“This is stupid.”

Aubree sat on her rocking horse with crossed arms, refusing to budge an inch despite her caregiver’s best attempts to get her to cooperate.

“You’ve said that about everything since you got here, Aubree.” Robin let out an exasperated sigh, tapping her foot impatiently. “Let’s go get breakfast.”

“No.” Aubree refused outright. “Look, I’ve been good. I slept all night. I let you change my diaper. I’ve agreed to go to school. But I don’t want to go to breakfast.”

“And why not?”

“Because I’m just not ready, okay?” Aubree blushed, gently rocking back and forth on her horse. “The others are going to say bad things about me anyways.”

“You’re the one who’s been a spoilsport.”

“I haven’t been meaning to!” Aubree shouted. “I’m not usually like this. You don’t know me. If you did, you’d see just how much this is messing me up.”

“Okay.” Her caregiver let up a little. “Well, what are you usually like?”

“I’m nice.” She mumbled, still averting her eyes. “I’m not a bully.”

“Well you sure have been acting like a bully.”

“Because I’ve been kidnapped and forced into diapers like a baby!”

“You’re incontinent, Aubree. You already wore diapers.”

“Yeah, and it’s not fair that I got picked for all of this just because I can’t control my bladder!” She exclaimed furiously. “I’m not trying to be an idiot child. I’m a grown up. I’m sweet.”

“Then how about we calm down and talk, yeah?” Robin smiled, gently helping rock the horse for the girl. “I’ll let you skip breakfast if you chat with me, deal?”

“Deal.” Aubree nodded.

“Mind if I ask, do you know what caused your condition?”

There was a momentary pause as Aubree reminded herself what caused her incontinence, and she was afraid to admit to it. “I did.”

“You caused it?”

“Promise you’re not going to laugh at me?”

“I promise to do my best.”

“Okay.” Aubree sighed, ashamed of what she was about to say. “When I was in junior high, I accidentally gave myself a urinary tract infection.”

“Any idea how that happened?”

“Yeah, but.” Aubree paused, growling under her breath. “You’re going to laugh at me.”

“I’m not going to laugh at you.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Not yet, you aren’t.” Aubree gave up, taking a deep breath before resuming. “So it’s possible that maybe it was something that happened during a weird sex thing. I was going through puberty, and exploring myself, but before I got very far I’d accidentally gotten myself infected.”

“I have to ask, what kind of weird sex thing?”

“I-” Aubree stuttered shyly. “I tried sounding with a thermometer.”

Robin let out a loud snort at the sound of that. “You’re kidding.”

“Hey.” Aubree crossed her arms again, a little bit hurt to hear Robin laughing at her. “You promised.”

“Sorry-” Robin clasped one hand over her mouth to keep from giggling, earning herself a fierce glare from her little one. “Continue?”

“I was like twelve. Aside from needles it was the only thing I could think to try. I figured that if it was safe to put up your anus it was probably safe to put inside my urethra too.”

Robin quickly settled down. “And then what happened?”

“I got an infection.” She groaned, still upset about the other girl’s giggling. “I was so ashamed of myself that when it started to hurt, it was too embarrassing to say anything to mom and dad, so I didn’t. I didn’t want my parents to laugh or yell at me for getting myself hurt by putting things inside of me, so I ignored it for as long as I could.”

Robin shuddered at the sound of that, a little bit ashamed of herself for laughing at her, when it has clearly been a sensitive thing for Aubree long before she found herself in this mess.

“I kept trying to hide the infection even after I started wetting the bed at night, eventually it just spun out of control and I didn’t know what to do. By the time I pissed my pants in front of my parents, I’d been skipping school to try and hide it, and it was already too late.” Aubree hung her head in defeat. “They took me to the doctor, found out what was wrong, and told me that I wasn’t going to be able to control my bladder for the rest of my life. I told them everything, and I still got screamed at for it anyway.”

“Aubree.” Robin frowned. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t need pity.” Aubree shook herself free of her caregiver, slowly getting off of the rocking horse. “I just want to go home.”

“This is home. For you and me both.”

Robin bit her lip as she watched Aubree storm her way back to her crib and climb inside. It took a lot of work to get her to come out and open up, and she didn’t want to have to start all over.

“Miss Panda can’t see color.” She finally admitted, desperate for something to talk about. “She can tell what color something is by looking at it. It’s different enough to tell apart, but she had to train herself to be able to do it.”

Aubree gave her a confused look. “What’s your point?”

“My point is. It’ll take a lot of work, but maybe we can try to train you not to wet yourself anymore?” Robin gave her a shy smile, still not so sure of herself. “That’s something mommies do, right?”

“Potty training?” Aubree huffed. “You want to potty train me?”

“I want to try.” She stuttered back. “If you want to try?”

The poor girl curled in on herself as she was asked that, breaking just a little bit on the inside. “I don’t want to stop being incontinent. I like not being potty trained.”

Robin’s eyes went wide. “You do?”

“It sucks, but yeah. It’s not that it’s better this way or anything. This is just fine.” There were tears actively running down Aubree’s cheeks as she spoke. “I don’t want to put in a lot of humiliating work just to try and fix myself. I’m not broken. I just pee my pants sometimes is all. I don’t want to be infantilized for that.”

“I know you don’t, Aubree. But you’re being infantilized anyways. Sure, you were picked because of your incontinence, but only as a test variable. None of the other girls are incontinent, and they’re being infantilized just as much as you are. They’re wearing diapers for the first time in decades, you already have a headstart on them.”

“A headstart?”

“Yeah. Those girls are probably getting beaten and spanked for refusing to use their diapers, but not you. You already know that there’s nothing to be ashamed of, so you just do it.” Robin stepped towards her, holding the little one’s hand. “I know that you’re avoiding food so that you don’t need to mess yourself. But trust me, it’s better than starving.”

“And how would you know that?”

Robin hesitated for a moment, before giving a sigh of defeat. “Because I’ve tried it.”

The slim brunette backed her way to the changing table, climbing on top of it and gradually peeling back her uniform to show Aubree what she’d been wearing underneath. Diapers. Just like her little one was wearing.

“And before you ask, no. I’m not incontinent.” Robin quickly covered herself back up. “But I thought you might need some encouragement this morning, so I put one on anyway, because I don’t want you to feel like a freak. If anything, I’m the freak for liking it.”

“Is that why you’re the best at changing diapers?”

“Guilty as charged.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“I didn’t trust you.” Robin climbed back onto her feet. “But I do now.”

“What changed?”

“You opened up.” She smiled, gently helping the other girl out of her crib. “And hopefully you trust me now?”

Aubree blushed, thinking it over. “A little bit.”

“Can you keep a secret for me?”

“If you order me to, yeah.”

“One of the other girls-”

“Candy, right?” Aubree filled in the details without hesitation. “Professional gamer?”

“How did you know?”

“I used to be a big fan.” Aubree bit her lip nervously. "Until I got here, that is."

“I won’t tell her you said that.”

“And I won’t tell her about you giving away her secrets.”

“We went to school together.” Robin blushed. “And let’s just say she’s into some pretty messed up shit.”

“Like keeping slaves kind of messed up?”

“Kind of exactly.”

“Huh.” Aubree paused. “Wait, but doesn't that-”

"Beside the point." Robin cut her off. "The point is that while we worked together, we kind of clashed sometimes because she was into things I wasn't into and I was into things that she wasn't into. But I still humored her when she wanted to experiment. Somewhere along the way, I started getting really into diapers."

“And then what happened?”

“One day I got her to try out something that I liked.” Robin blushed. “And she ended up liking it. A lot.”

“I take it didn’t turn out well?”

“She liked it so much that it kind of took over everything. This new obsession with control. She was always in charge, but she wanted to control everything.”

“What sort of control?”

“Mind control.” Robin shook her head, trying to blot out the memories. “I know it sounds crazy, but that’s why we made a virtual assistant together. She was meant to be an AI who could hypnotize people.”

“But it didn’t work?”

“Even worse.” Robin corrected. “It did.”

“You made an AI that could hypnotize people?”

“I cut her mouth off as soon as she became functional, but yeah. We made an AI for hypnosis. Lullaby is a watered down version of Whisper, our original design. It got to the point where it was just too much for me, and I tore through the code and deleted as much as I could before she could try to actually use it. Because I knew she would. That’s why we built it.”

“She sounds like a supervillain.”

“She is a supervillain.”

“What’d she do after you ruined the project? Fire you?”

“No.” Robin shook her head, pulling down the neck of her outfit to reveal the collar she wore around her neck. “She had me enslaved.”

Aubree didn’t have anything to add to that, looking on at the blinking light in horror. But Robin had plenty more story to go through.

“She wanted me to fix what I broke, and when I didn’t, she kicked me to Miss Panda in exchange for one of her other slaves, this boy apparently.” Robin hesitated for a moment. “I’m sorry. Is this helping at all?”

Aubree looked to her and blushed, nodding her head shyly. “I think so.”

“The point is. Lullaby.” Robin took a deep breath. “Please play me a song.”

The virtual assistant kicked on as soon as it recognized Robin’s voice, and a few seconds later it was playing the same soothing tones it had used to lull Aubree to sleep the previous night.

“As per orders, I fixed the AI that I’d broken.” Robin said without a hint of pride. “I fixed Lullaby.”

“You mean-” Aubree swallowed nervously. “Lullaby can hypnotize people?”

“Only if you’re susceptible to hypnosis.” Robin smirked. “Which you are.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Because I used Lullaby to sing you to sleep last night, remember?” Robin gestured towards the speakers in the ceiling. “The track I used to help you fall asleep was also one that I use to test a subject’s vulnerability to hypnosis, and you enter trance very well.”

“So when you say you’re going to program me.”

“I’m going to hypnotize you.”

“And why should I let you hypnotize me?”

“Because it’s going to help. I promise.” Robin tried to reassure her. “It’s going to take a lot of work, but it’ll be worth it. If it works, it will help make living here easier for you.”

“How?” Aubree swallowed nervously. “How can it do that?”

“It’s going to make your inhibitions go away.”

“Layman’s terms, please?”

“It’s going to help make living here feel good.” Robin smiled. “It’s going to help make being a baby again feel good.”

Aubree sat there in stunned, terrified silence as she stared into Robin’s eyes, able to see just how serious she was. And it was a scary idea. Letting herself be reprogrammed wasn’t something a normal woman would do. It wasn’t something that Robin would do.

“You’re a supervillain.” Aubree stuttered. “You’re not going to give me a choice, are you?”

“No.” Robin confirmed. “This is where I put my foot down. I’m in charge. I’m not giving you a choice.”

“So that’s it then?” Aubree’s voice trembled. “You’re going to scare me into submission?”

“If I have to.” Robin smirked. “Yeah, maybe that makes me a supervillain.”

Aubree shuffled in bed just slightly. “Miss Robin?”

“Yes, baby?”

“I think I just wet myself.”

“You think you just wet yourself?” She teased. “Or you just wet yourself?”

Aubree blushed. “I just wet myself.”

“Get out of bed and climb onto the changing table. Let’s get you cleaned up before school.”