Petra shook her head to dispel the lustful haze and pulled away her prodding digit. As enthralled as she was by her gifted changes, she couldn't risk this momentary lapse of judgement to end up getting caught. Besides, now with her mind clearing, she realized there are a lot of far better places for her to explore her new body more comfortably than a school bathroom. She owed at least that to herself.
With her mind sobered, she let her formerly raised tail droop out of her hand down to its resting arch once again, her skirt falling with it to cover what it could of her nether region. Her ears flicked lightly as she took a breath to calm herself and plan the next part of her escape.
If her sense of time was accurate, it couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes since the start of her free period. So to avoid as many eyes seeing her as possible, she has to escape in the upcoming half hour before passing period begins where the school will undoubtedly be full of students going between classes or out to eat lunch. It is in this time frame that she has to somehow sneak from this bathroom to her car in the student parking lot without being spotted. Additionally, it didn't help that she wasn't well oriented with this part of the building or where that exit sign she saw even leads to. It may not be worth the risk of getting to it only to find out it leads straight onto the main courtyard of the school.
Her feline tongue popped out to lick the side of her mouth as she weighed the gamble of taking that exit, or alternatively following a route through the school she knows for sure leads to her car with minimal exposure. After taking a moment to think, she shrugged her shoulders and went with the latter. If she had already played it safe by halting her play, she may as well take the safe choice here as well and go the way she knows, even if it means backtracking through the library. Taking a firm gulp in her decision and a quick slightly nervous flick of her tail, Petra picked up the spell book and returned to her stealth mode.
Her ears perked up straight, she padded over to the door of the bathroom and once again listened for any activity in the maintenance hallway. It had been at least a couple minutes since the janitor passed so likely she wouldn't see him again for a bit, making this an optimal time for her to make her move. Petra gently unlatched the lock and slowly began twisting open the doorknob before parting a thin crack of sight. Poking her head through to peer around presented another benefit of her new body. With her sharp eyes she could easily see quite far into the dark distance either way down the hall, the former opaque shadows now a transparent purple into their depths.
The enhancement earning a toothed smirk from her, she resolutely opened the door the rest of the way to step out onto the dusty floor of the hallway. Carefully shutting the door behind her, Petra once again briskly, yet soundlessly, padded the direction she first came in and before she knew it, she stood at the door entering into the library.
Flattening her ears to make herself less noticeable, she looked through the door's window into the scene of the library. A small pout escaped Petra's lips as she saw the librarian still wrapped up in her duty as before, humming and sliding books into their designated slots within the many shelves. With her having come back from lunch, it would likely be a while before she stepped out again to give Petra a chance to sneak past. Her spirits began to fall as she saw that essentially a miracle would have to happen for her to pass through unnoticed.
But as if the spell book she had tightly clasped against her chest heard her, exactly that presented itself. From the other end of the library, the heavy doors suddenly clacked open and that same ominous rumble of the custodian's trashbin met her ears. He must have wrapped around and came into the library from the other side. But the only bins inside were for recyclables, and his trashbin was for non-recyclables. Petra's brow furrowed at what he could be possibly coming into the library for. He parked his trashbin on the side of the entrance and strode in.
"Margaret, honey, how many times do I have to tell you. Either finish your lunch, or take what's left home. Those strays I swear are gonna make a homestead in my closet if you keep this up!"
The librarian turned around with a seemingly out of place sultry smile on her face as she regarded the janitor. Wait did he just call her 'honey'? Petra's tail couldn't help but start swaying in interest at the scene unfolding before her.
"Oh Phil I'm sorry I just sometimes forget. I didn't mean to cause any problems for you, sweetie." She started walking towards him with an overt sway in her hips until she closed in on him, leaning up against his chest and laying her hands atop of his shoulders. Just barely audibly to even Petra's ears, she then said "Or maybe I just wanted you to come by and punish me."
Petra's curiously wagging tail froze and her eyes went wide in surprise as the librarian suddenly locked her mouth onto the janitor's in a deeply passionate kiss. He leered back for a moment at the vigor of her movement, but he soon with equal energy reciprocated the action.
Petra stifled her giggle as it turned out all those jokes and rumors of an affair between the two of them actually turned out to be true. The couple stumbled in their passion as they ran their hands up and down their bodies, but slowly began making their way into the defunct computer lab. Margaret pulled off their kiss for a moment to stop and look around, fortunately not spotting the curious catgirl, before leading Phil inside the lab and closing the door behind them.
Realizing this as her necessary miracle, Petra quietly opened the door and slipped inside without a sound. Hunching down into a crouched trot, she snuck along the shelves and tables before rounding the reception desk to reach the door Margaret's secret lover had initially entered from. Looking over her shoulder to check her tracks, she caught a hushed moan slip out from the lab that made her grin at quite the unexpected couple. It looks like her's wasn't the only secret desire being satisfied in the library today.
Peeking through the slitted window of the library doors to fortunately find no one in sight, Petra opened the door just enough for her to slip through and close it behind her. From here it was simply down the stairs and through a hallway before reaching the exit into the student parking lot. With fate having shined as brightly as it did hitherto, she was confident she could make the rest of the trek as successfully.
Taking one last moment to listen for activity ahead and finding none, Petra took off in a gentle amble toward the bannister of the stairs and rounded it. The steps of her paw pads made the lightest pats as she skipped from one foot to the other making her way down the stairs. She was pleasantly surprised to find herself even effortlessly flicking her tail from side to side in time with her steps to help keep her weight centered in her descent. Once at the bottom, she rounded the lower bannister and continued down the hallway.
As she traversed further, the sounds of murmured lectures and student dialogue emerged to her sensitive ears, prompting her to return to her careful crouched trot. Slight pangs of nervousness began surfacing in Petra as she felt her cheeks turn hot and butterflies take flight in her stomach. If someone were to leave class for a bathroom break either in front or behind her, she would have nowhere to hide. Gulping down that vulnerability, Petra hastened her pace down the hall, desperately seeking out the glimmer of the exit sign that she knew would finally lead her outside.
With rounding a slight turn in the hallway past some vending machines, Petra's eyes lit up to see that relieving red light just a bit ahead of her. But before she could make the final charge, the creak of a door up ahead struck her into a panic. Not even taking a chance to be frozen in terror, she spun on her heel and leapt back around the turn she just took. She really couldn't take the risk of sprinting back the way she came as in doing so she would certainly attract attention from the classrooms. Her heart pounding and eyes darting around for a solution, one presented itself to her.
There was a fairly hidden alcove atop the vending machines next to her that whoever was trailing her likely wouldn't notice as they passed. In a frenzy and with no better options present, Petra crouched down in preparation of her leap, feeling her tail flicking anxiously behind her. All her muscles in her legs then violently tensed as she propelled herself up into the air. Had she not the reflexes of a cat, she would not have caught the top of the vending machine that so suddenly flew up to her grasp and then nestled herself into the dark recess above. As she crouched atop the machine with her tail tautly wrapped around her legs, the shock of her immense physical performance not swaying her focus in the slightest, all she could do was hope it was enough.
Opening her senses again, Petra was surprised to find not her ears to be assaulted, but rather her nose. Her face scrunched up at the harsh smell of cheap rank perfume following the figure or figures making their way down the hall towards her. Pressing her shirt over her nose provided some relief, but it was hardly enough to blot it out to any tolerable degree. Who could possibly think it was reasonable to essentially empty a whole bottle of that perfume onto themselves?
The answer came pretty soon as Petra's ears perked up to chatter coming alongside the odor. It was a clique of girls that had emerged from the bathroom after apparently dousing themselves in the vile substance. Tuning her hearing over her olfactory distress, she tried to pick out what they were saying.
"I'm telling you, old Margaret definitely has it in for that janitor! The way she looks at him whenever he comes by to pick up the garbage says it all!"
Another voice, one more indignant in tone, replied saying, "No way, she's married. And he's not even that hot. I don't believe it."
A third chimed in, "I don't know. Becky was saying she went to print something out during free period and saw them kissing in that old computer lab they're remodeling. I thought she was full of it but now that you mention it.."
They rounded the corner just beneath where Petra sat with her breath held and body frozen solid, only the glow of her sharp eyes visible from the darkness. Now in sight, she recognized those girls to be the really stuck up bunch she would see in the halls every so often talking about similarly shallow gossip. Fortunately their fascination with that apparent rumor was more than enough to keep them distracted as they walked past and onwards away from Petra.
For the sake of her lungs, the clique finally rounded the end of the hall and went up the stairs, at which exact moment Petra let herself breathe. Though a few dregs of those noxious fumes remained, it was minimal enough for her to recompose herself. Strangely, despite definitely having been as close in proximity to them in the past, she never had such a reaction to their perfume before. Maybe it was just another feline tweak of her's that made her sense of smell so much stronger.
With no one else in sight or present by scent, Petra leapt off the top of the vending machine into a sly crouch. Minus one hand clutching the spell book, her pads completely dampened the sound of her landing. Standing up and shaking the tension of the last near miss off of herself, she turned back down the hallway. Peering all the way down, she was pleased to see this hallway was strictly lockers. No classrooms to notice her escape and only that girl's bathroom next to her exit at the end.
Petra grounded the pads of her feet into the tile's smooth surface to test her traction. As slow and careful as she had been up until this moment, she felt she really couldn't hold back a well of energy to end her trek on a wild note. Maybe it was another development of her new self, but wherever it came from, it made her smile widely and tremble in excitement. With a flick of her restless tail, she resolved to end her escape with a sprint.
Petra threw one leg forward and began her dash to the finish line. No more than a few strides in with nothing other than the wind in her ears, she felt herself running at the speed she would have previously topped out at. However now with her new body, she felt confident she could push so much more. She leaned forward into her sprint, finding that getting herself lower to the ground made it even easier for her to gain speed. With the floor tiles whizzing past underneath just a few inches from her arm's length, she took the hint her body was making.
The instant she touched the pad of her free hand onto the floor, it was as if something in her head just clicked. Almost without her conscious control, her body seamlessly transitioned her bipedal running form to one that she could most closely compare to a lioness fiercely chasing down her prey. Her feet were taking leaping bounds to end up right behind her hand before she extended out her torso and arms to grab onto the floor several feet ahead. Once she realized she was effortlessly sustaining this cycle of motion, Petra couldn't help but let out a giddy giggle amidst the rush. The agility and grace she could harness with ease felt truly amazing to finally let flare. Fully using her newfound potential like this elicited such profound joy in herself that she didn't even notice how rapidly she was nearing her intended exit that happened to have a rather unforgiving wall right after it.
She gasped in shock at the belated realization and she instinctually locked up. Her hands and feet tensed, claws she didn't know she had unsheathing from her digits and embedding themselves into the ceramic floor beneath. The piercing noise of her claws scratching the tiles made her wince in pain as her ears folded down, but her emergency brake seemed to be working. Grinding to a halt, the noise she made was surely loud enough to get people concerned. With having left a shining scar behind her of about three car's lengths, Petra frantically stood up and dashed out the door, paying no heed to stealth at this point.
Although the brick wall along the student parking lot provided significant shade, the aggressive early afternoon sun blew up in her eyes, inducing an ephemeral pain before her slitted pupils widened to accommodate the daylight. There was no time to mess around now. Petra hurried along the wall past several cars, weaving and hopping over bumpers until she arrived at her own relatively unremarkable vehicle. She patted her skirt back pocket and sighed thanking her stars that by some miracle she hadn't lost her keys or phone. Unlocking her car, she threw open the door, tossed the spell book into her passenger seat, and settled herself into the driver's seat.
A stinging pain suddenly erupted from her backside forcing her to draw a sharp breath through gritted teeth. As anxious as she was, the comic relief of having sat down onto her own tail granted her a little light-hearted respite. Directing her tail out from underneath her rump, she laid it over her thighs and more or less settled its long length in her lap. That will probably take a little bit of getting used to.
Petra stuck the key into the ignition and faltered a moment before turning the key. Where should she even go like this?
She has a few hours before her parents get off of work to figure things out at home. Either that or she could text her best friend to also ditch and then meet up at her place. She's probably the only one Petra can trust with something like this.