“Aren’t you ready yet, Curt? Classes are starting soon!” Ollie said while pacing around Curtis and Shro’s room. He was tossing his backpack into the air and catching it, occasionally glancing at the lump under the blankets on Shro’s bed while Curtis was standing in front of a mirror and fussing over his reflection. “Hey, is he alive? Your roommate, I mean.”
“Soooo alive, man,” Shro’s voice issued forth from beneath the blankets, though the lump did not even move an inch. “Join me. In the darkness.”
“Maybe later. Me and Curt have Anthro 101. Don’t you have classes?” Ollie asked. Shro certainly didn’t seem to be in any hurry to go anywhere, and was content to laze around in bed with his ‘nip.
“Anthro 101's for guys like you and Curt. Nothing they can tell me I didn't learn before I was 10,” Shro sighed. “Have fun, probably gonna be an easy A. You sure you don’t want a little ‘nip, just to-”
“Ollie, how are my ears? Are they even? The fur looks a little-” Curtis complained, frowning as he lifted his ears in his hands and let them fall back down.
“You look great, Curt. Especially the ears. Don’t worry so much, ‘kay?” Ollie said without missing a beat, grabbing Curtis by the shoulder and carefully steering him to the door. “Later Shro, I’ll think about joining you in the darkness later, okay?”
“...Endless blackness, warm and dark...”
“Sounds fun, see you ‘round!”
--------------------------------
Milo and Dare were already down in the common room on the ground floor, chatting together and waiting for the others to arrive so they could head to class together. Milo, Dare, Sam, Todd, Ollie, and Curtis were all in the same class of Anthro 101, so they’d agreed at dinner the night before to walk to class together whenever they could.
“Milo, Dare! Thanks for waiting!” Sam called out, running down the stairs from the third floor with Todd quietly following behind. The fur on Sam’s head was still slick with water from his shower, clearly still in need of quite a bit of drying. “Whoa, sweet nose, Milo! Bet it’s gonna tough to deal with if your roomie sprays someone, though!”
“I don’t know, he’s already a pain to deal with sometimes, so- OW!” Milo said, groaning in pain as Dare jabbed one of his clawed thumbs into Milo’s side. Sam just laughed and continued on as if nothing had happened.
“And you actually got Dare to agree to come to class, huh? Thought he was just trying to get kicked out!”
Dare glared at Milo, who chuckled quietly and avoided Dare’s eyes. “I-I was just joking around with him, might have mentioned it...” Milo mumbled, nervously rubbing one of his tusks with his finger.
“Do I need to be more careful about what I share with you?” Dare sighed, though it was clear from the tone of his voice that he wasn’t that upset by Milo’s little slip.
“Won’t happen again, promise.”
“Better not. I told you what’ll happen if you do.”
Sam and Todd just sat back and listened to the other two bickering, with Sam smirking and holding back a laugh while Todd was convinced there was about to be a bloodbath. However, before the claws could come out, Curtis and Ollie arrived and distracted everyone from their arguments, and soon the group was happily on their way across campus to their lecture hall. Dare, as usual, began to lag behind the others, but Milo wasn’t going to let that stand from this point on; without a work, Milo reached over and grabbed Dare’s paw and pulled him in close, holding on tightly to his roommate the entire walk to class and enjoying the feeling of the pads that were growing on Dare’s palms and fingers.
The campus, as they’d discovered over the past few days, was set up with most of the dorm buildings set up on the opposite side as the lecture halls, with the cafeteria and student centers arranged in the middle. This gave them a nice long walk from their dormitory to class, seeing plenty of the other freshman and their various changes on the way. Plenty of them already had thick coats of fur peeking out from under their clothes and looked quite sweltering in the warm weather, while others were uncomfortably walking along the sidewalks with paws and hooves awkwardly stuffed into their shoes and boots. Clearly, they all still had quite a bit to learn about what was happening to them, and what they’d have to be prepared for as their changes progressed further.
The group arrived at their lecture hall with time to spare and found a row of seats to get settled in. Dare, having already attended a few colleges, recognized the usual features of a lecture hall, albeit with a few notable differences. All the seats were open-backed to accommodate a variety of tail sizes, and the rows of seats were set up with different amounts of legroom, to make sure that all types of legs, from digitigrade paws to hooves would be able to sit comfortably.
“The tabletop feel weird, don’t you think? Kinda rubbery,” Sam observed, running a finger across the table and feeling the unusual texture.
“I-It’s to keep our f-fur from sliding against it,” Todd said quietly. “Makes it easier t-to write and type if your arms and elbows aren’t sliding everywhere on a smooth t-table.”
“Oh, that makes a lot of sense!” Ollie joined in. “How’d you know that, anyway?”
An odd look of confusion crossed Todd’s face, a look that was not lost on Dare although the others didn’t seem to notice it. It’s happening to him, isn’t it? Memories popping up out of nowhere, Dare thought to himself. He still hadn’t told Milo or anyone else what he’d really experienced the night before, but at least he knew now that it wasn’t just happening to him.
“I-I guess it’s just intuition...” Todd said slowly, though he sounded unsure of himself. “It m-made sense in my head, so I just said it.”
The others quickly accepted this explanation, but Dare knew there was more to Todd’s ‘intuition’ that it seemed. However, he had no time to dwell on this, since while they were talking a door opened in the front of the lecture hall and a tall, well-dressed raccoon male entered the classroom and took his position at a lectern.
“You’re here for Anthro 101 and not the Applied Interspecies Relations Seminar, I assume?” the raccoon asked, his nose twitching in amusement as he glanced over the half-transformed students. “...That usually gets a bigger laugh.”
A round of nervous chuckles rippled through the room, but the raccoon’s mood had already seemed to sour. “You don’t need to patronize me, I’ll just try to be funnier next time,” he sighed. “In any case, I’m Professor LaVeur, biology department chair. But, since we’ve got a big freshman group this year, they asked me to help teach a class of Anthro 101...”
LaVeur opened a briefcase and withdrew a pile of papers and passed them around the rows. “There’s the syllabus, try to read it. It will give you the assignments, class topics, online resources, the usual,” the professor said airily as he walked back to the lectern. “Any questions so far?”
There was a moment of silence in the lecture hall, as everyone looked at each other and wondered who’d ask the question first. Finally, Milo slowly raised his hand, and LaVeur nodded in his direction.
“R-right, sir. I was just wondering... Well, nobody’s told us what this class is actually about yet.”
The professor furrowed his brow, his whiskers twitching almost imperceptibly as Milo’s question sunk in.
“Oh. Right. I suppose that would be a problem, wouldn’t it?” he sighed, pushing his glasses further up his muzzle. “I’m sorry, I thought they’d already told you... Hmm, this might make things more difficult...”
LaVeur paced around in front of the room for a couple of seconds, then he turned back to the class with a slight smile on his face.
“Okay, let’s try this again,” he said, sounding much more cheerful. “You're all turning into anthropomorphic beings, or ‘anthros’. They already explained that part to you at orientation, but I’m sure you’ve all already figured out that there’s more to it than that, right?”
Dare’s ears perked up at that. Yeah, no shit. What the hell have you been keeping from us, Stripes? He thought, suddenly quite interested in what the babbling raccoon had to say.
“You’re finding out that the way you used to do things aren’t quite working anymore, correct?” LaVeur observed, then his eyes locked onto Sam and his still-damp, matted fur. “Tried to towel off after your shower, am I right? That won’t work, you’ll be damp until next week. Full-body fur driers and a sunny spot in the dorm will help you dry off and keep your fur from getting mildewy.”
“That’s just an example,” LaVeur continued, and soon the whole class’s eyes were locked onto the professor with great interest. “Nutrition will be a big thing. Some of you are carnivores now, some vegetarians, some omnivores. But even within those broad categories, you’ll find that you have particular dietary needs that differ from each other, or your health and academics will suffer for it. Personal hygiene, grooming, body language. You’ll need to learn all about these things if you are to succeed here at Claw Valley. Normally, these things would be learned over a course of years, but you’ll need to become familiar with them right away. They’ll come to you easier than you might expect, but they won’t be completely instinctual. However, mastering these skills and learning more about your changing bodies will help to ease your transformation from one form to another and settle into your new lives here at CVU. ...Does that answer your question, Mr..?”
“...Milo. Y-yeah, I guess it does. Thank you.”
“Wonderful. Well, with that taken care of, let’s take care of the most awkward topic right off the bat. Let’s discuss ‘Personal Hygiene’,” the professor sighed, pinching his nose. “The RAs and custodial staff demanded that we really put an emphasis on this one, since they’re the ones that end up having to clean up after you if I don’t, but I suppose those of you that are acquiring more sensitive noses will appreciate this as well. Now, I have a selection of different cleaning and grooming products, for different fur textures, claw types, etc. When your name is called, please give your best guess as to what you are becoming and we can get these passed out before moving onto less embarrassing subjects...”