I should start here; at the beginning. My beginning is in the city of Acritote in the Orith region in the year 2021. I’m joined by a few of my friends later on but right now we begin at my school, Acritote Academy, a sprawling, beautiful campus of nearly 1400 people and a few others who aren’t entirely human. The campus is clean, full of trees, and full of people playing in the grassy grounds. I’m what they’d call a Changer, someone who can switch between human and animal, someone who will never be accepted by either group of beings. I’m a felitz, or another way to say it is that I’m half cat, Abyssinian to be more precise. Today just happened to be the start of my adventure, our adventure, to save the entirety of the mystical and natural world.
Day One
Today started as any other did. I write a bit, I read a bit, I wait a bit, I get on the bus for a bit, I get to school after a bit, and sometimes there’s a whole lot more bits to go with my usual amount. After exiting the bus and being called a few names, such as faggot and tranny, because of my habit of wearing the girl’s uniform which is a simple yellow dress with a blue ribbon on the neckline. I walk to the corner of the Café where my friends are waiting. There’s Leo the male strong, empowered Lion Changer, Kathrin the lithe, cute, female Fox Changer, Jason the male, average, human. Jason’s the only human that we knew of, other than my father’s colleague, that knew our secret. In a way we were his guardians, his protectors, his white knights! The reason he knows is because we each told and showed him. Luckily he wasn’t frightened, only a bit (there’s another bit right there, I told you that they end up everywhere in my life) shocked that his friends were so abnormal, so different, so weird, which was a rather big change (no pun intended) from what he was used to. We trust him, too much according to Leo even though he was the second one to tell Jason. Our corner is a meeting place for the Changers in the school. There are only about 15 or so, but the only ones I care to remember are Leo and Kathrin. The others aren’t very nice; they like to be territorial almost like the animals they are. Seven of them are wolves, three of them are German Shepard Dogs, there’s a Turkish Van cat named Baki who’s the leader of the school since he requires almost constant attention and is extremely popular with everyone except for the Changers, a skittish mouse named Agnes who hates being in the limelight. And then there’s my friends and I, the rejects of the rejects who befriended a human and let him know our secret. That’s the reason we don’t have anyone else in our group; we befriended and let him know about us, but we can’t let another know. All Changers have the right to tell a single human about them before they are given legal problems with the Changed Council of Twenty, the legal counsel that handles all legal cases for the Changed. All of the council represents a different animal branch. And each branch has different species. But that doesn’t mean Changers tell humans often, for some reason they consider the humans the bane of their existence, I’m not sure why exactly but I’ve figured out it has something to do with council of twenty telling everyone the humans are evil or something like that. This is the new school year; we’re juniors now except for Kathrin who’s a sophomore. “Hey Felix!” Kathrin calls happy that I’m finally at the table. My name is Felix if I haven’t mentioned it yet, Felix the cat, make some jokes. “What’s your first class this year? Mine’s Geometry. I’m not looking forward to it since I’m no good with math.” “My class is Algebra.” Leo boasts, a smirk on his face looking expectantly at Jason who no doubt had a higher math class than any of us. He was the smartest when it came to math, I was the smartest at English, Kathrin was the science genius, and Leo was the PE buff. “I have calculus.” Says Jason, with a smile that looked like he ate a canary, which was interesting since he was the only normal member of our little group. “What about you Felix?” Kathrin asks, expecting the answer that all knew was going to come weather they wanted to hear it or not. “I have Algebra with Leo” I state with a smile. Me and Leo have been friends since childhood, we all have been. Well, almost everyone. Jason came into our lives in 7th grade after we each asked him for a pen or a pencil during the same day. Once we went to return them, we realize we all borrowed from the same person and we invited him over to my house, although house is an understatement. I live in a mansion; my parents invented some sort of science product and made millions, so I live in the lap of luxury. I don’t let it go to my head luckily. Leo gives me a high-five with a giant smile spread upon his face. I’m pretty sure he has a crush on me, not that I’m complaining. Everyone knows that we’re both Bi, people just enjoy reminding me more than Leo. “Nice! That means I can get the answers!” “Think again, not after last year.” I say, reminding him of the giant fiasco where he was caught looking at my English paper. We both nearly failed the class if it wasn’t for the teacher being a Changer and letting it slide that one time. This year I wasn’t about to let that happen again, besides, Leo needed to learn how to do the math work himself. Everyone laughed after I said that, I even started giggling a bit (yet another bit) myself. Only Leo looked embarrassed, looking down with a blush upon his face. I pat him on the back, still smiling, “I can tutor you if you ever need some extra help though. I just won’t directly give you the answers.” “Thanks kitten” Leo says still blushing. Kitten was his nickname for me since I was a smaller cat than him. It didn’t make it any less embarrassing and just reinforced my thoughts that he liked me more than a friend. “N-no problem.” I say my own blush forming on the entirety of my face. And then the moment was ruined by Baki. “So, I guess it’s true, you two are faggots.” He smirks at us, thinking he just made a huge insult, when in reality all he did was make me and Leo and the rest of us annoyed. “Leave them alone Backey.” Kathrin states, frowning. ‘Backey’ is our nickname for Baki; it annoys him so we call him it whenever he tries to start trouble with us. It seemed to have its desired effect because he looked insulted and slid off into his fan-club. Once again I was saved by Kathrin. She always was saving me, weather it was from humiliation when I wet myself in kindergarten, or from bullies in 5th grade, or even now from Baki. She’s been more of a sister than a friend all of these years. She even helped me with my changing practice. “Thanks Katt, but I could have handled it on my own.” Leo had another opinion about it. Kathrin and Leo have always been rivals and the closest of friends ever since I can remember. It’s always been Kathrin helping us out and then Leo saying he could have done it better, or he could have done it himself. Kathrin always replied with an annoyed… “Then why didn’t you? If you could have done it yourself then you should have, especially since it involved Felix. Baki is annoying, but he also has power. If he wanted to he could rally the school against us. Do you really want that to happen?” And as soon as his name was spoken, he was on his way back. “Here comes trouble…” Jason said, a frown growing on his face. And he was right, Baki was about to stir up a whole lot of trouble. “Oh Jason, I heard something absolutely adorable about you. You know about the changers,” and raising his voice, stated “now everyone knows about the changers too, the ones who are neither animal nor human, the ones who-“, he was cut off by a rapid slap to the face by me. And then, my face burning and about as red as his grabbed him by the collar of his dress shirt and yelled; “You idiot, what the hell are you thinking saying shit like that!? What if someone heard you and decided to call the council? What then? Would you just sit back as they had you sent to the counterpart?” The counterpart was the other world, the world hidden to humans and known only by the Fae and the non-humans. The counterpart was only a rumor to me and the others since we’ve never been there, but according to our parents it wasn’t much different than Earth. It was like a second earth, but full of magic. “So what if I got sent to the Fae world, you’ve heard what they say, about it being not much different than this world. Hell, it’s probably better than this world, at least in the other world we don’t need to hide who we are.” I contemplated giving him another slap. ‘Don’t need to hide who we are’ my ass, the other world was strict on their rules, and one of them is no same-sex couples or relationships, which was against my own beliefs and against me. “Sure, we won’t need to hide anymore which would be nice, but think about what you’d be trading Baki, you’d give up everything you have, everyone you know, your popularity, everything. Here, you’re different, exotic, but there, you’re no different than a lot of that world.” That seemed to hit him hard. IT must have hurt him to the very core because he started crying and leaned into my chest. I just held his head, shushing him quietly, even as the bell rang and everyone left except for Leo, Kathrin, and Jason. He finally stopped crying after about half an hour and looked up, sniffling. “Th-thanks…” he said quietly looking away for a second before returning his gaze to me blushing. And before I had a chance to react, he kissed me. It was quick and not much more than a peck, but it was a kiss nonetheless. My first kiss and it was taken from me, by Baki. I was dazed and let my arms go limp even as he smiled lovingly, even as he left after saying thanks again, even after the others tried to snap me out of it. I just stood there touching my lips with my fingers, feeling the light tingling on my lips, standing there like an idiot. Finally after what seemed like an eternity I came back and started to move again. Everyone let out a sigh of relief, even as I started smiling like a fool. This was a great beginning of the day. The rest of the day felt really uneventful. It was mostly just the same stuff that happen every new school-year. People learn each other’s names for the umpteenth time while the teachers learn it for the first. Speaking of teachers, I got lucky and got an elemental for my PE teacher. An elemental is a being that controls an element which can range anywhere from water to vegetation. In my classes I was lucky enough to be paired with each of our group members for at least once for my classes. I had algebra with Leo, English with Jason, PE with Kathrin and health with all three of them. I can’t exactly say that my day was uneventful entirely though considering what happened in health class… “Don’t have sex, because you will get pregnant and have to raise a child that you don’t want and by association, nobody wants. Don’t have sex at all, ever, until you’re married, and even then, wait until you’ve been together for over a year. After a year you’ll know whether your partner is someone to be loved or if they’re a horrible man-whore who lusts after every girl they see even if I’m around to watch him drool over anyone that has breasts!” She finishes, breathing a bit heavier than normal. That’s Mrs. Johansson for you. She has problems with her marriage. Everyone’s making bets on whether or not she’ll get a divorce with him within the next month or not. “Mrs. Johansson?” I ask tentatively. “Yes? What is it?” “Can you teach us about condoms?” I ask, trying to make her go on another venting session at our expense. It was rather entertaining. Once she finished the rest of her seminar, going into extreme detail, we all met up at ‘the parlor’ which was our hangout when we weren’t in school. It was a cute little café in near the school. “I can’t believe she talked about her marriage problems for over sixty minutes.” Jason says with a blank expression. “Try seventy.” Leo adds in, the same expression on his face. “Today sucked, first I had to deal with Baki, then he cries for a long time, then he kisses Felix, and then health class.” Kathrin mopes. “I dunno, it wasn’t so bad, the kiss I mean, everything else blew.” I say with a blush on my face and a smile on my lips. This earned six eyes staring at me. “Felix,” Leo started, “Kitten, are you sure it doesn’t bother you even a little? Not even a smidge?” Leo asked, upset. My answer was a simple nod while I started drifting off into my mind, wondering if maybe I was a little bit upset because of it. After all, it was so sudden and unexpected, maybe, just maybe, I was somewhat mad at Baki for taking my first kiss away from me instead of someone else doing it, someone who might like me, someone who might have liked me for years. Someone like Leo. Apparently I was zoned out for quite a while, because when I came-to everyone looked relieved. “Jeez Felix, you worried us for a while there. What were you thinking about?” Kathrin asked, the most worried out of all of them. “I was thinking about how Leo must be pissed at me because I’m happy about getting kissed.” I said quietly, staring at the ground. Leo went from pouty to flustered to comforting in a matter of seconds. “Kitten, you know I could never be angry at you, no matter what happens we’ve been friends for almost ten years or more, I won’t let something silly like this upset me that much.” He whispers, hugging me. That hit something I thought would never happen again, something that hadn’t happened since my parents died nearly seven years ago, I started crying. Although crying is watering it down, I was sobbing, right into his chest. I’m not sure if he minded or not, but one thing is for sure; everyone wanted me to feel happy again as soon as possible, so everyone joined in the hug. After half an hour, I stopped sobbing, and the crying turned into a trickle as I announced I had to go home, to which everyone replied at once with; “Felix,” Although it was kitten in Leo’s case, “you don’t have to go to that place, you can stay with me.” And as soon as everyone finished saying that, they all turned to each other and laughed which was mighty contagious and got me to at least smile. Kathrin added in quickly, “Hey, how about you all stay at my place? It’s too big for just me since my parents are out of town, so what do ya say?” The answer was definite between everyone. Operation Kathrin’s House was a go.