still scared, and not even recovered from my surgery? An entire day in the corner, imagining how much happier the world would have been if I died, when I should have been in bed? It was the worst, most cruelest thing that anyone had ever done to me as a Penitatas, and you need to explain to me how you could have ever thought that was fair!”

As one of those responsible responsible for the injustice that had been sentenced upon her when she needed compassion and care the most, still haunted by Maxwell and Tyson’s shadows, the firecracker felt wholly entitled to challenge the high-and-mighty authority figure and condemn the entirety of what they’d done as a grown, free woman. The Parsia didn’t appear to agree, leaning into the desk with an intertwining of her fingers.

“Well, aren’t you a bitter one.”, Montgomery’s voice dipped with a languidly indifferent growl of annoyance.

“As much as I should refuse to answer to your flippant little rant, I’ll play ball with you, Ackart. I was the one at the table who insisted on that full day in the corner, after all.”, she tacked on with a derisive tone, visibly getting under the skin of the glowering fox before her.

“Fairness had nothing to do with the two days of special penance we gave you for having gone ‘round two’ with DeltaStar. It didn’t matter at that point if you did what you did unwillingly, or with some perverted sense of joy in the back of your head. Some of us still believe in disciplining our Penitatas even if it’s only ‘just in case’ they’d done any wrong, and we were all able to agree that you required hard, fast correction for robbing that banking station blind, just for having done it as a penny under our watch. That, as much as some kicked and screamed against it until it went away, is the good ol’ trusty writ of ‘might’s and maybe’s’ that we cherished back in our days. Penitatas were meant to be spanked as often as possible, and it was just another way of making it memorably hurt – something you rightfully deserved, even if it was oh so sad to be so unfair.”, the once ‘Mistress of Fur’ tipped her nose to the air with the same sardonic mockery that she used to show her Penitatas of old, drooping the weight of her ears onto the back of the Principal’s chair.

“I was a victim!”, Kayla’s vulpine growl erupted into a scream.

“Says the criminal with many victims of her own.”, Montgomery dismissed, letting that be the mess she’d rub Kayla’s muzzle into as to ‘why’ she was so severely disciplined, “You were a Penitatas, and Penitatas get punished. Like it or not, no one would have supported a Department of Corrections that couldn’t assure the public that their little inmate paid dearly for the galactic trade disruption she caused. Everyone claims to want the system to be all soft and fluffy these days, but the moment they feel personally wronged by someone, all they want is for their wrongdoers to get everything but the kitchen sink thrown at them. That sort of wavering public sentiment is why I’m back here at Newstat so early in my current life cycle too, I’ll have you know.”, she trailed off into a sweeter-spoken sort of remark, but Kayla had already been floored by her other choices in words and phrasing; the pain of realization creeping across her face, even in all her anger.

“… It wasn’t just because I was a penny. Nobody caught the bastards that took me hostage, so you sold me out.”, she easily deduced when Miss Montgomery’s explanation didn’t end where it should have. With the white-knuckled clench of her paws, her muzzle’s lip kicked up to the point that all of her carnivorous vulpine teeth came venomously bare.

“I didn’t at all matter to you! I almost died, and all you fucking cared about was punishing me for things that weren’t even my fault, just so the council didn’t catch shit from angry people?!”, Kayla screamed with everything she had, and the slightest movement of Miss Montgomery’s jaw had her throwing an ebony claw up toward the Parsia’s face.

“Shut up! Fuck you, and fuck the whole Corrections Council! You’re a godawful bitch, and I should have told that to your face the moment I fucking met you, talking to a Starfleet Medi like he owes you shit!”, she jabbed that damning finger one last time in rage, looking the hare dead in the eye; her throat burning from the intensity of her shouting. Lashing her tail to the side so hard it looked like she’d break it, the fox spun around right for the door with her ears quivering in ill-tempered fury.

“If you’re done checking off boxes on your profanity-word bingo card, I’d say that was already more than enough for me to suspend you for a week.”, quipped behind her, surprised yet shockingly unfazed.

“Like I fucking care!”, Kayla honestly spat, reaching up to leave.

“It’d be such a pity if you lost that business of yours because of it, though.”, the woman’s phony-sounding sympathy made Kayla’s paw flinch before the door came open. She snapped back around, but the cool, collected, ‘knowing’ little smile across Miss Montgomery’s lapine snout cut in before her fiery tongue could.

“Even if you don’t fall under the jurisdiction of the Penitatas Justice Department, you do fall under the Parenting Oversight Committee’s like everyone else. They’re not going to let a rejuve who’s struggling fall through the cracks. If you suddenly start to have failing grades in school, their boards are going to get worried about your future and pull the plug on your grown adult activities so you can refocus your efforts and get safely back on track. Societies with rejuvenators have a duty to protect their non-Kindern children from self-harm, after all. They wouldn’t want you juggling those big-girl obligations at your age if you couldn’t balance them and your education at the same time – just as they’d freeze the assets of a rejuve that couldn’t stop stealing access to their own bank account in order to gamble.”, sounded like an empty threat at first, but quickly had Kayla’s brows narrowing until the flames that wanted to come out of her mouth fizzled into palpable, frozen apprehension.

“And what do you know – a student who’s suspended gets an automatic ‘zero’ grade on all of the assignments they miss, and can’t make them up. That makes getting good grades and behaving yourself something to care about, yes?”, the hare hiked up a questioning brow as her point was made, leaving Kayla visibly gritting her teeth with a wide-eyed, chest vicing stare.

A single week wouldn’t obliterate her entire semester’s overall grade by itself, but when mixed in with her lack of study, divided home focus between video games and Ackart Enterprises, and having already flunked a ‘Business Law’ test, the fear of a poor report-card flooded the forefront of her mind with visions of ‘D’s and ‘F’s; her Ackart Enterprises paddle in her father’s hand, and a painful letter from the Parenting Oversight Committee’s in her mother’s. All of her white-hat hacker work and software engineering was the biggest main reason she didn’t at all care about being suspended from school, having so much else to do – pissed off parents or not! If she didn’t buckle down…

“I-… I didn’t… ”, Kayla tried to speak, but her voice failed her, and the words wouldn’t come, as hard as everything she believed and envisioned came tumbling down.

“I’m sorry, I-… ”, she lifted her paws; that soft, squeaking voice fading with Miss Montgomery’s satisfied, casual chuckle.

“Only the nicest of words – just as always.”, the Parsia declared of her still-sharp authoritarian talents, and the sweet things she could make the children beneath her say. Her paws came apart once more, sweeping her dusty-hued digits toward the door.

“Go sit on the bench outside of my office and wait for one of your parents to come and get you. Oh, and Ackart?”, Miss Montgomery asked of Kayla’s attention before the poor fox could slink out; tail hugged to the legs of her jeans, even while her face was still stiff with rile, “If you ever raise your voice to me again, cussing me out or not, you won’t be able to sit on the bench outside of my office while you wait for your parents. Please see to it that this is an isolated incident.”

Having her nose rubbed in the degree of restraint she was being shown, not having her insubordinate hide tanned further right then and there, Kayla closed her eyes and excused herself upon legs that wobbled. Now that she grasped that her livelihood was on the line, all she wanted was to get the hell away from the woman and not hear another cruel, knife-twisting word. The administrative assistant watched her flabbergasted as she sat down on the bench and slumped forward, burying her face in her paws to wait for Emily. She rarely sat on the Principal’s bench even as a penny, but… at least she had a really good explanation for why she was.

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

Looking out her home’s front window at the snow that had accumulated that morning, Ki`rene clutched a jar of nano-lotion to her breastbone while she anxiously awaited the arrival of her children’s school bus. She was alerted to demerits received and “corrective action taken” when the school sent out their daily reports to parents, and just as she had sighed and asked aloud what Ninne had done now, the discovery that it was in regard to a caning made her realize it wasn’t about her Penitatas at all. Fretting over how Jacob must have been fairing after something awful like that, not even caring about how he’d earned it, she’d been racked with motherly worry; her sunny yellow eyes saying so out loud as the hover-bus finally sailed into her view and warbled down to the snow-covered street, kicking up a puff of loose powder within its blue ionic glow. Seeing Jacob step off with his head hanging and Ninne’s far larger stature trotting close behind in the gaggle of Penitatas that departed for their homes, she went to the front door and slid it open just as Jacob neared their home’s stoop.

“Jacob! Jacob dear, are you okay?”, Ki`rene gently asked with concern; his long face looking like he’d wet the bed, coming home without Kayla at his side after getting into such trouble. Ninne hastily swept her dinosaur-like frame alongside the Karrian, dipping her head down to his height.

“See? I told you.”, she prodded in reassurance, “He was afraid you’d be mad and ground him the moment you saw him.” The thought of it alone seemed to make Ki`rene wince.

“Heavens, no! I want to lotion those welts right away, and you can tell me all about what happened from your side. I’m just sorry you’ve been sitting on those.”, their mother drake promptly and apologetically put that fear of his to rest, slipping herself out of the doorway to welcome her children in from the cold.

Though quiet from the embarrassing prospect of disrobing in front of her for the first time, Jacob slunk by with calmer gratitude, being told in so few words that he would have to commit something far worse than a mistake for his behavior to ever be doubted and warrant parenting. That notion of earned respect and endearment was rather comforting after having been chastised like an errant little eight year old and left to squirm in a hard seat all day. While he emptied his pocket of the memory chip he carried for his homework, Ninne nuzzled up against her mother in passing, whispering something to her before going straight to the stairs to head up to her room. Jacob could only assume that she wanted to give him privacy as quickly as she could, sisterly as she’d been to him all day, finding his mother’s focus solely upon his weary muzzle.

“It’s only me, dear. I’ll be respectful.”, she promised with a hopeful clutch of her nano-lotion jar, wanting him to be at ease with baring a few scales for some deserved, wholly needed mothering.

“Besides, I’ve seen so many bottoms in my time. When I was a penny, we saw each other’s asses more than our faces!”, Ki`rene’s sunniness arose to lighten the mood, and was tickled to the moon when Jacob’s sorry-seeming demeanor cracked with same sort of childish laugh that he’d given Kayla that morning.

“I can imagine. Thanks, mom.”, the Karrian simply appreciated after how he’d been feeling.

With but a second’s look around, Jacob chose the living room sofa as the best place for the deed, undoing the button above his tail. Big as it needed to be for Drakonians, its armrest seemed like a soft place to bolster himself up high for her; his trousers and briefs sliding from his hips with a single paw as he laid himself across its wide, plush curve. He lifted up the long, lizard-like length of his tail and bared his backside without a fuss, showing Ki`rene all of the still-rosy, hours-aged cane stripes he’d been left with. She almost missed the one at the very underside base of his tail, alarmed by the sight of what appeared to be far too severe marks to ever see upon a non-penny, but that look across her snout turned confused once she placed a claw upon his bottom and felt little firmness beneath the welts. Her poor son’s grimace told her how much they could still sting, but they were strangely restrained into being mostly dermis-deep. That had to have taken some masterful talent, and one disturbing to see used upon a Medicalos. Holding in the guilty apologies she wanted to spew for his ever having been caned, Ki`rene quickly swiped two digits through her jar and minded her claws as she began a gentle, careful circular rub of the nano-lotion into his punished backside.

“So… what happened, honey? I read that you and Kayla were in the hall, and you wouldn’t give up your hall pass when someone wanted to take it from you. The demerit called you ‘insubordinate’, so I took it with a grain of salt – or three.”, the mother drake thickly appended at the end, as little as she’d ever believe that. Squinting at the lamp his snout was slumped toward, a few wrinkles appeared atop his muzzle – a stewing seed of young agitation and elder desire for justice combined, finally getting to escape the tension of his chest.

“Some… jackass of a woman was with Mister Yami. She was really uptight and nasty, and railroaded the hell out of us. He didn’t think we were doing anything wrong, but she was going to take the pass off my shirt, and I wasn’t about to let her come grabbing at me. I stuck up for us and told her to listen to Mister Yami, and everything just-… ”, he argued against what had been done to he and Kayla, but the boyish tones that came out in his voice made him stop. Figuring he’d already said enough, Jacob took a deep breath and turned his muzzle toward his shoulder with a worry that had been haunting him.

“Did I do the right thing, or did I act my age and screw up because she was jabbing me in the ribs?”, he needed to know, as strongly as he felt… but his mother remained silent long enough for him to lower his head back down, afraid of the idea that he’d fallen victim to the sort of emotional misstep a rejuve could unknowingly make as a child. The smooth glide of cream-slathered scale came around the base of his tail, and just as Ki`rene promised, she mindfully kept every drop of the lotion away from places more private.

“I mean, technically you broke rules, but that’s technically.”, her consideration of it came to dissent out of sheer principle, “Who’d ever pounce a Medi for a technicality – especially you? Yami never should have caned you, even if it wasn’t just the misunderstanding that it was. Nobody should be speaking to you in a way that makes you feel railroaded, period, and if you thought it was time to bring out your ‘Commander’ tone of voice, then it probably was! It’s just that an adult of authority punished you into thinking that you might have been wrong, making you doubt yourself with trashy guidance at your age.”

“… Like what my last mother was doing to me?”, Jacob quietly recalled of Lory Rich’s subtle abuse, as relevant as it seemed. Ki`rene wilted at the connection he’d made, craning her neck to cuddle her snout against his shoulder.

“Like that.”, she affirmed just as softly; his happiness and home having fallen apart from the jaded viewpoints she tried forcing upon him through punitive parenting. Ki`rene and Jacob both felt fortunate for the loving little family they made as mother and son; the Karrian turning his head to nuzzle her snout in return. By goodness did he need her after the day he had, and he didn’t even feel shy about admitting it.

“It wasn’t Mister Yami that caned me, though. That awful woman is our new Principal.”, he sighed, feeling validated and markedly less achy.

“Well, that explains a lot. I liked Yami. He’s cut Ninne a break or two when she apologized nicely enough to deserve it, and I appreciate that sort of thing.”, Ki`rene sounded disappointed, brushing her saurian thumb across Jacob’s bottom in a slow massage of the lotion’s remnants.

“It was a real surprise to see a Parsia too, even though I wish I didn’t.”, the doctor socially griped, freezing Ki`rene’s claw where it laid, “There aren’t many of them after they lost their home-world to a supernova half a millennia ago. They’d have gone extinct if it weren’t for rejuvenators giving their survivors time to scatter.”

With a dry maw and a lump in her throat, unexpectedly teetering on the precipice of time itself, Ki`rene steadied her voice to be as normal as possible, “Do you remember this woman’s name?”

“Miss… Montgomery, I think?”, he recalled in his slump toward the sofa’s side table, just for his adoptive mother’s claw to suddenly jump from his backside.

“Alright dear, pants up!”, she hastily directed with a pat to his back, swinging her long saurian body toward the stairs, “Ninne, come back down here, please!”

Jacob slid from his indecent perch and began to button his trousers back up, sharing the same questioning glance with Ninne once she began coming down the stairs. Ki`rene didn’t usually speak so fast or slip out of her sunny calm, even if her words themselves were still the same as always. She fetched a few things and her car’s key-fob, and before either of the rejuves knew it, they were being ushered out the door with the instruction to head over to the Targate’s house so she could take a trip to their school. The ‘why’ was certainly apparent, but being asked to impose themselves on Emily to be babysat was awfully unusual, even with the assurance that she’d understand – and besides, they could see how Kayla was doing this way, and find out why she didn’t take the bus home with them! Ki`rene’s sizable hover-car sped off into the gray of Calleet’s mid-afternoon before they could so much as ring their friend’s doorbell, and with it, the raptor-like allosaurus sank into the furious, indomitable scowl that she’d been holding back since she’d heard Furball’s name. Madam Montgomery wasn’t someone she ever wanted to deal with directly again, no matter the century, but there wasn’t a chance in fucking hell she was going to let that monster lay a finger on one of her children without hearing about it.

She stormed into Newstat Elementary with purpose, looking far more imposing than the gentle giant ever did, stamping her heavy foot-claws down the school’s main hallway with all eight feet of her height towering above the two teachers she passed on her way to Administration. When tile gave way to carpet, she found the secretary’s desk vacant, and not a soul lingering around aside from a dispirited Penitatas left sitting upon the bench outside of the Principal’s office. With a pencil in her black-lettered paw, the Whyslian had been doing some line writing homework atop a book in her lap before Ki`rene’s strong stride snapped her head up. The feminine-looking little otter’s first reaction was to shrink as she approached, but that persecuted, sullen face upon a rejuvenated child alone was enough to drag the mother drake’s silent fury back down to Earth, slowing her trot to a halt.

“… Are you waiting for a turn in her office, dear? After-school detention?”, Ki`rene softened the tension in her saurian jaw to ask, poking a claw at the soundproof door beside them. It would make sense that a schoolmate of hers was already howling at the Mistress of Fur’s paws, but the Penitatas was quick to shake her head.

“No madam.”, her whiskers withdrew toward her cheeks, softly spoken and demure, “She didn’t want me standing at her desk to do my homework. I was told I had to sit on the bench out here.” The moment that all clicked, Ki`rene’s scaly eye-ridges leapt up high.

“Oh good gracious, you’re her penny? I’m so sorry.”, she quickly spurt in sympathy, dipping herself down to the long-haired girl’s height, and that outlandishly brazen disrespect of the hare out of nowhere forced the otter to stifle a powerful giggle with her paws. It was the vibrant, childish sort she’d hear from Zachary when he was in the midst of acting his age and playing, but as abruptly as the happy sound began, she fearfully fought to swallow it down for daring to laugh at that as a Penitatas.

“It’s okay. I’m the one who’s being bad.”, Ki`rene promised with a sheepish chuckle, having breached penny-protocol by speaking ill of another caregiver. The thought of that woman being a parent soured her maw, but at least her unusual honesty seemed to help the girl be less sullen; her paws falling away from her mouth to reveal a shy, reticent smile.

“I’ve never heard an adult say anything like that before. Are you a teacher here? It’s my first day.”, her otter-like whiskers relaxed a little.

“Just a penny-mom. Did you get a nice welcome from everyone once the bad part was out of the way?”, Ki`rene warmed her tones to be motherly for her, knowing well of the ‘welcome spanking’ she would have gotten in front of her new peers. She could never resist the urge to cheer up a long face, especially after they’d had such an eventful day.

“There was a girl that talked to me right away, but she was only interested in me because she thought I was a ‘Y-rep’ like she was. I don’t think she believed that I’d always been a woman. An Aspatrian boy got me away from all of her questions, and helped introduce me to the others so I wouldn’t feel awkward about my letter.”, turned into thankful, cautious optimism; her voice so girlishly timid.

The ‘Y’-chromosome repressed girl that pressured her must have been Stephanie, because only male Aspatrian in the whole district was Zachary. Being an ex-penny allowed Ki`rene to imagine how that exchange went once they were out in the yard for a break, and it gave her a fair idea of what crime the girl must have committed if Stephanie Galmar was so interested in a potential kindred spirit. It also told her that the young, apparently six year old Whyslian was as kind as she seemed if Zachary went out of his way to interact with a fellow Penitatas for once, as much as he disliked your average penny. She adored his willingness to extend a friendly paw to black-letter pennies now that he had Richter in his life, choosing his friends on their attitudes alone – something all too rare when black-letters could be so easily judged by their covers.

“That sure sounds like Zachary.”, she could happily say for how sweet he was, even if she had to spank him more than she’d like for the amount of slips he could make, “He’s my Medi son’s best friend! You’re in a great class! I think you’ll have a fine time here.”

For all of the parental cheer she could exude, shoving her agitation aside for a young one, the encouragement made the otter’s ice-like eyes wander toward her lap and the line writing homework she held; still gently smiling, despite its shallowness. As she trailed the neat, repetitive etchings she’d made down the paper, she imagined what it might feel like if that big, warmhearted drake were to compliment her handwriting, if only to tell her she did a good job on an effort that was otherwise meaningless. That… little something, she so dearly wanted.

“I wish I could be your penny.”, drove a dagger straight through Ki`rene, never fathoming she’d be told such a thing in all her years, “Thank you for being so nice.”

“You’ll have other moms. I’m about to give your current one a piece of my mind, if that makes it any better.”, Ki`rene’s empathy mixed back into the tumult of her ire, swinging her neck to the office door beside them.

In one snap motion, the mother drake smacked the door’s controls and barged straight into Principal Montgomery’s office before it had even finished sliding aside. She and the desert-hued hare behind the desk locked eyes the moment her long saurian bulk strode through the full height of her doorway, and a deluge of long-faded memories came rushing back at the mere sight of the woman she once had to call ‘Madam.’ The Mistress of Fur looked no different than she did those two centuries ago, right down to her far-too-tight clothes and the pompous look she had across her face, hiking a brow above the rearward drape of her weighty ears.

“… Can I help you?”, the Councilwoman questioned after a moment of silence; paws still upon the key-panel of the desk’s built-in computer.

“You certainly may. I’m Doctor Vasse’s current mother.”, stiffly set the tone of their meeting. Montgomery made a calm, quiet ‘ah’ of understanding to it; her demeanor, nor her voice, suggesting that she had any clue who was actually standing before her.

“Your concern is to be expected, given the circumstances.”, the Parsia returned professionally, leaning into the Principal’s desk with a fold of her paws, one over the other, to address the elephant in the room – or the Drakonian matriarch that stormed into it, at the very least, “As much as today’s events warrant discussion, I’m afraid that corporal punishment is both compulsory and mandated within Earth’s school system. Mister Vasse cannot be opted out of the consequences that come with failing to adhere to some semblance of school policy. The best thing that can be done is to have a talk with the old boy, and make sure he understands that Medicalos privilege only goes so far.”

“He shouldn’t need Medicalos privilege to be treated with respect by an ancient relic that still dresses like she’s starring in a twenty-second century spanking porno.”, abruptly ended any pretense once Ki`rene cut the wanna-be headmistress down out of nowhere, earning a rather interesting expression from the hare; her brows reaching for the ceiling, “How dare you lay a finger on Jacob for standing up to you, when he never should have had to in the first place!”

With her features stiffened into one that looked more bewildered and annoyed than insulted, Madam Montgomery stared back at the wrathful glare of sunny yellow eyes above and slowly tapped at her computer’s key-panel even in the midst of being berated. Seeming curious to who she might have been dealing with, it took no more than a check of Jacob’s administrative records to find the full name and address of the errant Medicalos’ registered parent – something that made her sputter into a fit of laughter, ‘pfft!’-ing at the sight.

“Ulrich! Well, that explains a lot!”, her professional facade disappeared, catching the faint gleam of saurian teeth now that she’d recognized the drake she’d blistered so many times, “I knew you’d moved back to Newstat and had some connection to Ackart, but I didn’t think you were the one taking care of her boyfriend! Even after all of these years of being in the department, you still spit fire like the penny I remember! I guess nobody finished paddling that out of you after I’d retired to rejuvenate!”

“Not everything needs ‘fixing’. Having a spine isn’t a character flaw.”, Ki`rene pettishly growled, crossing her arms, “You aren’t the only one who knows all of the rules listed in our school system’s charter, either. Corporal punishment is compulsory, but I reserve the right as a parent to restrict who can administer it to my children. Consider this your notice – you’re never to touch Jacob again, or my penny-daughter, Ninne.”

Madam Montgomery smirked, “So long as there’s another member of staff available, that is… but, such little technicalities aside, I’ll make the notations in their files. Now, just so I know, would strapping a muzzle on this ‘daughter’ of yours a count as a physical punishment?”

Her lackadaisical simper of self-amusement failed to flinch when Ki`rene’s claws slammed down on the desk, and a feral, snarling Drakonian snout swung up close enough to her face to stir the air around her lapine whiskers. The display of motherly rage did nothing to dull the loose, airy chuckle that promptly slipped from the Parsia’s maw, staring back into those piercing yellow eyes.

“Oh please, you’re the last thing a Parsia would ever feel intimidated by. You drakes have too much… neck, to be threatening.”, the unflappable mistress quipped with a flip of a paw, leaning back far enough in her chair to throw a broad hare-like foot-paw upon the edge of her desk’s surface with a thump; her naturally powerful leg making a show of it, regardless of how incredibly indecent the pose made her while wearing such a tight pencil skirt. A Parsia’s leg was a bone shattering guillotine to be respected.

… Though, when her own display did just as little to Ki`rene as the drake’s had done to her, Madam Montgomery’s haughty little smirk melted into a far more languid, bored expression amidst their silent stare. The hare’s maw crooked in disappointment, and with it came an uncomplimentary sigh as she sat back upright.

“Fine. I shouldn’t have expected you to take a bit of sarcasm when you’re literally known for rallying to rain on people’s parades.”, she leaned into her desk and groaned, considering the big-name reform activist that Ki`rene ended up becoming against the enjoyable system they once had. With that offhanded potshot out of the way, her expression turned to one more serious in the face of the agitated drake before her nose.

“That muzzle they slapped on you way back when is illegal these days. Obviously I’m not going to be putting one up on my wall, and am bound by the rules to defer any situations with your wards to the vice-principals now that you’ve asked me to. Is that blunt enough for you, Ulrich?”, she affirmed with a tone, being direct enough to leave no question as to her intentions – like they’d been clear all along.

Ki`rene stood back upright looking several shades of confused and rattled; her saurian snout wrinkled, staring down upon the hare in disbelief. It stirred a deeply buried pain in the back of her mind to think that Madam Montgomery’s attitude this whole time was just her taking the shit out of everything behind closed doors – all just “part of the game”, as her old Principal had once said of enjoying a Penitatas’ misery more than two centuries ago. The inkling that she’d likely been prodded all for the woman’s amusement made Ki`rene’s blood boil and disarmed her all at the same time, turning away from the desk with a frustrated swing of her saurian length toward the door now that she had gotten the answer she came here for. Still, a nagging question roiled inside of her, and it erupted sharply off her forked tongue.

“Why would you even come back here after getting onto the Council?!”, she snapped back around with a toss of her arm, being so unable to fathom it.

“Because I always have. I take my desk back when it’s time to step away from the Council chambers and enjoy my later years. Warm, red bottoms make for a fine retirement.”, rolled into one of the hare’s hedonistic, sanctimonious smiles of self-satisfaction, “But, this time around, I decided to return much earlier than that because I scored a breakthrough vote on a long-stalled policy referendum of mine. I can afford to step back now that I don’t have to keep fighting to drum up support for it at the Council table. It’s only a start, but it puts us a step in the right direction.”

“What could be so important that the Masters wouldn’t get an advisory for?”, Ki`rene doubted, having rolled her eyes well before the Councilwoman was even finished with her spiel.

“Increasing the number of special days that Penitatas are required to serve a year, and the reinstatement of our retired holidays.”, she managed to say so calmly and plainly, the absence of any prideful fanfare behind it made Ki`rene tensely scoff.

“Like I’d ever believe that! That’d never fly this day and age, and all of us would’ve known about it!”, she fired back at the woman’s authoritarian mind-game nonsense, being a top ranking official herself. The uneasy squeeze around her heart became no better when the Mistress of Fur didn’t so much as blink, resting her chin upon her paws.

“The finalized policy will come down the proper channels once it’s ready. At the moment, hard timers serve only one measly Special Punishment Day a year, Christmas, and black letters also serve their birthday as a second. As of February first, all Penitatas, regardless of letter color, must serve three. That means the birthday S.P.D is back on the menu for every single hard-timer, and a third special day is going to have to be retroactively sentenced to every Penitatas by a judge, just like they used to be. We just need to finish clearing up the logistics with the courts, and brush the dust off of the old pool of holidays for those judges to choose from.”, came with enough administrative detail to obliterate the expression across Ki`rene’s face.

The old Special Punishment Days? Three a year? Birthdays, again? That grim, baleful reality for every one of their Penitatas had been seemingly looming in the darkness and given Parsian fangs, and all of the empathy the mother drake held as an ex-penny and activist sent her emotions into so much tumult that all she could do was stare.

“You can feel free to relay that little preview to your mother, and the rest of her Department of Nepotism.”, the hare slighted as a neat bow on top of how wounded she looked, cavalier and indifferent with the history they all shared, and that quickly narrowed Ki`rene’s reptilian pupils into razor blades.

“I earned my place in the Masters like everyone else, and I earned it by fighting for the reformation you’re trying to undo! Richie fucking died so our Penitatas could enjoy their goddamn birthdays, and black letters only serve it because we can invite their victims to make it work! This isn’t the twenty-six hundreds, Furball! Nobody’s going to play games to paddle their friends!”, Ki`rene lashed back with the same iron-willed fury she cultivated in Penitatas Court so long ago, fighting back against titans of higher authority.

“We didn’t think so either in our current cultural climate, so you’ll be seeing plenty of updated procedures. It just means that parents are going to have to do all of the spanking, and attendance of parties will need to be mandatory in order to give the birthday-penny an uncomfortable audience. Come hell or high water, everything that McDaft’s drunkard parents ruined for everyone is going to find its way back, and Penitatas are going to rightfully be Penitatas again. The free ride ends here and now.”, shrugged off the sharp-toothed rebuttal, firming up once Madam Montgomery’s leisurely expressions became those of a staunch mistress – the sentiment and motive behind her olden-times referendum becoming all too clear.

“That hard-liner bullshit is why Richie isn’t here anymore! The Masters will absolutely fight this!”, came out with an uncouth anger that Ki`rene couldn’t hold back, throwing the point of a claw toward a carpet forever stained by the tears of their pennies. Poised to turn back the clock in a bid to return what was lost, the long-eared Councilwoman lifted her paws into a sort of shrug.

“I’ve got to give the credit for all of this where it’s due. If you don’t like the Council’s decision, the Masters can all blame their new ‘golden penny’, Saccard. I never would have been able to finally push this through the chamber if it wasn’t for the public sentiment that boiled over after after he attacked the planet. Maybe all of you can have a rousing parenting discussion about that, instead of picking apart his so-called ‘positive’ behaviors. Preferably before he has you all debating how to approach an autistic Penitatas’ disruptive stimming – the poor baby.”, ended with cruelly derisive ridicule, nearly raising Ki`rene’s scales on end.

“You’re disgusting! What century do you even think this is?! You don’t know a damn thing about him!”, she shouted with enough defensive rile to make Madam Montgomery laugh, and her obvious pleasure in it raised Ki`rene’s animosity to new heights.

“I know more than you, apparently.”, she slyly taunted, using that as the launchpad for the high-and-mighty smirk she slathered across her broad lapine snout, “You should expect to get your scales ruffled when you raise your voice and call me ‘Furball’. Everything has its consequences, but you should know that better than most people after your day in Penitatas Court, shouldn’t you? You should be careful to not earn any more, Ulrich. You’re just so easy to punish, no matter how big you get. So, I would say that if you don’t have anything else to give me ‘notice’ of, do please leave, and try not to adopt Farah on your way out, if you’re at all capable.”

For not having been anywhere near the woman in almost two hundred years, the authoritarian vitriol hurt in a way that still felt so familiar to Ki`rene after having been under her thumb for so long. Silenced by the frozen stumble of her own tongue, being told that the woman’s grotesque comments were purposely meant to upset her as some sort of retaliatory recompense made the tension and pain of her own rage that much more noticeable. She’d been played like a fiddle from the moment she’d raised her volume, and the Mistress of Fur just got to sit there in all of her confidence while she wound herself up. The mother drake’s snout twitched with her jaw clenched, and the wordless stare the two shared ended with Ki`rene turning and smacking the Principal’s office door controls with a slap of her claw to storm out the same way she came in.

The gut punch of learning what had been transpiring beyond the authority of the Masters overshadowed the fact that she’d gotten what she came for. If that change in Special Punishment Days went through… when it went through, it would become the most massive shift in policy in centuries, tripling what your typical Penitatas had to serve in top-tier penance – and all of it coming in the form of special days they had once deemed too severe or unfair for a reformed system. It ate the sunny-eyed guardian alive after everything she’d done for the reform, and her infuriated distress must have been obvious, because the young otter on the bench with her line writing homework looked outright alarmed when she flew out of the office. There was no way the she had heard what was said on the other side of the soundproof door, and it certainly didn’t help how powerless Ki`rene felt, knowing that the girl had no clue what was in store for her.

“Your mother’s a bitch, Farah.”, she harshly spat in her haste to leave, with her mind in too much of a blur to look back and see the black-letter penny’s wide-eyed blink. All she wanted to do was get back to her car, and she prayed the whole way there that she’d calm down enough to keep from roaring once she got inside.

Her prayer went unanswered.

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

While the warm light of Kayla’s bedroom separated its three young rejuves from the dismal gray beyond the Targate household’s windows, there remained a solemn dreariness between them that they’d been forced to accept as the day went on. The ever-present liveliness of voices and sound from the holo-vision on the fox’s desk was all that carried on within its blue walls, having been devoid of much beyond the occasional rustle or sigh since the hours had dragged into the evening. Jacob and Ninne’s earlier arrival had been the social venting spectacle one would have expected from a trio of upset, flustered rejuves getting together, but once they’d gotten all of it out, the slow drift back into the more mundane throes of their young lives had left them feeling quiet, scorned, and honestly a little bitter all around. Kayla had been trapped at her computer console ever since, just as she had been before they’d gotten there, using its key-panel as a space to write her parents a lengthy punitive essay in regards to everything she did to get suspended from school. The fox didn’t expect to have to be on the defense after what happened, much less get into a teary-eyed argument with her mother about it, but for as foul as Principal Montgomery was, she didn’t get off as cleanly as she thought she’d be. That pink bar of soap in her bathroom had brand new marks from her teeth upon it, and for as angrily upset as it made her to be punished for giving that wicked hare what she had coming to her, she was told she needed to write a “damn good” essay if she wanted to keep any of her privileges while she was out of school, for all the harm she’d done to herself and Ackart Enterprises. She understood that much, but being the sorry, repentant fox that she was hadn’t been enough to wipe the sad scowl off of her snout, etching upon yet another piece of paper after a few hours of banging her head against Emily’s demanded page count.

Life hadn’t been much fairer to Ninne and Jacob. After they’d settled in and had their group “bitching session” as Ninne had so called it, the older drakeling had taken residence upon Kayla’s bed, curling up to relax and watch the holo-vision that Jacob had turned on. She was big enough to take up most of the twin-sized bed all on her own, but Jacob didn’t mind tucking himself in where ever he could. That proved to be a point of sharp contention the next time that Emily rounded to check on them, seeing as Jacob let her pick what to watch and sank his time into his datapad. Finding her watching an entertainment news show clearly meant for older tween girls brought out the heavy tones that none of them wanted to hear, and a slew of drilling questions about her asking for permission, or whether or not she was grounded from her holo privileges at home and was using Jacob to skirt them. He pressed harder against that notion than he might have liked speaking, and Ninne was just as defensively taken aback, having not done anything but quietly lay there. Being so close to turning eleven years old, she and Anne’s holo privileges were the most cherished things they had, classed so far higher than toys at their ages. Emily took all of their answers, including her daughter’s own fiery side-eye, but still never really seemed to accept that Ninne was having what amounted to personal holo-time without explicit rationing. They never came to know for sure, because her warning reprimand still came with the order for Ninne to come downstairs with her. She was due an unearned punishment, it seemed. Guilty of being a Penitatas, if nothing else, she followed her disciplinarian with a dry, sour, “Yes ma’am.” Regardless of the reason used, Jacob was left wishing he was somewhere far away.

Kayla knew enough to figure that Ninne simply had something assigned to her today, and her mother was merely taking care of it for Ki`rene since it was starting to get late, but the timing and severity of it added to their dark, anxious cloud. It ended up being some time before Ninne came back, and it was long after they’d heard her last muffed roar from the living room – a sign that today was one of the bad, harsher unearned spankings a Penitatas sometimes faced. She did so without her pants, nor a word, slowly slinking back in to carefully crawl back up onto the bed. The scales upon the base of her tail and the sides of her hips were thickly pocked with red, bruising dimples that disappeared beneath the hem of her white saurian underwear, and she bitingly grunted when she tried to ease herself onto her side to curl up. With reddened, tired eyes, she set her head down on Kayla’s mattress and went right back to watching the holo in her loose, miserable slump. Kayla tried not to stare when she looked over her shoulder, knowing that deadened, distant look in Ninne’s eyes. It was a bitter heartache every penny experienced when they felt so tired of it all. Those times they were just sick to death of the pain, and had enough of crying when all they wanted to do was be left alone to enjoy one nice thing. As much as Ninne didn’t seem like she wanted to talk, she and Jacob both stiffly went back to what they were doing, letting the spanking and whatever else happened downstairs stay there.

The next time there was the sound of weight upon the stairs outside of Kayla’s room, no one was really in the mood to turn their heads for them anymore. That dour sentiment lasted until the footfalls began to seem too large to be a human’s, and a telltale pivot of Kayla’s ears spun her part way around from her key-panel; pencil still in her short vulpine fingers.

“Ma’!”, Ninne beat her to the punch with, throwing her head off of the bed just as Ki`rene came up to the bedroom’s open door. Right away they could tell something was off when her long face stepped into the light of the room, looking like all of her motherly sunshine had gone through the wringer.

“Sorry for running off like that and not coming back, dear. I ended up having to make a lot of calls, and needing your grandmother’s help on top of it. I wasn’t feeling very well.”, sounded awfully morose and run down, and right behind her was Emily, seeming just as drug through the mud. They might as well have been coming home from a funeral, and their black clouds dropped a troubled, uneasy air upon the room that none of the young rejuves could understand after a mere trip to their school to see Principal Montgomery.

“What’s wrong? You put the ‘fear of mom’ into that lady for Jacob, right?”, Ninne warily asked, not bothering to veil her penny-insolence toward the hare for the sake of her step-brother.

Only silence replied; neither parent’s expression so much as twitching in response to her more prickly choice of wording. The weight of the ceiling above grew heavier by the second as Ki`rene languished where she stood, arms crossed and eyes on the floor, trying to find her words. Emily sulked in sympathy of it in Kayla’s doorway, cutting the awkward, woeful quiet with a touch of her hand to the Drakonian woman’s tail.

“Kayla, hun?”, she softly asked to garner Kayla’s attention, giving her ailing friend a moment to steel herself for the talk she’d been dreading to have with them all, “You don’t have to write anymore. You can keep your privileges. I trust you to steer clear of this woman at school, and keep your grades from hurting your business. Your father and I can still read what you’ve written if you wanted to share. I… don’t want it to feel like a waste, or anything. Just mind your temper, okay?”

At first the young fox only nodded, but for as heavy-hearted and apologetic as it sounded, she couldn’t help but partly fold her ears and and willfully melt away her bitterness now that she wasn’t being punished anymore, “Thanks, mom.”

“I’m going to start making dinner for everyone. I’ll call when it’s ready.”, Emily looked to the rest of the room to say, since it would be news to Jacob and Ninne that they’d be staying to eat. She lingered a moment, looking over the punished drakeling’s well-paddled hip and tail upon the bed, and only slipped away once Ninne had noticed her subtle assessment of how she was doing. The Penitatas hardly knew what to make of it, as unflinchingly strict as Kayla’s mother could be.

“Did I just get let off the hook because of you? I never heard you talking down there with Emily.”, Kayla could only imagine happened with her mother’s change of heart, turning her computer chair the last bit around to Ki`rene with a discarding flick of her dull pencil back onto her console. The sizable mother drake didn’t have much room for maneuvering now that Kayla’s room had proper belongings and furniture, so she opted to settle back onto her tail; its bulk lightly bumping the Completatas’ old corner-stool by the wall near the door.

“I asked her to meet me outside before I came up to see you kids, and I told her how my trip to the Principal’s office went. It went about as well as yours from what I hear, and I didn’t mind my language with her either. She pushes people on purpose. It’s what she does.”, she spitefully explained of the hare’s ways, knowing how vulnerable a willful, strong personality like Kayla’s was in the presence of Madam Montgomery.

“Did you really tell her off?”, Ninne lit up a little, and Ki`rene raised a claw with a point to both she and Jacob.

“I at least made my feelings on the matter very clear to her before I left. She isn’t to lay a paw on either you, and Emily’s going to file the same disciplinary deferral for you too, Kayla, but it’s still going to be up to all three of you to stay completely off her radar for everything else. Madam Montgomery follows the rules to the letter, so as long as you mind yourselves and keep out of trouble, she’ll go after the lower hanging fruit to get her kicks instead.”, she urged them as a more firmly spoken piece of parental guidance. It was prudent to ensure that they didn’t stand out and make themselves easy targets for her punitive whims, but what she said ended up stirring more consternation upon the rejuves’ faces than she thought it would.

“Madam?”, Jacob balked in confusion before even the girls. Ki`rene’s choice of title became more glaring than her inexplicable familiarity with the woman, crooking the drake’s maw for that odd slip of trained habit; eyes well upon her.

“See dear, I… had to call her that for a very long time. It was what she used to make the Penitatas at your school call her back when this was the District of Newstat, but we gave her plenty of names of our own. She was the ‘Mistress of Fur’… except I just called her ‘Furball’, and my best friend came up with ‘Rage Rabbit’. I had more days like yours than I could ever count, getting paddled to hell and back in that awful woman’s office. Dahlia is the whole reason I ended up getting judicially paddled in court, and served time for so long.”, she somberly revealed, letting the trio piece together the more obvious notions of her bombshell on their own.

All they’d known since Kayla’s parole day was that she’d been a Penitatas, not the where, much less who in this world marred her scales back then. The sudden knowledge of just who Principal Montgomery was to Ki`rene and her darkened place in history made the room deathly silent with slack jawed stares. She’d been their ages enough times to know their young minds were imagining the Parsia hurting her in some foreign, unrecognizable century.

“When I got my judicial, there was still the old holiday when… ”, she tried to continue, but thinking of that fateful day as an ‘old holiday’ when she knew it was coming back in its punitive form made her sadly stumble; needing a moment.

“It was Diaspora morning. We were going to get thrashed by the automated booths you’ve all learned about, but she accused a courtyard full of us of vandalizing some stupid statue that no one touched. It was how things like that were handled back then when they didn’t know if anyone had done anything wrong, but I got her to admit that she was only doing it so she could enjoy spanking everyone after the booths had a turn with them. She said breaking our blisters open would be a ‘treat’. So, I went out to the field and bloodied myself smashing those booths’ controls to stop her from hurting us for the fun of it. I had no idea what they were going to do to me for that. I only wanted to protect everyone, but… in court, she got a pass, and only the penny had to pay.”, Ki`rene soberly retold, watching their faces contort with anger until their inevitable eruptions were clambering over one another.

“And this is the kind of person they’d put on the Council?!”, Kayla snapped her ears back with a throw of a claw toward her window and the world beyond, rekindling the childlike temper that her mother had literally just told her to mind.

“The Council’s filled with holdovers from the old era like her. They… never really left.”, Ki`rene slumped, sharing a piece of administrative knowledge with an eye upon the fox’s door to make sure Emily wasn’t around, “Dahlia managed to take the Fourth Seat when the fallout from Richie’s death made some vacancies on the Council. I was just a… you know, sad and sick little ‘Psy’ then. My mother liked to rub it in her face that she became a ranking official first, and without being… whatever the hell her porno-skirt-wearing ass is.”

And though her cherished rejuvenated children were scowling in their angry riles from her story, that unexpected potshot broke Ninne into a reptilian ‘pfft!’, damn near hissing out her snicker with the loss of her full control over her throat. It made Ki`rene’s snout burn sheepishly, feeling like her present-day mother Sally after being so incredibly cavalier yet again, like she had been in front of Farah, but her daughter’s reaction clearly dulled some of the tension within the trio beneath her wing. Off the top of her head, she couldn’t think of a single instance where she’d ever sworn in front of them like that. Meeting their Grandma Sally was going to be rather different than what they’re used to in a penny household, to say the least.

“I don’t want to sound like I’m not taking any responsibility for my own actions back then, especially to you, Ninne, but… I just don’t have it in me to pretend to be sorry for standing up to them, even if I should be setting an example for you. It doesn’t feel fair for me to talk like that when I’m the one who chews your tail, and forces you to make up for the things you’ve done.”, she felt obligated to express out of fear of being hypocritical, thumbing her nose at authority when she herself was Ninne’s.

“It’s not the same. You shouldn’t have to feel bad for trying to be-… being a good person.”, her daughter’s eye-ridges narrowed in confusion, strengthening her wording mid-sentence with the firm tone she took.

The rosy-hipped drakeling continuing to be nothing but familial and protective as she had been since she got home made Ki`rene smile in a sad, pained sort of way with everything on her mind. Ninne giving someone that had made her cry a thousand times over a free pass wasn’t what your average Penitatas would do, and hearing that automatic, unquestioning understanding struck an emotional chord, considering it was the only thing she wanted when she destroyed those Spankmaster units long ago. Hearing it from her daughter so easily like that just-…

“Ma’… what’s wrong? What did she say to you?”, Ninne more softly asked her out of worry, bringing the mother drake to realize that she might not have looked perfectly composed anymore.

“She told me the Council is in the process of finalizing a draft policy to force hard-timers to serve more than just Christmas. They’re bringing Penitatas up to three ‘special days’ a year.”, she admitted without sugar coating a single syllable. The reaction to what she’d been dreading came instantly; Jacob recoiling with a near mewling exclamation of fear for his friends, and Kayla’s fiery dissent amid Ninne’s broken, frozen stare.

“Dahlia came up with it, and convinced the other Council members to pass it. They’re making birthdays ‘special punishment days’ again, and all of the old holidays from my time are all coming back in some form to potentially be anyone’s third day.”, Ki`rene’s voice weakened as she explained further, considering the devil was truly in the details. All at once, the rejuves were struck with the concept of the defunct punitive holidays coming back to be more than just legends. Those unfathomable spanking booths, playing games of chance with Easter eggs…

On cue, in agonizing sympathy, the fox and Karrian slowly turned their eyes to the sole person in the room this terrible news directly impacted. Ninne was still and silent in mortified grief, seemingly sharing the same grim, dreadful lump in her gut with her mother as they stared eye to eye. Nearly eleven years old, the older rejuve failed to break down into the pleading fit of a crying tantrum she surely would have years ago, and experienced the heartache from the lens of her mind’s age.

“Saying it like this means you can’t stop it, can you?”, her voice rang with pain, sadness, and anger all at once, reasoning that it must have been beyond the authority she’d come to learn her mother had. As she figured, Ki`rene slowly shook her head.

“But… my birthday’s so close though, I’m sure I’ll still get to have it before they-… !”, her hastened attempt at finding reassurance abruptly died, seeing her mother’s eyes close and her head shake a little more. Her birthday was barely more than a month away, going into the final year of her sentence’s first cycle… and quite possibly the last one she’d even have as hard-time Penitatas. The weight of that dagger went right through her for everyone to see – and it hurt.

“We’re not letting them do this without a fight. I’m so sorry, Ninne.”, Ki`rene sorrowfully promised as a Master and her mother, being forced to swallow what hit her when she saw the sort of anguish that came with not only losing a happy birthday, but being promised the utmost pain and blistered scales instead.

It brought Ninne’s teeth together in frustration, and with it, she buried her snout into her claws without making a single sound. Dread, grief, pain – all of the things that would come to an older child first, all flooded in at once, making her curl up on Kayla’s bed to the gnawing swell of stinging tears in her eyes. She wanted to roar with anger and slam a wall with the weight of her tail, or at least erupt into a swearing tirade against the crushing emotions, but the nagging silver letters on her claws made her feel unable to express any reaction at all, when even the slightest outburst or exasperation could get her into serious trouble. Sometimes the rules weren’t fair. She didn’t want to spend her night crying into a corner just because she exposed her own rightful pain, and reacted beyond keeping her mouth shut. A high pitched, rapid squeal of a growl grew in Ninne’s throat; her saurian chest heaving with her eyes gnashed and her claws deeply indenting her teeth-gleaming snout.

“Ninne… ”, Jacob so quietly spoke up for her to be comforting and lend himself, but he sounded so upset, Ninne no longer wanted to shove her face into the mattress and just “be a good penny” – her wet eyes filled with the sort of fire Kayla could achieve.

“Why?! Why do people like her always get their way?! It’s not right to change the rules in the middle of me being here, making me go through more for no reason!”, shot out of her with as much restraint as she could muster. The answer to her question crept to Ki`rene’s tongue, but as she relived Montgomery’s foul mockery of Richter and the unconscionable things she said about him, she uneasily swallowed the truth back down.

“Politics… and a politician is only limited by what they think they can get away with.”, was ultimately the wisdom she could provide, refraining from throwing Richter under the bus as the driving source of the sentiment that the hare leveraged. After everything he’d already done to Kayla and Jacob, and the fact that sweet little Zachary was close friends with him, she promptly swore to herself that she’d never allow the Roferian to take the blame for any of these extra ‘S.P.D’s outside of the Master’s internal forums, heavens forbid anyone took it out on Zachary.

“I know you look forward to your birthday, and come hell or high water, you’re still going to have it. You can have your friends over like always, and your Grandmother and I will figure out how to handle the bad parts as they come. She’s going to be coming here for it, and we’re going to use your birthday to set in stone how the day is for sure going to work, moving forward. We’ll make it as best as we can, and you can help us figure out how to guide parents through this for now.”, Ki`rene dressed up what she and Sally had already devised together, having a penny-birthday hitting so close to home so soon, but there was no way of saying it that would have kept her daughter from growing more bitter.

“I don’t want to be a lab rat. I want to be left alone, and be done with this penny stuff already.”, Ninne’s voice strained, low and stiff from her locking jaw even if she failed to cry; her hindquarters already in so much pain tonight ‘just because’.

It was stiflingly honest, and as Ninne hung her head and soaked in her aches of many kinds, Ki`rene couldn’t help but do the same in her own way. She didn’t know how to make things any better, but a certain familiarity with the situation and atmosphere had her mind dredging up memories long since faded. Memories of “being there.”

“When I used to go through a whole handful of these special days a year, I’d sometimes make myself upset and anxious when those holidays came. They’d hit different after a day I’d been good too, or if I was feeling proud of myself… like I’m sure you were today, having been such a good sister.”, she praised to show that it was noticed, knowing how tough it must have been to remain perfectly behaved in school all day, and especially at Madam Montgomery’s assembly, after what happened to Jacob beside her. All she got for it was the worst unearned spanking she’d gotten in probably an entire year – plus soap for her maw, and needing to keep her arms up for her corner time, making for something truly severe. Ki`rene understood how that felt, and how much worse it probably hurt after she’d been a model penny and friend, but she had no apologies for a single one of the darkened pock marks littering her daughter’s hindquarters, and with fair reason.

“My favorite father, Gerald Weyburn, would always tell me something the night before one of my ‘special days’ when he was putting me to bed. It works for your day today, too. He’d tell me that I was having that bad day, not because I deserved it, but because I earned it. That it was just… another one to grow on, and serve out my time as a penny with. My letter promised me the sorest of tails – not the how, or always the when or why.”, she shared from her time beneath the paddle, and did so with the lightest of lectures, just as the jolly, heavyset man always did for her.

It wasn’t at all a reassurance, or even a positive spin on the punishment she faced… just the simple fact of the matter, that being a Penitatas meant that sore tail at any time. Even her birthday. She didn’t deserve to screech and roar on her birthday, but she would, no matter how much her mother hated doing it. It was a sobering reminder of the inevitable, unavoidable nature of the pain to come; a reality found at the intersection of where grief meets acceptance, and it ripped what little of the fiery winds remained in Ninne’s sails. It was always sad to think of it that way, but accepting and coping was all that could be done.

The man’s name sounded strangely familiar to them all, like they’d all heard it at their school lunch table before more than once, but the humorless air sank to more dour places as Ninne laid her jaw down upon the bed and covered her face with her claws. Everyone waited motionlessly for her to say something, but the silence remained, stretching out until the drakeling sniffed. The pain of reality had set in, and there was nothing left to be said. Jacob came to her side and rubbed her saurian shoulder, and before Ninne knew it, Kayla was gripping the fingers of her claw, and her mother’s warmth came alongside her neck. The supportive contact made Ninne quietly hiccup and sputter beneath her claws, and inadvertently taught a lesson about reality to everyone else.

There would be no bittersweet smiles, or looking at the bright side. No one was going to laugh at dinner.

They’d all just have to cope together.