Overworld:

Allison Griffin, eldest daughter of the Griffin family, refused to marry the man she was betrothed to. He was 20 years her senior, he was boring, he drank and gambled, and even his name, Willard, sounded like dullard.

But he was from a rich family and her father liked him so she had no choice in the matter.

She had met him a couple times growing up, yes, growing up! And he had always been the most drunk out of her father's acquaintances. He wasn't a mean drunk, its just that combined with his disinterest in education or the arts, he was more of a blob than a man. He was easily entertained by dogfights and trained his own dogs for them, and seemed to do nothing but tell bad jokes and play cards. She's pretty sure the only reason he hadn't lost more on betting was because he was never the only one drunk while playing.

Once she learned she was betrothed to him, she had been pushed to conversate with the man, and wasn't surprised to find out their interests were incompatible, but what had made her stalk off was that he not only didn't seem to understand any references she made, but when she tried to explain the plot of one of her favorite books, he had cut her off mid sentence. Rude much?

If she was anyone else she'd likely be fine with Willard. Despite all that she loathed about him, he had been entertaining enough with his jokes and his dogs were something he seemed passionate about, but a worse match couldn't have been made.

As a result, she had decided to skip town.

------

Aumeria:

Vira Kozel was a lot of things. Child of Lord Giles Kozel, grandchild of the great matriarch Cynthia Kozel, and future leader of the bovid demons, but the first thing people noticed about them was that they were a chimera.

They caught glances from their family at times, their dad sometimes looked expectant of... something, but Vira had caught their grandmother looking disappointedly at them out of the corner of their eye. It's not like Vira didn't know why, Vira could assume it was because of any combination of things, like their status as a chimera, the fact that for a mix of bovid and corvid they had gotten the short end of the stick with most of their combined traits (no wings being the biggest one). It could also be Cynthia's distain for Vira's dead mother, who Vira never really knew. Or it could be how they didn't seem to click with their peers.

Maybe it was just them, but Vira had always been able to see through people's acts.

Every heir or child of a noble bloodline was shouldering the weight of their respective families' expectations, but most of them turned to attempting to one up eachother or vie for power by taking it from those weaker or "lesser".

That's why, with military academy coming up, Vira was starting to dread it. Part of being a leader was making connections, and Vira wasn't looking forward to that aspect at all. They'd probably do better as someone's 2nd in command than as the one calling all the shots. The weight of leadership with all those eyes on you and expectation, both positive and negative, seemed draining. Vira had already seen what it'd done to their dad. No wonder he always looked so expectant of them, he'd gone through the exact same things from his parents.

Allison hadn’t quite known where she had run off to, having stowed away in a passing cart, but given that a half tiger-half dog creature was pointing something that looked like a curved sword at her, she’d had to expect that the darkening outside she had felt beneath the tarp was not, as she initially suspected, nightfall. She stayed huddled where she was for a long minute, crouched between crates and bundles of firewood, opening and closing her mouth uselessly, surveying the creature before her: dressed in a dark blue and gold suit, emblazoned with a gold winged pin, and a name tag that read: ‘Commander: Aumeria Military Academy’ in silver letters.

The creature—Commander—spoke before she could: “Identify yourself, stowaway.” Its voice was harsh and clipped.

Allison hesitated. “All—“ she stopped. She was a runaway. “Alice. Alice Grey.”

The Commander rolled this name around its canine tongue. “Alice Grey,” it repeated. “Stand up.”

Allison obeyed, and was marched round to the drivers cabin, peering in at the woman who had unwittingly taken her here, putting on her best pitiful face.

“Driver Kate,” the Commander said, staring down at the woman at the reins. “You have a stowaway. Did you know about this?”

Driver Kate, ostensibly, did not. But she looked at Allison, and then back at the Commander and said with her whole chest: “Yes, Commander. Forgive me, but she is my niece—a wayward girl, you understand. I thought military school might do some good for her.”

The Commander looked at Driver Kate, then at Allison. “Very well,” he said. “Kate, you are hereby dismissed from delivery duties with us, and I doubt we’ll be taking any more deliveries from the Overworld—“ he turned to Allison. “And Grey, I am placing you in bunk 12.”

Allison stopped. “Bunk 12?”

The Commander grumbled and took her by the arm roughly, in the direction of the camp. “Yes, I think you have caused your poor aunt enough grief. I am placing you in Commander Vira’s camp—they’re new, too.”

Aumerian Military Academy (Entrance):

The woman (Kate?) who had covered for her turned away, and she could now see a large, bushy tail, reminiscent of a squirrel's. Doing a double take, Allison noticed that her ears weren't normal human ears either. She couldn't quite make it out, but they seemed fluffy?

Also Overworld? She was from America.

Thinking back now, she remembered that the person driving the cart she got in was a young man, and not the middle aged woman that was driving now. The Commander hurried her along, and trying not to draw too much attention to her bewildered state, she realized that everyone in this place had some sort of animalistic feature. The Commander, for example, had dog like ears connecting from nose level to eyebrow level pointing upwards, a striped tail, pigmentation on his nose that combined with its shape reminded her of a dog's snout, and a mouth too wide to be human. She was starting to realize that no one in this place was human at all.

"Is your dress more red or purple?"

What a weird way to break the ice, she thought. "I'd say it's more purple. Why do you ask?"

"Ah, I wasn't sure if you were Bhau or Yoni"

What or what? "What are you then?"

The Commander points to the uniform's yellow accents, "Bhau of course." The Commander muttered something, "You young demons these days make it so hard to tell."

"Excuse me?" She didn't know what the Commander had said, but she knew the tone all too well.

"Yoni like you should stick to cooler tones, no wonder your Aunt wanted you here." The Commander sighed.

Allison and the Commander kept walking, but now she was pissed off and even more confused. Apparently she was a Yoni? Was that a good or bad thing?

"So what happens to my Aunt now then?"

"Well, if you do well enough in this semester's classes, then she'll be reinstated. I am one of the citizenship 100 teachers, so if you end up in my class, I'll have my eyes on you."

Allison stood before the doorway to a building that was almost a mix of barracks and what she imagined a university's dormitories would be (from what her cousins had told her). Her head spins and she takes a deep breath to settle herself. The inside is nice, if a little dated, Allison thinks as she tries to map out the layout in her head.

The Commander continues the tour, rambling on about... something? Zoned out, she was more focused on calming the growing nausea than anything the Commander was saying.

"-And here we are." Allison is jolted back to attention. She was too focused on the rolling pit in her stomach to focus on the Commander and just nodded as she's left alone.

Allison, or now, "Alice", dryheaved and quickly staggered into what she hoped was the bathroom. Feeling the bile threatening to spew, she dove for the toilet before any vomit could get onto the floors. Kneeling there, heaving her guts out, Allison felt the spinning feeling start to subside. A moment passed with her eyes still closed before she shakily dragged herself off the floor to clean up by the sink.

That's when she saw the eyes of someone else.

Wait.

Not someone else. Herself.

Where her eyes used to be a cool blue tone surrounded by white sclera, now in their place were amber colored eyes and black sclera surrounding them. There was also something uncomfortable about her skirt, and reaching to adjust it, she found a tail where there wasn't one before. It felt like it was made of straight bone and muscle, but had a short coat of hair on it, the same pale brown as her hair.

Where in the world was she?

------

Somewhere else in the Academy:

A teen boy closes a book in frustration. As his ear twitches and he sighs, he stashes that old book under his mattress and quickly leaves bunk house 9.

Vira really wished that they could just finish their food in peace for once without it being some sort of mock political banquet. All of the Junior Commanders had been gathered to dine with the Commanders and Generals that made up the academy's staff, and Vira just wished that the speeches would end, or at least get to the point.

Vira spotted movement on the stage and realized whatever speech ended and a new one was about to start. A woosh of fire filled the stage and an imposing demon with a bright orange mane stepped forward, sending a hush over the crowd.

"Principal Inger..." Vira muttered in awe under their breath.

Leon Inger, the Patriarch of the Callitrich demons, was the Principal of the Academy as well as a retired General himself. Vira had met him before he retired, and he was a terrifying wall of muscle and steel, even when unarmed. Vira was actually sitting next to his grandchild now, a young na named Enola. Ey were very quiet most of the time, using eir grandfather's inherited stare to intimidate people instead of words or actions. Enola was fun to talk to, but nothing would ever come out of it. Ey had eir own group of friends that were scattered around the hall, after all.

Vira just went back to playing with their food and swished their tail aimlessly.

At the end of this, all the Junior Commanders would receive a tentative list of cadets they'd be seeing over in their assigned bunks. Vira was bunk house 12's Junior Commander, and was told by their father to expect somewhere between 6 and 10 cadets. Unlike cadets, children of the noble houses had been given the resources growing up to fast track their education, placing them at Junior Commander instead of cadet.

It would be up to the JCs to gauge the skills and training each cadet had and help hone them to be the best soldiers possible. Over the next week, JCs would be prepped to command, while cadets slowly moved in and got settled in the faux military environment. JCs wouldn't be expected to lead anything with the cadets the first week, still being trained themselves, but would eventually be expected to lead morning drills and supervise training blocks.

So cadets and JCs weren't isolated to their bunks, they'd also have specific classes based on whether they were Lingam, Yoni, Na, or Bhau.

They felt bad for the Aster family. The youngest, Nikolai, had hue shifted, but had been told he would still be training with the Yoni class, instead of Lingam. He could see across the hall Niko's pointed red ears contrasting against green and teal because the academy still wouldn't give him a red uniform.

Damn Vira was bored. Well... maybe it wouldn't hurt to close their eyes for a moment. They'd gotten away with it before.

.....?

A small dark space. A flash of short pale fur. Nausea threatening to overwhelm. And the feeling of pages beneath fingertips.

...!

"Wha-" Vira was jolted awake by the applause and quickly joined the crowd. Glancing around, no one seemed to notice Vira's impromptu nap, but they could see some of the commanders starting to pass around the cadet lists. Having corvid eyes sometimes did have their advantage after all.

When one of the Commanders, a sheep bovid, finally came around, they thanked her before standing up. Well, they'd be able to look over the info on each demon once they got to the library. The hall was way too loud, but that didn't seem to dissuade most of the others. Vira glanced at the packet of papers in their hands: 6 cadets names were written in careful calligraphy, while the 7th, a demon named Alice Grey, was hastily scribbled down. Interesting.