"What if they don't like me? What if they think I look weird? What if they make fun of my fur!"
These were the type of questions running through the mind of the freshman girl standing outside of the school. She looked back at her adopted mother who gave her a thumbs up as the young girl took a deep breath and started her first day in a school full of humans.
Mieya had just turned fourteen over the summer and the united earth government had passed a bill that allowed descendents of the G.E.S.S , Genetically Enhanced Super Soldier, program to attend public school. Meiya, for her part, had not wanted to go to the school. Meiya was still very nervous around others, She had spent most of her life growing up around other GESS children who all looked like she did, different species, but very few humans. The times she did run into them, she was always met with hostility. Most humans still viewed them as nothing but relics, animals that just happened to be able to walk and talk, freaks of nature.
The program had taken DNA of humans and animals, blended them together to make smarter and faster versions of the animal that was used, this took humans out of war for the most part which is why it was allowed. After the great war of 2106 the remaining soldiers and their offspring were released. It took another ten years for them to get many rights that humans had, with a few laws still sticking to the books discriminating them from normal humans. Most of the laws revolved around the use of natural weapons against humans. Use of claws or teeth normally was a sure ticket to lockup or worse, being de-clawed, a massive social stigma for her kind.
Meiya's parents had been of otter stock, created and bred for underwater operations, so Meiya looked like a walking talking otter girl. She was slender and sleek, built for speed in the water. her tail was thick and strong, and her hands and feet were webbed just like a non-morphic otters would be. At the moment the young girl was now waiting in the office for her student chaperone, normally a upper classmate, tasked with showing the freshmen around. However, because Meiya had missed the buss, she had to wait while one was found for her.
Meiya sighed and hugged her backpack to her chest as she shrunk in the chair, she could feel the eyes staring as students started to back up in the halls to look in the office at the strange animal sitting there. She laid her ears back and pulled up the hood of her Rainbowdash hoodie and tried to ignore it all. She knew that the hoodie was a little childish, but it was a present from her adopted mother, the first one, and besides Rainbowdash isn't afraid of anything. Meiya kicked her feet a little, looking down at them. the combat boots a little scuffed but in good order.
She tried to shrink more when she heard the whispering, the gossip, the teasing through the glass. She took out her phone and sent a text to her mom 'Can I come home please I don't like it here. Everyone is staring at me...' A few moments later the return text from her mom made her sigh as she read 'Jellybean it hasn't even been two hours hun, just stick it out..If it really gets bad text me at lunch okay."
Just then another student came through the door to the office, shoving past the throng of kids at the glass before he looked down at Meiya. he was dressed in a pair of dark jeans, a cannibal corps shirt and a leather jacket covered in spikes. he had both eyebrows pierced multiple times, his lip pierced twice, both ears pierced, and was sporting a neon green mohawk. He just screamed punk.
"Okay I am here to take the fresh meat through the school. Who is the looser I have to show around?"
Meiya looked up at the boy and watched his face drop and that all too familiar look of disgust show up as he stuck his proverbial nose in the air before he looked to the office attendant and said, loud enough so the students at the glass could hear.
"Oh heck no! I am not going have that freak tag around with me, fuck that!"
Meiya glared at the boy before she clenched her fists and stood up in his face and with a flash of her fangs shot right back.
"Freak? Look who's talking. You have more crap in your face tan I have fur on my body. And that mowhawk? really? 1980 called, they want their hair back! I may look like an otter, but at least I don;t have to look like that to try and fit in. I will find my own way around here, I don;t want anyone to think I hang out with weirdo's"
With that , she turned and pushed past the throng of students, her ears pinned back to try and lock out the whispering and the few names she caught on the way out.