SPOILERS: This chapter and further chapters contain spoilers for Academy A - Chapter 12.

89.)

"Oh my gosh, Wendy blaming the Ghost for the lanterns going out? She's so cute!"

Blossom was mumbling to herself as she read the document that had been presented to her on the laptop screen. She couldn't believe that she'd woken up before Amy, but at the same time it did make sense because she'd fallen asleep first. At first, Blossom wondered if she was supposed to wait until Amy woke up, but then why would Amy have left it up on the screen with a note?

So Blossom read Chapter Twelve.

She made notes in her head about what to gush to Amy about; about how cute Wendy was, about how she was going to go to daycare, and how that was okay because Nurse August wasn't upset with her.

Blossom decided around this point that she could no longer keep it all organized in her head, so she got up and fetched a pencil and notepad from her bag before sitting back down. She would simply take notes to give to Amy when she woke up; Blossom had a feeling it would make her day.

Blossom finished the chapter. Then Blossom finished the chapter again. Then Blossom opened up the DailyDiapers page so she could start Academy A from the beginning, to remember what the scene looked like from Aya's point of view, because Wendy and Aya had a moment together where both stories overlapped. After all that, Amanda still wasn't up! Blossom checked the time on her phone.

This was maybe the latest she had ever seen Amy sleep. Then she had a thought: what if she wasn't here? With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Blossom got to her feet and hurried up the stairs. The door to Amanda's room was closed, but that wasn't a guarantee... so she knocked lightly, just a bit, hopefully enough that it wouldn't wake her up if she really was in there. But opening the door without knocking? Rude!

No answer.

With a nervous hand, Blossom opened the bedroom door to find... Amanda Pearson staring sleepily up at her.

I rubbed my eyes, but the foggy blur in the doorway didn't become any clearer. A moment before, I heard some faint knocking. Before Blossom - or, the blur in the doorway that I assumed was Blossom - could enter, I had pulled the covers up to my chest, under my arms.

"Oh, hey, hi, you were asleep…I uh…"

Blossom had memories of waking her father up on Christmas morning, stammering the same way, trying to play it cool, like she didn't even expect to find someone asleep at that time of day. But just as younger Blossom couldn't contain her excitement on Christmas morning, Blossom-the-current couldn’t hide her excitement from Amy.

"I finished, and, well…" Dirty. "…I mean, I took notes, and I loved the chapter and it was so good and.. and yeah, you're probably sleeping, sleepy, tired, I get it, it's cool."

Finished... chapter... oh!

I sat up on my elbows and rubbed the rest of the sleep from my eyes. Then I reached over on the nightstand and grabbed my glasses so I could see Blossom properly. She read Chapter Twelve!

"What did you think?" I beamed up at her. It was like I had been awake for hours.

"I loved it. I loved that feeling of dread when Wendy was in trouble, and Nurse August was really disappointed in her. But then he talked about how he's not upset with her even though he has to take her to Daycare, and that makes it kind of okay. And oh holy heck, Aya is there! I forgot about that. And also Mistress Miff is equal parts intimidating and sexy and I kind of want her to step on me? Or at least smack my butt? God she's so hot. Wendy doesn't know how lucky she is."

"Right?" And Blossom didn't even know the half of it! I sat upright, almost crossing my legs before I remembered I was wearing a still-wet diaper. Sleeping in wet diapers wasn't really my thing, but I had never done so with a Megamax. Honestly? It wasn't so bad.

But the combination of sitting in a wet diaper and having Blossom standing in the doorway? I felt a blush coming on. Luckily for me, an opportunity presented itself for me to kick Blossom out of my room.

"I wrote a lot of stuff down," Blossom said, "but the list is downstairs."

"Oh?" A list of stuff she liked about my story? If she kept doing things like that, I'd fall in love with her. "Well, I'm up now, so I'll be down in a second. Then we can talk about it?"

"Okay!"

Blossom turned around, and then turned back around to look at Amy, and she looked a bit like an NPC stuck in an animation loop for a second.

"I'm going to order some breakfast delivery; do you have anything you feel like?"

"Uh... no fish." Not that fish was a particularly popular breakfast food. Blossom nodded and hurried out of the room leaving my door open.

"Why do people always do that," I sighed. "If the door is closed when you come in, close it when you leave." I shuffled out from under the covers and waddled over to close the door. Then I doubled back to look at myself in the mirror.

My hair was a mess. My pajamas were bunched up too much. I still had sleep in my eyes. But with a bit of rubbing and pulling and untucking, I looked somewhat presentable. I pulled the front of my pajama pants down to glimpse the white plastic. Gosh...

Then I remembered last night. Wendy and Academy Works and everything else. Wetting myself in the hallway. Leaving Blossom on the couch. Coming up to bed alone. A shiver ran up my spine and I felt a little queasy. Blossom could never know about that.

Either way, the diaper was actually a little uncomfortable in the renewing aura of morning. It was folded down over my stomach, pulling tightly at my hips, and my skin didn't like the hours and hours of chafing on plastic. Even the heat between my legs was gone, and now it was just cold and clammy. It was appalling how different I felt last night. Night and day, one might say.

I stripped myself of the diaper, balled it up, and threw it in the bag in the bathroom. It was part of Blossom's ritual now, along with turning on the heat and water. I wiped myself clean with baby wipes and put on some normal underwear before getting back into my pajama pants.

I paused in front of the bathroom mirror and took a deep breath. So she changed my diaper. So my chapter was a little sexy. It was fine. Nothing was different.

That thought - those three words - brought with them an indescribable and irrational amount of both relief and disappointment.

"Okay, so do you want me to - oh, I ordered McDonalds breakfast," Blossom clarified, waving her little notepad around, adorned in several different shades of pink and purple inks, and even with a couple of highlighted segments. Then she remembered what she was talking about and continued.

"So do you wanna read my notes? Or do you want me to read them to you? Because holy moly that chapter was so hot and I have many questions for you as the author who I did things with last night, just how inspiring our little scene was because if I inspired this? This? You might never be allowed out of diapers again. And I'll be the one putting you in them and changing you, if this is the result!"

Blossom was always turned up to eleven, and I was already red as a tomato when I sat down next to her on the sofa.

"Well, we can go through the notes and you can ask whatever questions you want?" I suggested. I reached for the notebook.

Note #1: The tension that Wendy is feeling is palpable and you captured that part really well. At first, I thought it was the ghost calling her name, not Stupid Sexy Nurse August.

Note #2: I had friends who would talk about how their dad spoke in stern tones, but mine never did. I wonder if that is why I can find it so ungodly hot.

Note #3: I have whatever the opposite of daddy issues are, apparently.

Note #4: I love thinking about the layout of this place. I can visualize it pretty well with my Good Apple Brain.

Note #5: Is there just one daycare? I should ask cupcake about that.

Blossom wrote down notes exactly the same way she talked. It was kind of charming, actually. At least, until I got to the part about "asking cupcake". So I guess that was a serious nickname now? And I thought Amy was embarrassing...

It was at this time that Blossom did just that - she'd been reading out her notes to herself, and it seemed like she ought to follow her own advice.

"So? Is there more than one daycare?"

"No, just the one," I said. "There are only fifty or sixty students, and the daycare has four alcoves or whatever. Plus the center part."

"Oh, speaking of," Blossom said, off script from her notebook, "the daycare is shaped like a star. And that's a tarot card, right? You mentioned it in Academy I's epigraph?"

"Yep," I said brightly, without a hint of intent. Did that matter? Did it matter that the hills in Academy K were also shaped like a star? What about those blocks in Academy I? What symbols were on those?

"Your stories have more layers than your underpants, and by underpants, I mean diapers."

Blossom grinned and Amy turned back to Blossom’s notes.

Note #6: "I am not upset with you, but you ARE in trouble", is SUCH a powerful combination of ideas.

Note #7: Huh, the right caregiver always answers the door to the daycare. Maybe there IS more than one!

"There's not," I said to note number seven, then continued reading.

Note #8: Oh Aya is here!

Note #8b: Diaper so wet it droops between her legs. SO HOT.

Note #8c: Come, said Mistress Miff - more like Mistress Milf, am I right? I think if she said come, I would.

"I absolutely would," Blossom interjected. "Without a doubt. Just so we're clear."

I rolled my eyes at Blossom. In my opinion, Mistress Miff was a complete monster, but some people were into that. I continued down her list.

Note #9: Please tell me I am a bad girl, Mistress Miff. Please. I can be badder.

Note #10: She is so HOT. Have I mentioned this? Wendy does not realize how lucky she is!

Note #11: You are a lost cause, Blossom. Nod for me. Yes you are. You're so naughty. I should not be writing notes when you left me alone with your story, cupcake. I am squarely at the 'hands down panties/panties ruined' stage of my morning.

Note #12: Yes Mistress. Good girls get Mommies and Matrons.

"You're way too into this," I said dismissively, as if I had any room to talk.

Note #13: Do you see me as more of a Mistress or a Mommy or a Matron, cupcake?

"Uhh..." Woah, that was a question I didn't expect. Like, keep it to Academy Works, Blossom! But it got my mind turning.

Mommy Blossom... everyone wants a Mommy. Or maybe that was just my perception of things. If Blossom were my Mommy... well...

A Mistress? She sure knew how to be bossy. Demanding. Self-centered. It really splashed a bucket of water over the fire of Mommy Blossom.

Or Matron. Matrons weren't really anything. The thing I maybe most associated Blossom with in Academy Works was Nana: condescending, yet manipulative. Hot and cold at once. Or, in Blossom's case, hot and hot, but two different kinds of hot.

But I couldn't tell Blossom any of that, so I deflected. Thankfully my brain worked a lot faster than my mouth. It only took me a second to say:

"Obviously you'd be Baby Blossom, stuck in the Cold Room until you learned to behave."

"W-o-w." Blossom didn't say the word; she just mouthed it, but that made it all the more dramatic. "The cold room couldn't break me anyway. I'm built different. Brixley Tough, and all that!"

Note #14: You have never ever written a hotter character

Note #14b: I know I am thirsty, it is not my fault. She is hot. You are hot. This is hot. I am ONLY HUMAN!

Note #15: "Her body cleansed of her filthy thoughts." I need that. I do not want that. But I need that.

Note #16: Please punish me with three cherries on top!

It was at this point Blossom had to literally stop reading along to fan herself, because the color in her cheeks and the flushed warmth of her body was getting too much.

Blossom had four more notes, but none of them were that relevant. They were more like the kinds of notes you say when watching a TV show. I appreciated them all the same, but Blossom was too eager to get to the Big Question.

"So which part did I inspire?" Blossom asked cheekily.

"Uhh..."

"You changed gears awfully fast yesterday," Blossom teased in a sing-song voice. "One moment we were cuddling and bam! Writing mood."

"Well, I don't think it was one thing in particular..." I said. "I knew Wendy would get caught and go to the daycare, right? But I thought she would be kind of a brat about it."

"Mmhmm," Blossom nodded.

"But then last night, we were trying to do that scene with me being a brat, and... it was kind of hard to stay in character. Because I really didn't want to win, you know?"

"That's a good point! So you got to experience that headspace, and that made you better able to write from Wendy's perspective? The stuff you wrote about how Mistress Miff made Wendy feel…"

Million dollar question incoming.

"Is that how I made you feel?"

"Sort of..." I felt a blush creep up my neck. "It's like... my character last night wanted one thing, and I wanted something different. I was worried that the way I was acting was out of character, but what if my character was conditioned to feel that way? Or altered?"

"Like the Academy does?" Blossom guessed.

"Yeah. I thought writing Wendy as a good girl wasn't true to her character, but then when everything settled down yesterday..." I paused to reframe the evening. How was I supposed to say this without sounding ungrateful?

"When the magic of it all wore off, I felt... I dunno. Like me again. Not lost in all that dreamy baby stuff, but just like a grown woman who just played a really stupid game. And I thought... well, that's probably how Wendy would feel too. She can't help but want to be a good girl - it's programmed into her. Like my kink is programmed into me." Well, programmed for her was literal and programmed for me was metaphorical, but the analogy still worked.

"So when she comes out of this..." Blossom said, inferring ahead.

"The feelings don't last," I said, almost solemnly. "Feelings never last very long."

"It's like the afterglow effect. When you have sex with someone, they usually lose a lot of the passion after climax." Blossom was always fairly comfortable talking about sex, even though she kind of got the sense that Amy wasn't nearly so comfortable.

"I'm really glad we got to share that experience last night." Blossom flashed a happy smile to Amy, just as the doorbell rang to announce the arrival of their McDonalds breakfast. "I'll get it~"

I looked down at my laptop and the list of twenty notes on the table. I knew so much of what Blossom said about me, about my stories, was over-the-top fluff. It was generosity turned up to 110%. I knew she expressed herself freely, unrestrained, and her passions would get ahead of her. It sometimes made her sound like I was a goddess or something.

But all the same, I knew a lot of what I said about Blossom, how I dismissed and trivialized her, was over-the-top fluff. It was generosity turned down to 10%. I knew I couldn't express myself freely, always restrained, and my passions were locked in my mind like sickness in Pandora's box. It sometimes made me sound like Blossom was a nuisance or something.

But I wasn't a goddess, and she wasn't a nuisance. I was just a girl who liked writing stories, and Blossom was just a girl who liked reading them. Sentiment and expression were not intrinsically linked. They couldn't be, because if Blossom really saw divinity in me, then perhaps it meant I saw wickedness in her.

I didn't want that, not anymore. I wanted to imagine - despite all our differences in expression - that we were the same in sentiment. We both liked each other a perfectly reasonable amount.

A perfectly reasonable amount.

"You can eat whatever," Blossom said, sitting down on the couch with a McDonald's bag in her hands. "I'll eat the leftovers."

"Thanks," I smiled. "And when we're done, I have a surprise for you."

Blossom paused, looking quizzical. I wasn't sure I'd ever caught her by surprise before.

"Surprise?"

"Mmhmm. I didn't just write Chapter Twelve yesterday. I wrote Chapter Thirteen too."

"You wrote two chapters last night?!" Blossom looked like a little girl on Christmas morning. She literally vibrated in place on the sofa, going through wild ideas. "I thought it would be a fade to black with the enema stuff, but you wrote both chapters back to back and I bet I bet that it's a continuation! I bet it's gonna be so stinking hot. You're such a temptress, a vixen, a seductress!"

"Well, yeah. I was writing for like seven hours. I'm not that slow." Granted, this response was why I'd waited to tell her. Blossom was shoveling food into her mouth, trying to get through breakfast as fast as humanly possible.

Maybe later on in her life, Blossom would reflect on the fact that she never felt self-conscious in front of Amy. She never felt ashamed to be eating excessively, or for being in her pajamas; heck, she didn't even mind Amy seeing her without makeup on or her hair done.

"Okay, okay, I'm done eating, give me that sweet sexy Miss Miff!"

"I am like two bites into this," I said, holding up a sausage and egg McMuffin.

"You don't have to touch the trackpad," Blossom argued. "I can do it."

I sighed, my mouth full of food. I didn't want to be rushed through breakfast, so it only seemed reasonable. Maybe this was my fault for telling her in advance.

"Fine," I said after swallowing. "I shouldn't be enabling this behavior though."

I opened my laptop to my master file of Academy A and handed her the computer.

Chapter Thirteen.

***

[Academy A: Chapter 13]

(If you are following Academy Works, please read Ch.13 [linked above] and return here to continue the story. If Ch.14 has been released, it is recommended that you DO NOT read it at this time.)