31.)

I followed Blossom out of the beach house and took shotgun in her car. If we took my car, I would have to pay for more gas, and gas wasn't cheap these days.

Blossom pulled out of the long driveway and got on the freeway. True to form, whenever we were alone in a car, Blossom started in on questions about Academy Works.

Blossom talked a lot about a range of different things. Her theories on Ai. Her affection for Bala. Her admiration of Talita. And then, after gushing a little while about Academy A, she looped back to her thoughts in Academy K.

"I just think that the baby babble berry bushes are something the Academy should be selling to people, or at least to colleges. Like, I know at least a dozen people who'd love to get that degree of messed up, and I know a lot of them who'd also be like 'well it can't be bad because it's natural' and you would not believe the things people try to justify under that excuse."

"I'm pretty sure the Academy has bigger things to worry about than getting college kids hooked on berries," I said. "And anyway, why draw unnecessary attention to themselves?"

Blossom did that sometimes, interspaced real questions with crazy hypotheticals. I didn't mind though. Actually, answering them sometimes helped me clarify a lot of the more abstract concepts in my head.

"So is Kione gonna come back?" Blossom asked. "She has to, right? Since she's the one Ai isn't supposed to meet? I bet they meet."

"Who can say?" I shrugged.

"You can say!"

"I cannot." I smiled. I really liked talking about this stuff!

"You can so too! You are Mia Moore and you could answer all my questions. But you're not because you're a brat and you clearly like making cute girls beg."

Blossom, as it turned out, was pretty good at talking and driving and even making wild hand gestures to illustrate her points.

"Yep, you got me. This is how I dom people: I withhold Academy Works lore. After a few hours, they do whatever I say."

"Well it's working, because I slept in a diaper last night and we're on the way to buy more, so kudos to you, Little Miss Mastermind!"

She laughed. She had a really pretty laugh; bright and crisp and airy; it was one of a thousand different things she'd crafted and cultivated during her self-discovery and reinvention. Middle School Blossom had a habit of snorting.

"Tragically, you're too far gone to do anything about it," I said playfully. "You're just wrapped around my finger." I twirled my finger to make a point.

"Well, I guess now I just have to decide if I'm an Ai, and I'll give you hell the entire time and be curious about everything like when a little kid asks 'why' to everything, or if I'll be a Bala and just be a good little girl, or if I'll be a Talita and form a fierce rivalry and find my forgotten brother, or maybe I'll be a Kione and nothing you do will work on me in the end~"

"Hm. So which one are you gonna be?" I was just playing around, but I was actually kind of curious. She stuck me as a bit of a Talita, causing trouble until she was finally put in her place. But maybe she was more like Ai, always wanting to be in the thick of it no matter the consequences. I never thought about Academy Works protagonists as personality tests before, but it sure had a good cross-section of Little styles.

"I am absolutely in every way a Talita; I thought it was so important to fight the system and have my own style and rebel rebel rebel and it wasn't until I leaned into expectations of me and let myself become quo with the status that I realized how happy I could be. And she's a brat and I'm kind of a bitch and the two have a lot of common data points."

Her answer came pretty quickly; she's obviously thought about it before.

"Cool."

"And you?"

"Uh... I dunno." I hadn't thought about it before. Not like she had. "I guess I'm a little bit of all of them, since I wrote them?" It was a cop out answer.

"Only so much as Stephen King is every one of his villains though, right? Try again."

There was a little bit of sassiness to Blossom's response, but that tended to be the way she got when she was feeling comfortable and right about something. She usually didn't care what most people thought about her, but Amanda was different. Blossom wanted her to like her.

"Maybe... Aya?" I shrunk a little in my seat. "She thinks happiness is in making others happy. That's usually what gets her in trouble, though. It works great for the Academy, but for the real world?" I didn't want to linger on what that meant about me, so I quickly added: "I wish I was more like Ai, though. Willing to risk everything for something she wants."

"Willing to risk not only your own everything, but someone else's everything, too? That doesn't sound like you at all, Amanda. Or who you'd wanna be - being Ai would wrack you with guilt. I could be Ai, and in the past I totes have been, but that kind of drive isn't who you really wanna be I don't think."

Aya was a pretty good choice though! And Blossom could 100% see Amanda through that lens.

"Maybe you're right..." I never really thought about Ai that way. She wasn't exactly selfish, but she did prioritize herself over Bala. I guess I just didn't really know what that was like. It's easy to envy things you aren't. I shook my head and changed the topic.

"So, how was it, uh... the whole diaper thing?" I wanted to ask earlier that morning, but she crinkled every time she took a step. She only had one diaper, so I knew she hadn't changed; I think it embarrassed me more than it did her. Did she wet it? I sure didn't my first time. Then again, Blossom was more of a go-getter.

"Oh it was pretty cool! Like, it wasn't as thick as I thought it would be but it was also pretty new all around so it had that built-in appeal. And I read one of my favorite diaper smut scenes online and it was enhanced by wearing one, that's for sure. It was like that heady dizzy feeling you get when…"

She thought for a moment, considered that this girl had probably never touched a drug in her life, and shied away from the analogy.

"Anyway, it was pretty nice. I thought about diapers and outfits and what kind of ensembles would go well to hide a diaper. Then I also thought about which kind of outfits would be really good at making it super obvious."

"Well... I'm glad you had a good time. I was mostly ashamed the first time I wore one." I must have been twelve or thirteen; it was a long time ago. I had a lot of bad feelings about baby stuff back then, and I tried really hard not to want it. It took a few years for me to get over that, and by the end of high school I was pretty much on the 'I'm a Little' train. Internet communities helped.

"I know a lot of people feel that way, and it comes up in stories a whole bunch as well. You don't really see people described like me who are like 'oh diapers sure I'll try that, yeah this is cool af' and I definitely feel underrepresented, babes!"

She laughed that bright and confident laugh that she had.

"Maybe there should be an adult baby in Academy Works... I mean, I am trying to up that representation factor." The readers would probably love it. I think a problem for a lot of forced regression stories is that ABDLs actually want it, so they don't always empathize when a character puts up a fight. Writing for that demographic could be fun.

"Then again," I said, thinking aloud, "I think if the Academy were faced with an actual ABDL, they would handle it a lot differently. The whole diaper baby thing only really works because it's undesirable, you know? Breaking down someone's sense of self. Associating helplessness and littleness to obedience and people-pleasing. So an Academy for ABDLs would actually have no ageplay or diapers, and would probably be kind of a dull read for my niche audience."

"You know you have a pretty good point! I see a lot of people talking about volunteering to go to the Diaper Dimension, and I think that could be fun, but I think volunteering for the Academy wouldn't work as well because a lot of it is about obedience and true obedience is only shown in the face of reluctance and doing the thing anyway. So for someone to be a good Candy they need to not want it by design I think. Or that's my theory anyway!"

"Yeah, that's pretty spot on."

Though I did wonder what it would look like if an adult baby was stuck in a non-regressive Academy, but they learned about the other Academies. Like, they got into the database or something and found out about a town where everyone was treated like a baby, or about the Melting in Academy B. But they were stuck learning obedience through electro-shock or something. They would be so jealous.

Or, maybe an adult baby was sent to an Academy like the Kindergarten, where children got to play all day and wear diapers. But they had to pretend they hated it, because if the Matrons found out, they would get sent to an Academy without baby stuff.

Ideas for fan-fiction, I supposed.