Heat

Story by interloper on SoFurry

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#3 of The Story of Cattanzo and Everyone Else

Freddie grows up, finds out some things about his situation, and gets into a couple of sticky situations as well when things don't exactly go as planned.


(Note: Given their extremely unusual "family" dynamic, I'm not sure if the incest tag is precisely appropriate, but I'm including it to be on the safe side.)

After that initial meeting, the routine for Freddie and his siblings began to undergo rapid change. A new corridor was opened up, which led to a proper cafeteria that provided more than sandwiches (although just about everything was made primarily with various types of meat), and a classroom with a large digital screen and orderly rows of desks, where they soon began to spend much of their time, with the various assistants acting as teachers, and helping them to connect the knowledge they already had, while building up new knowledge on top of it. They were even allowed outside for the first time, into a small, grass-filled courtyard between a square of hallways, with white chalk lines laying out a small playing field for various sports, and a small patch of blue sky above that was occasionally dotted with the light, fluffy clouds he'd seen in some of his books. His days were suddenly much busier, but it was a nice change of pace, as all of a sudden there was so much else to do and people to get to know. At night, they were all back in the room, and the assistants quickly gave up on trying to force them into separate beds, removing them entirely after a few weeks, leaving in their place a big pile of pillows and bedding for them to arrange as they saw fit. Freddie adjusted to the new style of sleeping almost immediately, as it somehow just felt more natural for them all to be snuggled together, and the fuzzy warmth all around him meant that instead of turning about to finds some comfortable position in bed, he just curled up naturally, his tail instinctually wrapping around his nearest sibling, the soft rhythm of breathing all around him gently lulling him to sleep.

Overall, the boys and girls stuck together more with each other, as the boys generally wanted to play and do stuff that involved building and wrestling around, while the girls liked to do things that required a lot of talking and complicated rules that they made up for how their playing should work. Freddie and Tommy hung out together a lot, and soon began to play with some other kids as well - Dwight, a rabbit-like boy with tan-colored fur, and Reggie, a feline whose fur was yellow dotted with regular black spots. They played out on the grass whenever they had a chance, kicking around one of the big red balls that seemed to be the only type of sports equipment in the facility. When they were indoors and not in class, they would build with blocks in the room, or occasionally wander around the halls, occasionally using Freddie's skills in shoulder-surfing to poke around in some of the rooms they weren't exactly supposed to get into. They all quickly settled into the routine, and everything seemed to work well, as the weeks stretched into months, and then years.

Over time, though, Freddie began to realize that some things weren't quite right. For one, despite all the books that told of the wide world outside, the only outside they ever saw was the small patch of grass, and there was little to their world beyond the series of hallways, with a number of doors that were always locked. The scientists also began to huddle away from them on occasion and exchange worried glances, accompanied by faint whispers that even Freddie's excellent ears couldn't make out.

One day, when he was about eleven or so, Freddie and Tommy were poking around, trying out some of the passcodes on doors to see if they still worked - some rooms, like the break room, never changed their codes, while others seemed to rotate every few months. Freddie had just punched into five-five-eight, the dim room with banks of computer monitors, and was inching the door open when he heard a group of voices emanating from inside. He quickly crouched down and pushed the door so it was just ajar, but the nervous tones of the conversation made him hesitate at the door and listen.

"It's going to be fine," said a voice that sounded like Dr. Mauro's. "These indicators are probably nothing. There's no way anyone on the outside could know - our security has been airtight."

"It's not that simple," a female voice replied. "You know it's not. We all have that lonely fool Dubrovnikov to thank for that. If he'd just kept a lid on it, if he'd just kept his research theoretical until we had time to develop things properly, we wouldn't even need to worry about this."

"But really, Gina, there's nothing to worry about-"

"Really? Nothing to worry about? Are you kidding me? Maybe you've conveniently forgotten about those laws that were passed in the wake of that mess, but I haven't! If the government knew what we were really doing here..."

"I'm sure that it's secure. Really, you're overreacting."

"Oh, you're probably right. But... Arrgh! That damm idiot Dubrovnikov! What the hell was he thinking? Thanks to his perversion, this whole line of research has been messed up. And what, so he can play kissy-face with neon-blue canines? I mean, how messed up is that? His whole project is one giant abortion. With no way to reproduce, how exactly is his group of mutants supposed to continue? We're doing real science here, building new, real, sustainable species, and thanks to his mess, we have to put up with all of this cloak-and-dagger bullshit! Did he even think at all? If he did, the organ he was using sure wasn't his brain!"

"Gina..."

"Don't Gina me! You know we should have been the ones with the first opportunity! We took it slow, put in the research, took every possible precaution, and he just throws a bunch of genetic material against a wall and hoped it would stick! The result? A bizarre abomination that scooped us by twenty-two fucking years, and then caused everyone to second-guess the whole situation! Thanks to his idiocy, we couldn't release our results even if we wanted to! And we're the ones who got it right! Dammit, Mo, it should have been our faces all over the news, not his!"

"Yes, look, it's not that I don't agree with you. It's not that I'm not angry and frustrated about this situation. But the fact of the matter is, we can't change these things overnight. Time is passing, and already public opinion is shifting - Dubrovnikov's spawn, as strange as they are, are almost universally accepted, perhaps as a curiosity, but the situation is stabilizing. Give it some more time, and there will be a point where we can reveal what we're doing to the same kind of acceptance. Once the gates were opened, albeit prematurely, people's attitudes naturally began to shift, and someday these new species will seem just as natural as humans."

"Well, they'd better. After all, we're the first real, viable project... and however the public reacts, they're gonna have a hard time trying to cover up the three thousand new sentient individuals we'll have on hand by the time this project is complete."

"Right. We just have to keep things together through the fourth phase, just a few more years, and then..."

Freddie wanted to listen more, but he could hear Tommy hissing at him that someone was coming down the hall, so he eased the door shut and quickly scuttled away to a more appropriate place. Once they got back to their room, Tommy bugged him about what he'd heard. "Well? What'd they say?"

"Uh, a bunch'a stuff, I dunno..." and, truth be told, he wasn't quite sure exactly what he'd heard. There was some guy that they didn't like, sure, and apparently someone didn't like what the scientists were doing here, but Freddie couldn't really figure out why - all the people here seemed nice enough, and all of his siblings seemed totally normal as much as he could figure. That number, though... "They did say that there are a bunch more of us somewhere. Like three thousand or something."

"Really? That's just... can you even imagine that? Three thousand of us, running around? Although they're probably all off in groups in some other place, just like we are." He paused, perking up. "You think we'll get to meet them?"

"Dunno." Freddie left it at that, and honestly didn't think that much more about it, although he asked Dr. Mauro about it a couple of weeks later.

"Three thousand? Wherever on earth did you hear that?" Freddie had just shrugged in response, not wanting to reveal his snooping. "Well, however you heard that, let's, uh, just say it's more or less accurate, but for right now, it's still gonna be be just the sixteen of you here. You guys are enough of a handful already!" Freddie grinned at that, and pestered him a bit more, but couldn't manage to pry free any more information, and when he said the name he'd heard, Dubrovnikov, Dr. Mauro said that he didn't know him, and gave him a look that made it clear the conversation was over.

In the end, it didn't really matter, as things went back to how they had been - school, playing around in the yard, as they slowly grew bigger and began to learn more complex things. In fact, they began to outgrow their previously loose-fitting clothes, and some of his siblings began to get frustrated with them at night and just took them off entirely. The scientists took note of that after the first couple of nights, and soon returned with heaps of clothing, and different stuff as well - instead of the loose white clothing, there were proper pants in tan and blue fabrics, colorful t-shirts with various abstract logos, and actual underwear, which they were supposed to wear under the new clothes - the old ones had been a loose shirt and pants, and that was it. "This is more like you'd wear, um... elsewhere," one of the assistants had said, and had told them that even if the clothes weren't comfortable against their fur at night, they had to at least wear the underwear. The boys got to choose between ones called boxers and trunks, and Freddie chose the latter - even though they were tighter and puffed out a bit from his fur, their closeness generally felt more comfortable, while the boxers always seemed to feel like they were rubbing something the wrong way. The girls got smaller things that looked like a triangle in front and a half-circle in the back, which was supposed to work better for their bodies.

Seeing the different underwear reminded Freddie of his curiosity about how their bodies were different. He still had the weird anatomical diagrams floating around in his mind, but they still didn't make much sense, and his teachers, despite talking about the biology of other things, never touched on the subject. A year earlier, he and the siamese-looking girl had gone into a corner of the room while the other kids were out and looked at each other's stuff, but it still didn't make sense - while she had looked intently at his penis and tries to figure out what it did, seeing between her legs just confirmed what he'd seen in the tanks years before - there wasn't really anything there, just a patch of pink, furless skin with a little ridge that folded in on itself, and that was it. The girl, Kelly, had said that she peed from somewhere in the middle of it, but Freddie couldn't even figure out how that worked, and ultimately the encounter had ended leaving him more puzzled than he'd been before. At the time, he simply didn't understand what purpose it served having nothing there, and the elaborate, flower-like drawings seemed to bear little resemblance at all to that nondescript bit of skin. As a result, he still found the girls kind of weird, and mostly ignored them in favor of hanging out with his friends.

A couple of years passed without his perception on the matter changing much, if at all. By that time, they were all somewhere in their mid-teens or so, and while they had gone through some changes, they weren't all that noticeable, or at least not as noticeable as they apparently were in people like the scientists that watched over them. Everyone had grown a bit, so that the scientists no longer towered over them, but were instead just a head taller, maybe a little more. The boys, especially the ones that played a lot out in the yard, had chests and arms that were a bit bigger, and the outline of the girls became a bit softer, and some had rows of pink dots that pushed up from the fur on their bellies and were sometimes visible as they slept. Freddie had worried a couple of years back that something bad was happening to them, that they were becoming "mutants" like the creatures in one of the sci-fi books he'd found to read, but an assistant had assured him that they were just a normal, harmless thing that girls had that wasn't important to think about. Still, he found himself thinking about the girls more when his mind wandered - something about them was becoming interesting, but he wasn't quite sure what. They still stayed separate for the most part, although there was a little more effort to make them all work in groups during class. Overall, he still wasn't quite sure what to make of them, and how to reconcile his newfound thoughts, so as usual he shoved them aside to think about other things, like how to defeat the new thumbprint scanners that had been installed on some of the doors instead of keypads - as his own hands had sort of soft, leathery pads surrounded by fur in the places that the human scientists had the skin that generated fingerprints, he didn't think he had any at all - or, certainly, anything that could defeat the new scanners. Because of them, he had less avenues for exploration, but he was sure he'd eventually figure out a way around them.

Then, one particular morning rolled around, and everything changed quickly. The day started out warm, and while the overhead lights hardly betrayed the season, the pollen in the air detected by his sensitive nose was a clear enough indication of springtime without any need to look outside. There was another smell, though, one he couldn't quite place - subtle, yet alluring, almost sweet but not quite. He'd noticed hints of it a few days ago, but today was the first day it was really noticeable, permeating the air with its unusual fragrance. Some of the other guys waking up around him were noticing it too, turning around in circles on the floor and sniffing in anticipation.

The girls didn't seem to notice it, though, but then again, they seemed to have something else going on, although he wasn't quite sure what. Usually, they got up a bit earlier than the boys, and were usually getting dressed by now, talking rapidly amongst themselves about something that had caught their interest. Today, though, only a couple of the girls were talking in the corner. The others were still on the floor, amidst the chaotic pile of bedding, and while a couple of them had pulled on shirts, the rest were still just in their underwear, stretching and rolling about with a kind of dazed look in their eyes. They looked happy, though, lazily smiling and occasionally making soft mewling and purring noises of the kind he hadn't heard since they were much younger. He wasn't quite sure what they were doing, but he also found that he couldn't quite tear his eyes away from the sight, either. There was something... attractive about watching them roll around like that. Occasionally, one of them would roll back upright onto all fours, and then stretch out very slowly, with hers arms and head low to the ground, and her back arching upwards with her hips in the air, her tail twitching towards the ceiling to reveal the pastel fabric of her underwear, and suddenly that bit of cloth around her hips and dipping between her legs became the absolute center of his attention. Every time one of them stretched like that, the scent in the room became stronger as well, and as it did Freddie could feel his own underwear becoming surprisingly tight, and he looked down to see the pouch in front pushing outwards as his penis rapidly swelled to fill the space. It had done that before, sure, usually in the morning, but he'd always thought it was just a signal to go and use the bathroom. It didn't feel that way now, though - instead it just felt sensitive, the soft fabric suddenly tantalizing against his skin, and when he reached down to touch it it felt incredibly warm, even through the underwear. In fact, he realized he was feeling warm all over, and pleasantly so, and all of a sudden rolling about in bed in his underwear seemed like an excellent idea, especially if it meant rolling around next to the girls.

Instead of standing up, he rolled over and got onto all fours - somehow, at the moment, it just seemed more natural that way - and crawled back onto the edge of the wide, irregular circle of bedding. Around him, he could see the other boys doing the same, edging curiously closer, and soon they had formed a close ring around the half-dozen girls cavorting in the center. The two girls in the corner had noticed what was going on, and looked over momentarily in curiosity, but didn't seem eager to join in. Freddie only noticed them for a moment, though, as his attention was now intensely focused towards the center of the bed.

The siamese girl, Kelly, had been rolling about vigorously, her tail twitching violently back and forth, but now she seemed much more interested in performing her unusual stretch, holding that position longer and longer. Now, when she stretched, she buried her face in one of the pillows, purring rapidly, while she arched her hips higher and stretched, her legs trembling with the effort as she wiggled her butt in the air, appearing to push it as high as she possibly could, her tail curled over onto her back. She stretched and turned in a slow circle, giving Freddie a good view of her panties - they seemed tighter than ever, caressing curves that were now intensely alluring, and the part that ran between her legs was somehow completely soaked, the lavender color of it darkened by the liquid and plastered so closely that Freddie could see it trace the folds and outlines of what lay underneath, suddenly seeming far more complex than what he had remembered seeing years ago.

Of course, Kelly wasn't the only one doing interesting things. One of the more canine girls, a wolfy one with silver-grey fur, was rolling from side to side, and then turning onto her back, the nipples on her abdomen seeming larger than before and practically glowing bright red, and she ran her hands across them like she was petting them, as her legs arched so wide as to be almost perpendicular to her body, pulling her hips a few inches off the ground as her hands slid downward and across the front of her underwear. As soon as her hands went across the fabric and dipped down between her legs, though, her whole pelvis began to shudder, and she let out an unusually sharp, high-pitched bark as her legs rapidly scissored shut, her butt bouncing back down against the sheets a few times as she writhed about, and the way her thighs bounced and undulated captivated Freddie's gaze. Then she turned over onto her side, her legs clasped tightly around the hand that she kept firmly pressed between her legs, rolling back and forth and murring happily as she began the process all over again, occasionally breaking up the routine with a stretch similar to the one the other girls were doing, although she stood on all fours and held her head up, her tail vertical and swaying back and forth, almost like a snake being charmed, only in this case it was the tail that was doing the charming, as multiple sets of eyes twitched in lockstep with its movement.

The other girls were doing their own permutations of the cycle, but as Freddie looked over them, he suddenly noticed that one of the girls was foxlike, like him, with sleek, reddish-brown fur that contrasted nicely with her bright blue panties. She was rolling around, playing with her tail, occasionally rolling onto her back and arcing her hands and feet in the air while the tail tucked tightly between her legs and brushed back and forth across the twin rows of pink nipples on her abdomen. However, while the other girls either seemed completely oblivious to the boys arrayed around them or seemed to be looking across all of them, he realized that this girl was looking directly at him, and kept her gaze locked as she played around. Once she realized that he was looking back, she smiled and rolled over onto her belly, her tongue flicking out to lick along her muzzle as her long ears twitched invitingly.

Freddie was captivated, and couldn't figure out how he'd barely noticed the girl before, and could not even properly remember her name. Of course, he had a hard time rememebering anything at that moment, as the thinking portion of his brain seemed to be shutting down, and another part of his brain was simply wondering why he wasn't rolling around with that girl right now.

Off to the side, there was a blur of motion as Reggie's brain apparently came to that conclusion more quickly. Kelly had gone back to her stretching pose, and Reggie had apparently been inching closer. He had suddenly pounced right on top of her, causing her to yelp in delight, and Freddie noticed that he had discarded his boxers, which lay in a heap where he had been crouching. Reggie stuck his muzzle into the tuft of fur on her neck, his hands pushing her shoulders into the bedding and arching her butt up even more, and it came up to nuzzle against his crotch, her tail naturally wrapping around to curl over his back. Reggie made a muffled sound, still nuzzled in her fur, and his hips thumped, making her body undulate. He growled, a weird, almost frustrated sound, and his hands darted back to between her legs, then slipped under the fabric around her hips, pulling down in a rapid motion that left the lavender fabric in a shapeless pile around her knees. His hands stayed back, doing something between her legs, as her hips made a series of short, quick motions as she bit into one of the pillows. Then she gasped audibly, her head popping up and her eyes going wide as Reggie's hips slammed against her butt hard, pushing her whole body forward. His hands came back to push her shoulders down, and he pressed his whole body against her, starting to rock his hips frantically, and each time they rocked forward against her she let out a little moan into the pillow.

The other boys watched this display, captivated, but Freddie kept glancing over to the fox girl, who was still rolling around lazily. Then she gave Freddie one more lingering glance and turned away from him. Freddie worried that meant she was going to look at someone else, but instead it appeared she wanted to give him a different view. She rolled over gracefully onto her hands and knees, going into a similar stretch to the one the wolf girl had done, her tail wagging back and forth as she seemed to line her ass up so that it was pointed perfectly at him. The area between her legs was soaked as well, and her hands reached up to either side, rubbing the fabric, and he realized how soft her ass was as it conformed to her touch. He suddenly wanted to touch it more than anything, and the equipment between his own legs had grown so big that it was bordering on painful to keep it contained in the underwear any longer, so he yanked his trunks down and kicked them away. The girl didn't seem to mind, and made a purring sound when Freddie crawled quickly over to her, the scent becoming intoxicating as he approached. He gently rubbed her fur, and he could feel his own thighs twitching as he ran his hands down her back, brushing along her tail and guiding it over until it lay along her back, exposing her panties. He grabbed at them, kneading her butt with his fingers, and it felt just like he thought it would - soft and warm. As he did so, though, she started to back up, and the head of his penis bumped up against one buttock, and then bumped up against the wet spot between her legs. She gasped at that, but then he could feel her relax under his hands, and she pushed back closer against him, leaving an tingling sensation that quickly coursed down his legs and made his toes twitch - and he quickly realized that the panties needed to go away, and fast. Unlike some of the other ones, they were held together with two bows on either side of her hips, and he knew what to do with those. Quickly pulling on a loose end on either side, the bows rapidly unraveled, and then the panties were nothing more than an irregular strip of cloth that he could easily brush aside. As soon as that was out of the way, his body just seemed to take over, and his hands were soon on her shoulders, pushing her down into a pile of soft blankets, his muzzle tucked against her cheek, and he heard her moan as he took in her amazing scent, feeling her soft fur brushing against his nose. His hands moved to hug her around her chest, and he could feel her ass come up to conform perfectly against him. His penis was still pressing up awkwardly against the side of her thigh, and it felt like it was supposed to go... in... somewhere. He continued hugging her, though, as everything felt so good, and she kept moving her hips around, his penis bumping up against one side of her thigh, then, the other, and then it hit right in the middle of that bare patch of skin, only it was wet now, and slippery, and yielded to his pressure, and he realized that the ridge of skin was actually two ridges, and they felt amazing as his tip poked between them, slowly wrapping themselves around his head as his hips rocked forward, and he couldn't have stopped them if he tried as he began to be enveloped by an incredible warmth...

He was so engrossed in the new feelings that, like the rest of them, he hadn't heard the duo of uninvolved girls leave, and he barely heard the rapidly thumping sets of footsteps as they tore down the hall and into the room. He did, feel, though, the arms that reached down around him and yanked his arms apart from where they had been grasping the girl's chest, and then wrapped around his naked waist and yanked him harshly upward, the sensation shockingly broken as he was lifted bodily into the air, his penis waving around ridiculously, swollen and bright red. He twisted in the person's arms, growling, to see the stern, angry gaze of the woman the others referred to as Dr. Maartens. He yowled like an animal and swiped at her face, something he'd never even think of doing otherwise, but he still felt barely in control of his own body, and all it wanted to do now was to lash out at this interloper and get back to what it had been doing. She dodged out of the way, though, and slapped him across the face. The blow stung, and he stood there for a moment, stunned, giving her enough time to set him down and wrap him up in a wrestling lock that froze his arms into place, before lifting him bodily off the ground again. Looking around, he saw another of the scientists pulling Reggie off, something white and goopy dripping down from where he was pulled apart from Kelly, and other scientists and assistants were pulling everyone else apart.

"Tenneret!" Maartens yelled, uncomfortably close to his ear. "You said there was no possibility whatsoever that they'd go into heat! You said that it was all supposed to be 'externally controlled!' What the fuck?"

"All of the data points matched the line perfectly..." Dr. Tenerret mumbled, holding onto a girl that resembled a red panda.

"Well, your data points don't exactly mean much right now, do they? 'Don't worry! We don't need to teach them sex-ed because they'll only be ready when we let them be ready!' Bullshit!" Maartens looked back down to Freddie. "As for you, mister, I think you need to cool down. Right. Now." She lifted him up and hauled him across the hall to the bathroom, where she tossed him, still naked, into one of the shower stalls. He got up, his body tensing to lunge at her, but she already had one of the taps cranked up and the handheld showerhead ready to go. The water streamed out in a strong blast, and it felt next to freezing as the first stream smacked him right in the muzzle. He gurgled and sputtered as she sprayed the water over him, hosing him down, frequently centering the frigid stream on his crotch until he wondered whether it was going to freeze solid and snap off. By the time she finally turned the water off he was crouched on the floor of the shower stall, his hands over his crotch, coughing up water, with his wet fur matted uncomfortably against his skin and rivulets of water draining off from dozens of tufts.

"Settled down, now?" Maartens asked, and Freddie nodded meekly. It was true, though - as uncomfortable as his crotch now felt, at least it looked like it was back to normal, and the crazy feelings he'd had earlier were now just an interesting memory. In its place, conscious thought had returned, along with the dull ache that began to spread across his pelvis. He realized that whatever had happened, he'd done something bad. Maybe he wasn't supposed to have done what he did with the girl, but he wasn't sure - what he was sure about, though, was that he'd long been taught never to hit anyone, and regardless of what had happened, he was definitely in trouble for trying to hit Dr. Maartens.

"I, uh... I'm sorry?" he said. "I'm back to normal, now, I'm not sure what happened, but I'm really sorry for trying to hit you, I know it was wrong but I just-"

Dr. Maartens stopped him, crouching down to face him. "Okay, I accept your apology! Jesus christ, I know it's not all your fault, it's just... I'm not really mad at you. Things happened that weren't supposed to happen, but I can't really blame you for it. Oh, there are people who do deserve blame, and they'll hear about it later, oh yes they will. You, though... you probably just did what some instincts inside you told you to do. Instincts that weren't supposed to be there in the first place, but that's another matter..."

She reached over and tossed him a towel. "Here... dry yourself off and go get dressed. I've got to go and see what can be done to salvage this mess."

Dr. Maartens stormed out, and once she had left, Freddie hung the towel back on the rack, and then shook himself dry in the shower stall as he usually did. He used the towel to wipe off the last bits of water, then headed back across the hall to his room, feeling awkward about being naked in the middle of the hallway. At least he was able to look down and determine that everything was in order, although it was remarkable how different it looked now, just the little fleshy thing he used to pee with and not much else, instead of the big, hard, bright red thing longer than his hand that had been about to do something amazing. He couldn't help but feel regret that he hadn't been allowed to continue what he had been doing to whatever its finish would have been, as he was sure it was something so incredible as to defy his imagination. He also knew, though, that for some reason, what they'd been doing was some kind of a problem. He didn't think it was wrong, and it had certainly felt right, but for some reason it drove the scientists practically into a state of panic.

He looked up from his thoughts to find himself beside the place where his bed used to be, and he went over to his dresser and pulled on a new pair of trunks, which felt much more comfortable now that everything was back to normal. He pulled on the rest of his clothing, grateful that the other boys there had barely took notice of his nakedness - even covered in fur, since they'd been wearing underwear, it had begun to feel unusual to walk around without any clothing at all. However, the other boys were now basically back to normal, some of them reading school textbooks while others were building an elaborate building with the struts and bolts from a metal construction set. It was almost like the events of the morning hadn't even happened for them. On the other hand, Reggie was still missing, his clothes lying in a heap where he'd been so quick to discard them, and much of the bedding had apparently been dragged away. Looking around, he quickly realized that all of the girls were missing as well.

Reggie rejoined them around dinnertime, complaining about some medical tests they'd made him go through, but the girls didn't, and after dinner Dr. Mauro assembled them all in the front of the cafeteria and told them that the girls would not be joining them for a while, at least not until they had completed a certain kind of cycle that only girls went through, and when they did come back they would attend school together again, but would shower and sleep in different places. Tommy asked what the cycle was and why boys didn't have it, and Dr. Mauro's face turned red and he refused to answer the question, although Dr. Redfield made a quip about boys "being in heat all the time." Freddie didn't think that was true, though, as at the time he'd definitely cooled back down, albeit forcibly, and everyone else seemed just about back to normal as well - certainly none of them felt like rolling around on the floor anymore! He'd though to ask more about what happened, but Dr. Mauro was looking very flustered and didn't want to go on, mumbling something about how one of the assistants would have to go over "sex-ed" with them soon. Then they were let out into the yard, where they played a variation of soccer until the sky began to grow dark. As they walked back in afterwards, Freddie could hear a number of loud, angry voices coming from behind the closed door to the break room, but he figured that he was kind of in trouble already, and didn't want to compound it by getting caught eavesdropping.

When they got back to the room, the bedding had been set back up, albeit in a smaller arrangement now that there were only half of them that would be sleeping there. They brushed their teeth as normal, stripped down to their underwear as they always did, and curled up to go to sleep, but Freddie quickly found that he couldn't close his eyes without his mind drifting back to the morning, and what had happened with the fox girl. It drove him crazy that he couldn't even remember her name, but he could see her face in his mind's eye, almost as clearly as if she were curled up next to him. He couldn't help thinking about her body, those alluring motions, that incredible scent... He turned back and forth, but couldn't get comfortable, and he realized that just from closing his eyes and thinking about her, his body was beginning to feel the way it had in the morning, parts of him tensing up, getting more sensitive, and once again his underwear began to feel uncomfortably tight. What could he do about it now, though? The girls were all gone, and didn't seem likely to come back soon, and even if they did, he was sure the scientists would never allow a replay of what happened. That didn't change the fact that his body still wanted to finish what he had started, and he didn't know what to do. Boys didn't have the same kind of equipment, and he was pretty sure that if he pounced on a boy the same way, they wouldn't react well. All the while, his underwear was getting tighter as he pushed against it, and finally he just pulled it off, hoping no one else would notice. His penis throbbed out, anticipating something. He shuffled about, trying not to disturb anyone else, grabbing a nearby pillow and pushing it down to his hips, lying on his stomach and rubbing up against it, bouncing his hips off it like he'd seen earlier. It felt... kinda good, but it wasn't the same. He growled softly in frustration, only to realize his growls were part of a chorus - apparently, he wasn't the only one feeling the same way.

Off to his side, Tommy grumbled. "Rrrarrgghh... why did they have to take the girls away? I feel crazy and there's no way to stop it!"

"Yeah, I know," Freddie replied. "I can't sleep at all... Whenever I try, I think about it, and it just gets worse."

"There's gotta be something we can do. I mean, at least you got to do something before they came in. I just got to look, and feel uncomfortable, and I was about to jump on Danielle, you know, that cute wolfy girl, but then..." He stopped talking to growl again. "Now I don't know what we're supposed to do, and there's this ache that won't go away..."

Freddie thought about it, lying there in frustration. "I dunno. I mean, it was guys and girls, and now there aren't any... Well, what if one person pretends to be a girl and lets the other one jump on them? And then... something... happens?"

"I... I guess," Tommy replied. "I mean, it's better than just sitting here doing nothing and feeling like this." Around them, he could hear other growls of agreement in the near-darkness. "Um, I guess, do you want to try... jumping on me?"

"O-okay," Freddie said, for some reason feeling suddenly nervous. The assistants couldn't be watching, could they? Although he got the feeling that they were more concerned because something was going on between guys and girls, and something about that difference was the issue. After all, they hadn't seen any reason to separate any of the boys, so it shouldn't be a problem... or so he hoped.

He looked over to see Tommy's silhouette barely visible. He appeared to be on all fours and looking back at him, his reflective, pupilless eyes glinting faintly. Freddie went over to him and climbed onto his back, and Tommy said something that he couldn't quite hear.

It wasn't the same, though. The intoxicating scent was no longer there, and while Tommy's fur was probably just as soft, touching him didn't feel as electric as he'd felt before. It just felt... kinda okay, like when he was regularly snuggling someone at night. There also wasn't anything between Tommy's legs as there had been with the girl, just a small patch of fur that didn't do anything when he bumped up against it. He shifted around as Tommy grunted, trying to bump up against him as he had previously, but there didn't seem to be anything to bump into, and his penis kept bending uncomfortably down along one of his legs instead. He momentarily hit something that felt kind of fleshy, but it wouldn't really give, and Tommy yelped in pain under him. "Ow! Stop that!" Freddie sighed, and tried moving differently, but the anatomy was completely different, and there was nowhere comfortable for him to go. After a minute, he rolled back off of Tommy grimacing in frustration.

"So, did it work?" Tommy asked. "It didn't really do anything for me. I mean, it felt close, like how we normally are, but nothing else really. But if it worked for you, maybe we could take turns..."

"Yeah, except it didn't work. Now I just feel more frustrated."

"There's gotta be something we can do..." Tommy said, then reached over towards him. "Here, let me take a look at it. There's got to be something... Hey, sit up, I can't reach it."

Freddie sat up, to see Tommy's silhouette crouching down in front of him. Moments later, one of Tommy's hands reached out, hooking two fingers under it and leaning over to look at it more closely. The touch sent a shiver running along Freddie's legs, and his breath caught in his throat for a second.

"Okay, that did something," he said, as Tommy looked more closely at it.

"Hmm... I can't really see it because it's so dark, but it's not like it's that complicated, right? It's just a big pole with a little flared bit on the end, like mine, right?"

"Yeah, I guess..."

"So... when you were doing the stuff, y'know, earlier, what were you doing that made it feel good? It obviously wasn't just jumping on her and bouncing around..."

"No, it was... there was this part of her that wrapped around you, and I think I was just about to go... inside her, somehow, and then move around like that. It felt all warm, and wet, and..."

"Around you? Hmm... like this?" Tommy took his fingers away momentarily, and then wrapped them around the shaft, like he was making a fist. The pads on his fingers felt velvety soft against the skin, and Freddie groaned involuntarily as the warm sensation enveloped him.

"Ohhh..."

"So it was like that, then. And then just move... back and forth?" He started trying to move his hand along the shaft, but his grip was too tight, and things stretched instead of slid. He figured it out quickly, though, and loosened his grip, so that his fingers were just lightly brushing back and forth. The touch felt incredible, different that what he had felt before, but still really good. The feeling was almost too intense, and he squirmed around, trying to keep under control.

"Huh, but the top keeps popping out," Tommy was muttering, apparently engrossed in solving the problem and not really noticing Freddie's reaction. "Maybe if I use both hands..." A moment later, his other hand wrapped around the tip, which Freddie realized was even more sensitive. The motion was rhythmic, back and forth, and Freddie felt his hips moving along with it, as each subsequent stroke made him feel better and better. He could feel something tensing up deep inside him, and it felt like the touch was amplified until that was all he could feel. Then Tommy's fingers brushed against the tip again, and the feeling was almost more intense than he could take, and a wave of heat spread across him as his thighs tensed and his pelvis shuddered. For a moment, he couldn't do anything, even speak, and his mind went blank as the feeling completely overwhelmed him. Then his body relaxed, the warmth suffusing to every part of him, as something throbbed rhythmically between his legs and he twitched in time with it in Tommy's hand, feeling something pulse out of the tip.

"Haaahhhh..." he finally sighed after a moment, breathing heavily, as Tommy released him.

"Whoa... something definitely happened," Tommy said. "Did that work right? A bunch of really hot, sticky stuff came out, and then you stopped moving, so... is that how it's supposed to work?"

"Hhhff... I guess... I mean it felt really good, I mean incredibly good, and then I just kinda... Yeah, I think it worked, I feel really good and not frustrated any more, kinda sleepy actually..."

"It did work? Awesome! Do me now!"

"Um, sure..." Freddie reached over, running his fingers along Tommy's fur until he found his penis, still hard and almost hot to the touch. He tried to replicate what Tommy had done, moving gently back and forth, and Tommy started making a sound deep in his throat, a mix of a growl and a moan. "Yyeahh, that's it, just like that..." he whispered. Tommy was still crouched down, which made the movement awkward, and Freddie, in his relaxed state, mostly wanted to snuggle up next to someone and get some sleep. He put one hand on Tommy's hip and pushed, and Tommy got the message and rolled over onto his side. Freddie spooned up against him, enjoying the feel of their fur intermingling, and it was much more comfortable to position his hands that way. He wrapped both hands carefully around, the way Tommy had done, and began to move them carefully back and forth, although his movement was slowing as he drifted ever so slowly towards sleep, snuggling close with his hips pushing him up against a soft patch of fur just underneath Tommy's tail. He needn't have worried about the movement, though, as Tommy's own hips took over, quickly finding their own comfortable rhythm as they moved him across Freddie's fingertips. The movement also caused him to bump up repeatedly against Freddie's crotch on each backstroke, the fur rubbing warmly against him, and he could feel himself becoming rigid again, lazily matching his rhythm with one of his own. The feeling wasn't as intense, but still good, and he kept humping even as Tommy's motion suddenly stopped, his low moan going on and on as his body shivered against Freddie, and as the warm, sticky fluid spurted out and oozed between his fingers. Tommy quickly relaxed against him, and Freddie wiped his hands off on a nearby sheet and considered continuing his motion to see if he could have another incredible mind-blanking moment. His exhaustion was overwhelming, though, and after a few more bumps that apparently lulled Tommy into a bout of snoring, Freddie buried his face in his friend's fur, as he normally did, and drifted off to sleep without any trouble at all.