Eric -- Hoodlum City (Urban World)

Eric Brausten woke up in his crib. His new roommate had just come in yesterday and had cried the whole time, wanting to "go home". While Eric could sympathize, the lack of sleep left him a little cranky.

He yawned, scratching his bare chest. He was only dressed in a blue nighttime diaper. While many of the other students felt cosey wosey in jamies or wrapped up in a bundle or footie-onsies, Eric felt more comfortable with less. The diaper stayed, though. He still needed that.

Another thing that made Eric different was that he knew how to unlock the bars of his crib, which he did. He got up, ignoring the clammy sensation in his loins as he grabbed the black hoodie draped carelessly over the foot of his crib and put it on. Some students didn't even know how to dress themselves, but he did.

He walked out of the room, glancing at his still sleeping roommate, and made his way out into the hall.

Eric passed by Dan and Marie, who were making their rounds, checking on the children. It was almost time for breakfast and you couldn't rush a baby's schedule.

"Hey Eric, how are you feeling today?" cooed Marie.

"Alright I guess," said Eric nonchalantly before yawning.

"Tony keep you up?" asked Dan.

"Yeah. Not my first new roommate," said Eric. It wasn't common for students to change rooms or swap roommates. Depending on what world they had experienced or the specifics of how much they've regressed, some students got along faster than others.

"Well, don't worry, baby," said Marie. "You'll be all caught up when naptime comes around."

Without even asking, Marie grabbed Eric's crotch. Normally, a woman grabbing a man's crotch would warrant a flinch. But when you've been a baby for as long as Eric has, you'd be amazed at what you'd get used to.

"Oh my. You're really wet. Want me to change you?"

"I'm good for now. You take care of the rest of them, and you can change me after."

"Aw, such a considerate boy," said Marie, and she ruffled his blond hair before kissing his forehead. That part made him blush a little.

Marie was a former graduate of Ellen's. When she was in high school, she found herself in a world not too dissimilar to depictions of Wonderland. She would become small and big on a whim, have tea parties with talking flowers while using toadstools as a snack table, and was even invited to play golf with the Queen. Her regression level while a student was at a medium: she still looked her chronological age, but she couldn't walk, preferred mush to solids, and was easily amused by jangling keys.

She was one of the unfortunate many who never returned to her magical world, forever abandoned by "mommy and daddy", and eventually grew up again. While she felt the loss for the rest of her life, she was also of the kind who decided to channel that loss for good and went to college for a degree in childcare so that she could come back to the school and help others like her. THere she met Dan, who was working on a degree in child psychology, and the two have been together ever since.

Dan wasn't a worldwalker and believed that all the crazy things she experienced were just an elaborate story she made up as part of some kind of diaper kink. That is, until she introduced him to the school, saw all of the unusual things housed within, and became a believer. Now, both of them act as caretakers for the students.

Eric found himself alone in the kitchen. He knew that some of the staff would come any second to start prepping the breakfast table for their students. Ellen's wasn't a typical school, more of a sort of rehab facility, and the dining area looked more like a McMansion-style kitchen and dining room. Eric picked the massive fridge to the left and opened it, revealing a fridge jam-packed with bottle after bottle of baby formula, ready to be reheated for their student body.

Eric grabbed one of the bottles, shaking it slightly, and helped himself to it. He was one of the few students who could drink normally from a cup without spilling it, but he didn't mind the rubber nipple either. He also didn't mind his formula cold either. In fact, he preferred it that way.

The breakfast table was like a gradual rainbow of different seating. On one side of the table, there were regular chairs. On the other hand, there were high chairs. Both kinds of chairs came in different sizes to acclimate different levels of regression, from the adults who worked there, to babies who looked their age that still needed a high chair, to babies who had been physically regressed to a small size.

Eric picked one of the bigger, padded high chairs, even managing to lock the tray in front of him himself like a big boy, and helped himself to his bottle.

---

(Two Years Ago)

Eric pushed a button. Out tumbled a can from the vending machine. The machine didn't really need money; the drinks inside were free for everyone.

He glanced lazily at the can. "Form-U-La: Milk for Cool Kidz." It was decorated in white and silver, the art style matching a lot of the grafitti that littered their territory in Playground Alley. The can made a "click" and a fizz before he chugged the whole thing.

His friends Tom and Jesse were dressed a lot like Eric: a hoodie and baseball cap (colors matching, Tom dressed in red, Jesse in Green, Eric in purple), socks and tennis shoes (with velcro, not laces), and comfy diapers big enough for them to wear. Everyone in Hoodlum City was dressed this way. Even the girls.

The playground in Playground Alley was like a cross between a skatepark and an actual suburban playground. Some people were climbing ladders and sliding down slides, and playing games. Others simply hung around, or tagged walls and sidewalks with chalk.

All of the Hoodlums were from another world; a world where they were potty-trained and went to school and expected to be grown-ups. Then each of them took a wrong turn and found themselves in a part of their hometowns they didn't recognize. In a city foreign to their known reality.

Suddenly, they would find themselves arrested by unusual police officers for "dress-code violation" and taken downtown. They thought they were being locked away by corrupt law enforcement, only to suddenly get stripped down and redressed in clothes offered to them after being oiled, powdered and put in diapers that they themselves couldn't take off, as though locked in them.

Sirens went off.

"The po-po!" cried out a girl in a pink hoodie. "Cheese it!"

As the various diapers people started making a run for it, imagining themselves doing parkour and acting the role of rebel, though it would have been impossible if they actually tried, given their padding. There wasn't a frowning face among them, laughing as though playing tag in a game of cops and robbers.

The police cars came in, though not with great urgency. Really, from the bright pastel colors and the twinkling music their sirens gave off, you'd think the ice cream man came instead. Out of the cars came a group of police officers, looking more like upstanding officers you'd see in a cartoon than actual cops.

No matter how fast the hoodlums ran, the police would always catch them. They were much bigger than the grown-ups from their homeworld and had no issue carrying Eric, who wasn't fast enough, against his hip.

"Alright kid, let's get you settled."

The cop's partner opened up the cop-car's trunk, only for a foldout-changing table to undo itself from it. The cop laid Eric on his back, strapping him down, and undid the tapes of his diaper.

The cop cooed and reassured him that he was being a good, law-abiding citizen for behaving himself while he wiped down his hairless pee-pee and bottom, Eric relaxing on the padded table with a thumb in his mouth.

In the corner of his eye, he saw that the cop's partner, this one a woman, had caught Tom. She had put a pacifier in his mouth, and he lay his head on her shoulder, content with his situation as she pulled the back of his diaper with her free hand to check for poopies.

The cops in Hoodlum City weren't violent or hateful or corrupt. They were nice and thoughtful and always there to help.

The natives of this world had a "hands-off" approach to child-rearing, apparently, as otherworlders were basically left to their own devices after they were diapered.

It was an urban jungle-jim that anyone would love to play in.

---

Hoodlum City was one of those rare worlds that collected worldwalkers like trading cards, yet rarely sent them back to their homeworld. People at the institute theorize that this is a trait of "High-Science Worlds".

Most Otherworlds more resembled older points in history and had a strong bent towards the magical, i.e. "High-Fantasy Worlds". Fairy worlds with knights and talking trees with moss for beards, worlds in eternal winter where Viking clans rode on dragons, and other such things.

"Low-Science Worlds" existed, sure; you had the Renaissance Italian world of Festivia with "clock-punk" technology, or the Wild West town of Stork, where otherworlders are cared for with steampunk nannies.

In contrast, Hoodlum City was a world that resembled modern times, both aesthetically and technologically. Eric had met otherworlders in Hoodlum City by the truckload, yet the Institute (and the massive apparatii that kept tabs on otherworlders like himself) rarely saw babies from those worlds return from them. Ellen believes that "High-Science" worlds like his had better luck keeping otherworlders, thus ensuring a lower return rate. Every other "High-Science" World, like Cyberland and the Galactic Nursery, had one or two otherworlders at Ellen's at the most. For a while, "High-Science" worlds were considered just a rumor among otherworlders until they got enough students, Eric included, to confirm it.

Eric really missed his friends. They were still there. They were probably looking for him.

His dad always had an anger problem, so when he suddenly found himself back at his old house, unpotty-trained with an unbelievable story as to where he's been the whole time, things were not looking good. Ellen's Institute found out about Eric from a domestic disturbance report, Eric's jeans reeking with piss, and both eyes blackened from his dad's fist.

When he was brought to Ellen's, he told them his story, and they believed him. They bathed him, put him in a diaper, dressed him in footie pajamas his size, and kissed him goodnight without judgment.

It almost felt like home.

But it wasn't his home. Not really. His home was with Jesse, Tom, and the rest of his fellow hoodlums. The formula they had here was good, but he missed the taste of Form-U-La. He missed the wild colors of graffiti on the walls. The smell of backalley trash covered in baby powder and perfume that was so omnipresent.

He just wanted to go home.