Taihen - God of Education

Chapter 1 from the Book of Edwin:

Some time after my untimely ****, I awoke to find myself in hell. Whether minutes had passed or years, I could not say.

Christians, Buddhists, the Shinto religion... each of them have their own words for hell and their own descriptions of it, but we cannot truly know the form of hell until we find ourselves facing our own destruction, trapped on the other side. Stepping past the comfort and safety of mortality, our feet leave the realm we know and end in eternity. I see not a host of angels, nor eternal bliss as I'd hoped when I lived my life as a faithful missionary of Christ.

In life, I was a humble pilgrim named Edwin Guillaume. My ship was lost during a perilous voyage at sea. In ****, I am one of innumerable other husks of men, shackled inside this dark prison. None speak. I can see no faces. God has abandoned us all.

I always believed that I was a faithful servant to my lord, but now, looking back on my life, I see why I have been stranded in this place. Despite my vows, I held lust in my heart. At every port, there were women waiting, and I was consumed by lust for them rather than love for my lord. I never took a wife, but I lay with many women outside of wedlock. A harmless-feeling sin enough at the time, but a sin nonetheless. Surely, that is what has damned me to this place.

I have, for whatever reason, been gifted pen and paper, so I do my diligence now to record the circumstances of my entrapment.

How to describe the scenery? It is like nothing constructed by mortal hands. Giant pillars of steel support roofs of iron on every side of me. I do not know their purpose, only that scaling them would be impossible. Some appear roughly the height of a tall cathedral's roof, while others stretch almost beyond where the eye can see. There is a pattern to them... four of the short, surrounded by four of the taller. The room is impossibly long, so much so that I cannot see the other side. It might take a day's travel to reach it on foot. Light comes in from overhead, the warm orange of sunrise, but I can see neither the clouds nor the celestial body itself. The opening is somewhere on the impossibly high walls, but I can see at a glance that no man could scale such a sheer, flat surface.

Finally, I recognize movement. Someone is moving: putting together a strange device, composed of a large, black rectangle with a surface like a brush, about the size of a mattress, but taller, atop massive wooden tires, like those of a carriage. Are they building a vehicle? I feel a ray of hope. Perhaps they intend to mount an escape?

I move closer, hoping to offer my aid. Selfishly, I want a spot upon their carriage. I want to be free of this place, which presents no food nor hope for the future.

I open my mouth, expecting no words to come out. After all, they are, all of them, silent. My throat is dry, but my voice comes unhampered: "may I offer assistance?"

The men aboard the carriage, each having been re-dressed in a black robe matching my own, turn to hiss me quiet, shushing me with one finger over their lips. It seems that while speech is not impossible, it cannot be done safely here. I nod, eager to have thus far escaped whatever punishment they are fearing, and approach. When I'm close enough to catch a bit of the light, I write upon my paper pad, offering both my name and my assistance.

The man in front of me has a face like a ghoul, I think, but I shall not tell him that. He is bald as an egg and thin as a rail, but there is a pride in his scowl, perhaps befitting of one doomed to hell for vanity. He points towards his own pad: "Shut up," written in the queen's English. Then he withdraws the pad and scrawls the next words: "Hop on." I oblige.

I feel now that the upper surface of the mattress is composed of hard wood. Looking at them more closely, the wheels look like naught more than toys. I mistrust it as a means of conveyance, but I try to hold my criticisms. If it would take me out of this hell, I would abandon any semblance of dignity.

A team of men roll something from out of the darkness. I cannot say what this is, only that the clear container is full of deep, brown liquid, like an especially dark beer. Bubbles cross its surface. As it rolls, I catch a word across its surface: "Coca Cola." I do not catch their meaning, but whatever it is, the container is now being secured to the back of our carriage. The rolling has caused the bubbles to gather and the container looks as though it may burst. I pray to God, whatever love he may have left for his humble servant, that this odd contraption will actually see us to safety.

The bald man counts down with three fingers as men hold tightly to the massive cap of the Coca Cola. As he reaches one, they push down hard, screwing it in a clockwise motion. The lid comes off and the liquid begins to burst from the other side. Before I know it, I am holding on for what remains of my life, gripping my fingers down as hard as I can into the grooves of the wood. What scenery there might be is lost to me, as together with the bald man and his compatriots, I fly towards the back of this dark cathedral.

I worry: what if one of the iron bars was to block our path? We would doubtless be dashed against it. Thankfully, our travel reveals something new to me: the bars are all arranged very evenly in a singlefile line facing the front of the room. There is no chance we will crash...

Or at least, I thought so, until I noticed a tremendous block of wood like an impossible tall mountain begin to fill our field of vision. I braced myself for the worst before noticing: there is a slot underneath the wood. With our insubstantial height, I figured we should be able to sail right through! The whole world became briefly dark as we vanished below the pillar of wood, then brightened again as we took to the other side. This sent us under four more pillars of iron, and then--

The wall!

The bald man grabbed me by the scruff of my collar and threw me off at the last second, before jumping clear himself. I landed hard as I was thrown from the vehicle, injuring my back, but what hurt worst was my spirit. The vehicle, which I had hoped might take us to some other civilization, was immediately blown to pieces, connecting with the back wall of the cathedral and scattering into its base components. Furthermore, the liquid of the Coca Cola had been mostly used up, and the rest of it spilled on impact. In short-- we were stranded.

Eager to understand, I wrote down a new query frantically in my notebook: "Why?" I underlined it. I couldn't understand why we would take such a risk just to reposition ourselves inside this same cathedral.

The egg-headed man didn't even bother to rewrite his original message. He just pointed at "Shut up" again. It appeared I would be left wondering. I rubbed my beard with one hand, feeling its unshaven surface. It had barely grown since I died... How long was my passage to this place? I wondered if I would ever see the light of my lord again...

... And whether I would ever see the softness of the fairer sex anew. Eternity with no one but these robed men for company... Alas, I fear that homosexuality will be our only option for company. I will find myself comforting the bald-headed man in the coldness of the night, when that blessed glimpse of sunshine falls to moonlight. Ugh. I do not want to think of it.

My heart aches for women. Ah, women... If I'd known they would doom me to hell, I would have enjoyed them more when I was alive.

Just then, with a thunderous noise came from the east... or, what I am calling the east, based on my orientation when I first awakened. One of the great eastern walls had begun to move, and as it did, a figure stood tall there. No, too tall to be a person, surely. A shape like legs stands there now, but in the darkness and with their great height, I can hardly believe it could be a human being. While still trying to contemplate how the wall had shifted, my sight was taken from me by another shift of the world: the entire room became illuminated from above with burning white light. I squinted my eyes, trying to readjust them. This hell would not be one of darkness, it seemed, nor would it be one occupied only by humans.

My entire party retreated to the safety of the darkness beneath that giant wooden mountain we'd passed under earlier, as the figure took its first steps into the wall. It moved with remarkable quickness for such a large beast and with every step, a sound like thunder erupted. The floor of the cathedral seemed to shake. This is a land of giants I've been thrown into! With terror on my face, I cast my eyes upward, trying to see the top of the creature.

I can barely comprehend the giant's appearance. Their flesh is stark red and their garbs composed of deep, purple-blue silk, like a nobleman might wear. This garment falls from their hips to their knees, matching the coloration of the shoes covering feet so massive that several of us could sit atop a single toe, were the toes revealed. I could not see the face: that is because a jutting chest, clad in thin white cloth like the sail of some great ship, hid it from this viewpoint. The hands hanging at the hips were tipped with long, jet-black nails, sharp and dangerous, I judged. But...

... Going back to the figure's chest. I do not sense that this is armor beneath the cloth creating that swell. Can it be that the creature is possessed of especially large breasts? And from this angle... Drat! That garment covering the lower body is too tight. I can only see so far up the hem of what I now recognize to be a skirt. Still, what glimpse I have has now allowed me to form a mental image of the creature in whole: an impossibly large woman with red skin, black claws, and some unfamiliar garment including a skirt and blouse.

What is more interesting is her shape. If I'm understanding it correctly, while she is muscular, she has an amazing breadth to her hips, thighs, and chest. Her muscle-tone rivals that of the most hardened warrior, while her womanly features surpass those of any bar-maid I ever shared a bed with.

I attempt to sketch this in my notes, to offer some semblance of clarity... but I am no artist. I've drawn a tiny stick figure next to a massive one with two head-sized orbs at her chest. All for the sake of proper documentation, you understand. The ones to follow me will understand my meaning, even if the picture is crude.

One more detail of note: a tremendous, steel club, carried over where her shoulder must be, behind the shelf of her bosom. The club is notched all over with spikes and looks unbelievably dangerous. But what need could she have of it? With a swipe of her hand, she could end the lives of one-hundred men my size.

My jaw hangs open in awe as I continue to observe the creature, all for purely academic purposes and perhaps to assist my fellow travelers, should they find these notes in the future. Repositioning myself beneath her to try to see more is useless-- it is like trying to see a different angle of the sun in the sky. Furthermore, the other men panic, signaling me back as I start to leave the shade of the desk. And always silently... what would this magnificent beast of a woman do to us if we were found, I wonder? My imagination runs wild as we wait and watch.

Next comes the influx of more giants. These ones are unlike her; they are dressed in too many different fashions to count. Some of them have odd skin tones like hers-- others are more human shades. They move in more quickly than she did, with less ceremony, and each find their spots around the cathedral. Specifically, they move to those great iron columns I saw earlier, then sit upon what I once took to be roofs. Chairs... they were the chairs of giants! I'm starting to get a picture of this place now.

It is no church. This is a classroom for giants! That makes the red ogre the teacher of these people. But they are no children-- they appear to be adults in age, or close to it.

If the woman was to speak close to our ears, I am confident her voice would shatter our ear-drums, or perhaps scatter our bodies like dandelions. Instead, the voice of the ogre, who I now assume to be a teacher, comes from above, like the booming edict of god himself. Only, this is no man's voice. To transcribe it honestly, her voice is appealing, like that of an angel, only more sultry. Were it not for the volume, I would find it appealing to imagine her whispering sweet nothings into my ear. Mature, but sensual. Composed but effortlessly sultry. Tempting... But tempted to what? To a giant like this, I am an insect, not a mate.

Would her words be otherworldly as well? The words of a devil?

"Good morning, class. I hope you all engaged with your homework seriously and have a completed paper ready to turn in. Before we do, I'd like to pose a few questions to the class, to get a taste of where your logic is on the matter. Yesterday's topic was 'the punishment of humans.' Put yourself in my shoes: you are Taihen, the Goddess of Education, and you need to punish mortals who have disobeyed your commandments on your Earth, or whatever your planet of dominion may be. How would you discipline those wayward humans?"

The woman's voice was like slowly decanted syrup. I could only understand half of what she said, but she spoke with such a formidable, raw intellect, such confidence, and yet such an undercurrent of physical sweetness undercutting all of that maturity, that I fervently cursed God for making me just a tiny fraction of her size. I wanted to be disciplined by her myself...

The goddess of the classroom gave a deep sigh, then pointed one nailed finger outward, casting a broad shadow over the floor of the classroom. I realized now, looking at the blazer, that her curvature of her biceps showed well through the otherwise stately silk blazer she wore over that white cloth shirt. I had to revise my imagining of her: she was quite voluptuous, but also, gravely muscular. Women were not this way in my time, but I could get used to it, I think.

"Yes, Majide?"

"If I were you, Sis, I'd sit on them with my big, fat ass!"

I gulped. What a way to die that would be. What a way... There is no use saying I’d like it if she were to sit on my face and take my life that way, for if she should sit upon my face, she should sit upon my whole body. It makes no difference.

I shook my head and tried to refocus– to see my situation as the other hooded men were doing. None of them seemed troubled by lustful thoughts, only terror, to my surprise. Who was this creature, who dared defy the God of Education in such a way?

From where I was seated, most of the student, Majide, was hidden by that giant wooden structure I now knew to be a desk. What I could see of her, though, was most intriguing: slender, blue-skinned legs, revealed all the way up to black, torn shorts around her hips, striped with red like a tiger's pelt. Her feet were covered with rubber-soled footwear in a similar black and red pattern, cushioned on the inside... presumably comfortable for someone her size. She must be smaller than Taihen, but not by a significant margin. The two didn't seem all that similar, but perhaps the blue ogre and the red ogre were sisters? I found myself intrigued.

"I thought you might say something like that," the red ogre started back up, crossing her arms and momentarily hiding my look at that fantastic swell of her bosom. "So you did not finish your homework. Is that what I'm to understand?"

"Homework! Ha! I'm the Goddess of Rebellion! Of course I didn't do any homework!"

"You're the Goddess of Nothing until you graduate this class. You're not even a demi-god so long as you're here. I have been entrusted with the education of everyone here, yourself included, and you will not see your own personal heaven again until your training has concluded to my satisfaction. So far, I'm most dissatisfied."

"You'd be a lot more satisfied if you took the stick out your ass, Sis! And your nose out of your books, for once," the other ogre groaned. "Look, you're the God of Education! You should know better than anyone that when you're a god, there are no rules! Why are any of us learning how to be gods?! You could just give us all an A and send us out of here! We'd even owe you a favor! Gods love having other people on the hook for favors!"

"I won't. The heavens run amok with too many untrained gods as it is. All of you prospective deities have been sent here because you are in need of tutelage. The sooner you accept my lessons, the sooner you'll be on your way."

... It sounded like the two of them were at each other's throats pretty often. A sad state of affairs for a family. Listening was beginning to hurt my ears, so I pulled my cloak tight about my head and rested nearby my companions, waiting for the thunderous argument to die down.

Time passed. Taihen asked questions. Students responded. Majide butted in with some insult. Taihen chastised her. On and on, until suddenly, all was interrupted by the shrillest ring of a bell I'd ever heard, just as I was getting used to the giant's voices. I covered my ears, feeling my teeth rattling inside my skull. For what it's worth, I got the sense the bell was a bit shrill for the students as well.

"Lunch time. Everyone, you have thirty minutes for lunch, then I expect to see you all return to this spot. When we reconvene, we will move on from Godly Logic to the Godly Sciences. I'll be in the teacher's lounge if you need me. Please knock before entering."

The tremendous steps of giants boomed all around. Taihen was the first out, carrying a thick binder under one arm-- for the first time, I was able to see her hair, long and black with orange creeping up its considerable length like flames. Still no way to see her face, though. Before long, they'd all left the room, looking for a blessed taste of fresh air and a change of scenery.

All except for one: that self-named Goddess of Rebellion. She was still in her seat, humming to herself with an occasional giggle. There was no telling what she was doing. I turned to my companions, to see if they had anything new to share. While I'd been distracted, they'd prepared something else... a much more fantastic looking machine than their previous one, consisting of an oversized paper airplane, attached to some unknowable black tube, decorated with images of explosions. Where could this be leading?

The egg-headed one produced another writing and held it out to me. "It's bad. We need her gone, but it's do or die time. You in?"

In what? Huh? What are we doing? I knew how to use a paper airplane, but that sort of thing required altitude, which we were sorely lacking. There was no way we could climb any of the surfaces in this room, let alone carry that oversized paper plane with us.

The man took my answer for “in.” With no further hesitation, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me onto the paper plane. Would it float our weight, even if we could somehow get it airborne? As I pondered this, a hissing sound came from below... then we shot into the air like a rocket. As I screamed, unable to stop myself, our paper airplane was catapulted atop some sort of flame and did indeed itself catch ablaze. The man had killed us, I thought. What happens when one dies in hell? I couldn't picture it.

Remarkably, the airplane seemed to find a path through the air. Despite the encroaching flames, we were flying! This was surely the fruit of some effort started long before I came here-- and that egg-headed man, bless him, is surely some form of genius. My screams turned to laughter as we soared through the air, close to the top of the classroom. I could see it all now: the various effects of the students, the blackboard, the windows. We were short of the windows, but this plane could take us through the doorway the teacher had exited through. What was back there? Something useful? Or would we only become further lost?

It turned out the answer was none of the above. We wouldn't be tasting freedom; not yet. A giant blue hand plucked us out of the air and guided us faster, not towards the door, but back towards the teacher's desk. Now I started screaming again; the velocity was too much. It was all I could do to cling to the paper and avoid flying off until we landed safely.

But how safe were we?

The giant face of a young woman, maybe 19 or 20 years of age, grinned into ours, as she inspected us at close distance. Her hair was similar to the other ogre's, black, but with light-blue tips like twisted lightning bolts instead of a flame pattern, forming a wavy, uneven cut around her head. Her facial features made her appear to be of the orient, but I could not place the exact part. She looked cheerful and inquisitive, but perhaps slightly mean-spirited, regarding our tininess with a happy curve of her narrow eyes. The eyes were orbs of bright yellow with no pupils to speak of and each of her teeth was sharpened into a pointed fang... the face of an ogre, even if otherwise a young girl. Finally, two small horns, purplish in color, rested just beneath her bangs, jutting from the forehead. She wore little make-up or powder. Perhaps she was not the kind of girl interested in courting gentlemen.

A winsome face all the same, despite the demonic features. I found myself becoming desensitized to devils, or perhaps even drawn to them, the more time I spent here. The giants were truly fascinating, in a scholarly way.

The girl backed up in the teacher's chair and crossed her arms at her chest, which I now realized wasn't nearly as impressive as her sister's. She wore a black, tattered t-shirt, emblazoned with some logo in a language I could not possibly hope to understand, but besides that, the shorts, and her shoes, her body was quite exposed. Her slender arms, her belly, a bit of cleavage... The sight of a woman in a place like this did make my loins ache, even if she was perhaps ten years my junior, yet a thousand times my size. Unlike her sister, she was neither muscular nor particularly well-endowed, but she was a girl none the less, and I saw swells of a certain something beneath her shirt where her arms crossed. They must be perky... I tried to visualize them, but this time, I did not bother attempting an illustration. I was too awestruck by the face-to-face meeting.

The girl's voice boomed as she addressed each of us.

"Alright, how the heck did you guys get out of the back of the classroom? That thing with the paper plane and the bottle rocket just now was super cute. Who thought of that?"

Everyone pointed at the bald-headed man with traitorous, accusing fingers.

"I'm not judging! That's cool as fuck. I'm with you guys, down with the man, and all that. Except... what were you doing, flying out into the hallway? You know there's just a whole lot more of the academy out there, right? You'd end up stuck out there and you'd probably get stranded. This guy just nearly killed you all."

She waited until they all got nice and angry at the egg man, then snickered and laughed.

"Aaaah, but I like you guys! So actually, he did a good thing, putting you all where I could see you! I'm going to help you guys out!"

I sensed it was finally safe to talk. Clearing my throat, I stepped in front of the others and gave my name, pressing one hand to my chest to show my sincerity.

"Edwin Guh-what? I'm going to call you Beardo." My disappointment must have shown on my face. "Okay, fine! I'll call you Eddy. We'll treat you as the leader, Eddy-"

"No no, I am the leader! I am Eggbert, a noble servant of the God of Timelines herself! This was all my plan! I am the savior that will carry the humans here to victory! If you wish to address any of us, I’m the one best suited to-" the bald man spoke up, agitated at the lack of recognition. He didn’t get very far in his introduction.

Evidently pissed, the young ogre moved two fingers onto the desk, grabbed hold of the man's shoulders with a pinch of the others, then flicked him far beyond the line of desks as though he were a toy. His body flew farther than we could see. I judge that to be the end of him. My apologies, poor Eggbert... I transcribe the events to follow in your memory. Thank you for all you did for me.

Suffice to say, the others adopted a new and healthy fear of Majide from there onward. I, on the other hand, was still entranced. These giants were so strange, their whims unknowable, but their size and strength so beautiful in its own way. I dared not question her dismissal of Eggbert; instead, I wanted to know more of this place and its people.

"Okay, but it's boring. My sis, Taihen, is the God of Education, which means she runs this super huge reform school for wayward gods and servants. There’s other teachers too, but she’s like, the main teacher and the principal all in one. The gods attend classes, like you're seeing right here. Basically, all of us had some parent or guardian or higher power or whatever that told her we weren't ready to accept our responsibilities yet, so we've been sent here to learn, and grow, and all that other barf-inducing stuff. We can't leave until we get a perfect grade here... and my Sis is super hard-ass when it comes to grades. I'm actually on my second year here. Some of the others have been here even longer."

But what of us, the humans? What is our place here? Why were we lined up at the back of the room with pen and paper in hand? Did this mean that we had a chance to graduate beyond our mortality and join the ranks of gods?

This solicited a sharp snicker from the girl and a dangerous slap of one palm on the desk in a spirited motion, one which left us all scattering. She didn't apologize, instead wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. "As if! Nah, you guys are kind of in a more traditional form of hell. Whoever your god was decided that your time in the mortal realm wasn't spent in proper servitude and they've sent you here to learn the rules all over. That means you all get those papers and shit to take notes with. For food, you just have to eat whatever crumbs you can find on the floor. There’s literally no facilities or food or anything for you mortal guys at all. When Taihen’s ready, she’ll give you a test, usually after 3 months or so.”

She put on a thoughtful face, as if considering for the first time if she ought to feel bad about the next part.

I asked her: if we cannot become gods, does that mean we are at least free to leave?

“In a sense. If you fail the exam, you stay here in good ol’ Sugoku Reformatory School for another however many days. If you pass, you ‘graduate.’ In your case, that means you’re fuckin’ murdered and your soul is reincarnated back into whatever world you came from, supposedly richer in mind and spirit, ready to serve your original god. Which, really, you’d have to do, because otherwise, you just get sent back here. It’s like an intimidation tactic. Real shit deal, honestly."

I exhaled deeply, feeling the air leave my lungs. I had no desire to return to my original god, not after how he had abandoned me. Especially not after seeing how the other gods apparently included figures of beauty such as that red ogre.

The girl tapped her cheek up and down with one thumb, then gave a huge, toothy grin. "You know, though, I've actually been waiting to find some cool little guys like you! Rebellious types! I'm the Goddess of Rebellion, after all-- I need rebellious soldiers who are loyal to uh... loyal to rebellion... hm, that sounds dumb now that I say it out loud. Anyone else think that's dumb?"

Everyone shook their heads furiously, self-included. My shaggy blond hair swished this way and that as I affirmed that no, ma'am, that doesn't sound stupid in the slightest.

"I know, right? It actually sounds kinda fuckin' sick," she cackled, grinning even wider. "You all are my hell-riders now, my loyal blood bros! Let's cook up a rebellion, yeah! Show my sis who's boss!"

I kept the thought to myself: your sister. Your sister is obviously the boss. Who could hope to stand up to her? We were one one-thousandth of her size and even the so-called Goddess of Rebellion looked like she could be headlocked and noogied into submission if the whim struck her teacher / sibling.

The girl's unusually blue face became cross with irritation as she saw us doubting her. "Like I said, I've got a plan. You heard that thing my Sis said about the teacher's lounge, right? I just know she's doing something like... totally embarrassing in there! Like fapping where nobody can see or something! She goes in there every break like clockwork and doesn't come out till the bell rings! She's gotta be rubbing her clit, right?"

I nodded eagerly. I liked where this plan was going.

"I need some juicy **** material. The problem is, I can’t open the door. So here’s what we’re going to do: we wait until she comes out and locks it behind her. Then, I sneak you guys into the keyhole! Once you’re in there, you can push up the lock. Then, I sneak inside and take you guys with me!”

I didn’t like that so much. It sounded like we would miss the show, if there was one to be had.

“I dunno, maybe we’ll find like… a wet spot in her seat! Or some soggy tissues in her trash! Nevermind, that stuff’s just gross.” The girl leaned back in her chair and kicked her feet up, once again coming dangerously close to crushing us all beneath her footwear. “Hey, trust me. There’ll be a pay off of some kind, in the end, anyway. Like, uh, I dunno: figuring out some way to throw a big fat wrench in her plan so she stops stamping an F on all my tests and releases you guys from the reincarnation loop in some way that doesn’t involve being crushed to **** or spending an eternity here?”

She had a point. That was a pretty desirable outcome. I spoke for the others and agreed to help her carry out her scheme.

—------------

The next part went like clockwork. We waited nearby the door with Majide, watched for Taihen to come out, then thanked our lucky stars when she did. Even now, I couldn’t get a good look at her face. If only Majide would have held us a bit higher in her palm… alas. At least I had a good look at her body as she walked by. The switch in her walk and the steady clap-clap of her heels against the school’s tile floor. Ah, I was smitten. Nearly hypnotized.

Next, we were fed into the keyhole. I was first in, but she must have sensed I needed help when I failed to unlock the door immediately. I’d found the plunger, but I couldn’t even reach it, let alone push it up. More men came in behind me and helped me gain altitude, until finally, I was able to **** it inward, using all of my weight. It was an exhausting task that left my arms shaky, but we managed to do the job.

“Score one for Team Rebellion! Alright guys, scurry back out of there and onto my finger like cute little bugs and we’ll see what’s inside the lamebrain’s lounge.”

The Goddess of Rebellion seemed to be taking a shine to us, which I counted as much a victory as anything. We eagerly obeyed her commands, then held tight to the blue flesh of her finger as she carried us inside the office.

There was too much and all of it too large for us to take in. On one wall, a tremendous gold altar, which I later heard described as a “Teacher of the Year plaque.” On another, a painting of a huge, feline beast, raising its paws to attack. The ironic text beneath read “HANG IN THERE.” As if anyone could, when faced with such a ferocious beast. Clearly, the intent was to frighten intruders into submission, but we each held firm. We were becoming less of a ragtag group of mortals and more of a **** for freedom, I felt.

“Alright, I’m going to set you guys down here on the desk, while I check out all of her file cabinets and shit. I’ll let you know if I find anything cool! If you find anything, just shout.”

I reminded her that a shout from such tiny creatures as us would never reach her ears.

“Uh, I mean… Wait. Yeah, just wait for me to get back over here.”

This didn’t seem to leave us much to do, but I nodded in agreement all the same. I watched her as she left, admiring the way her shorts fit upon her cute, round bottom. I thought that, perhaps, I’d spent too much time admiring Majide’s sister and not enough taking in her girlish features.

Just as I was about ready to content myself doing nothing more than ogling the younger of the two goddesses while she handled searching the room, I heard a call from one of the others who’d been placed down upon the white pages of some tremendous book. “Guys, come read this!” I figured I might as well oblige, but…

… How could we possibly read anything written for ogres? Their books were the size of houses to us. We could not possibly comprehend the text unless it was held further away from us, to be read like the banner flag at some great feast.

“That’s just it. It’s actually written in text like we can read. Small print and uh… cursive, if you can believe it! Does that big ogre really write in tiny cursive letters like this?”

It did seem preposterous. I was ready to doubt his claim, but it was entirely accurate: I found the words were readable for me, but surely would have required a giant’s magnifying glass for Majide or, presumably, her sister. It didn’t make sense…

As the blue ogre left the filing cabinets and began to search through her sister’s briefcase, we inspected the words in detail. There were simply too many to possibly read top to bottom, so we each picked a spot and read out an excerpt. These included:

“...Arrive at school promptly at six-o-clock A.M. Park in the reserved God of Education parking place….”

“... Address the assembly by asking them to recite the Pledge of Education. Each student must place their hand over their heart, repeating the phrase…”

“... God’s Logic. Begin by asking the students for their homework. Chastise any students who have failed to turn it in. Use strict words and make an angry face. Sigh a lot. Show your disappointment…”

“... Pack a sandwich for lunch. Pack a change of clothes in case the students decide to use an old prank, like dumping a bucket of baby powder over your head when you walk in the door. Always wait a moment before walking into the room, in case the doorframe has been booby-trapped…”

I read out my own randomly chosen passage: “... God’s Math. One plus one equals two. Two plus two equals four.” And so on, so on. Eventually, an interesting part. “If you are having difficulty performing math, deflect to one of your students. Make them solve the problem instead.”

I rubbed my beard thoughtfully with the inside of my fist. Curious… What to make of these notes? Some of them seemed like the sort of notes a teacher could make use of: day-to-day planning and reminders. Others seemed like the sorts of notes that a child would make use of. A celebrated educator has no use for “one plus one equals two,” surely?

We continued to go through a few others, thankful that our protector was used to playing hookie and quite willing to do so for the entire class period, before eventually growing weary of reading the elegant cursive letters. There was no way to signal for Majide to approach, so we had **** but to wait for her to take a renewed interest in us.

Finally, she came back over, carrying her sister’s briefcase in one hand. “I’m not finding much. Did find these, though!” she snickered, holding up a massive pair of black running shorts in her hands and stretching out the springy elastic. “My sisters gargantuan size jogging shorts, specially designed for the fattest ass in education! Think they’ve been used. They smell like ogre sweat.”

I gulped and steeled my jaw, trying with all my might not to reveal that Majide’s teasing of her sister was having the opposite effect from what she wanted. She went on and on about how fat her sister’s posterior was, but that only made us want to see it more, or perhaps to traverse the inside of those giant shorts in a truly disturbing, fetishistic way.

I eventually saw it in her face: she was getting pissed that we weren’t laughing about her sister’s great curse, her fate, damned to having an incredibly shapely dump-truck of an ass. Her laughter stopped and a frown came onto her face, as though daring us to call her jealous. We remembered Eggbert’s fate.

Now was the time to change the topic and make ourselves useful. We pointed out what we found in the planner.

“... You serious? Let me take a look!” she gasped. “Why didn’t you guys say something earlier?!” We tried to complain that our voices didn’t carry that far, but, well, our voices didn’t carry that far. Her own rambling drowned it out completely. “This is… This is…! What is this? Read me a bit.”

I cleared my throat and recited the line about “God’s Math” once again.

“Uh huh… And you! Read me something!”

This repeated about three more times before we all came to the realization together: the so-called Goddess of Rebellion can’t read. Not only is she lacking basic literacy, it seemed to me she couldn’t read a single word on the page, as though she’d gone her whole life actively resisting learning one letter of the alphabet. Could it be that she only reads one of the oriental languages? No… she speaks English. Why would that be?

She seemed to catch on to our misgivings and her blue face blushed a darker, purplish color. “Y-You guys are thinking I’m stupid, aren’t you? I ain’t book smart, I’m street smart! Book smart people are like my idiot sister, who we’re about to overthrow! That’s what happens to nerds: they get overthrown by rebels like us!”

Here, I interjected, pointing out that she and her sister might not be as different as she thinks.

The girl reached out to pinch me with her giant fingers– I could tell I was about to be flicked like a toy across the room.

I hastily clarified that I wasn’t trying to mend any fences between the two of them or repair any bridges. Rather, I meant that Taihen might not be all she’s cracked up to be. It seemed to me that the notes in here were rigorously assembled to allow anyone to act as the Goddess of Education, as long as they had basic reading comprehension and, in a giant’s case, a magnifying glass.

“Oh yeah! My sister’s worn those stupid glasses ever since she started working here. Think that’s to read this small print?” Majide questioned. I responded that it didn’t seem outside the realm of possibility. “Ah ha! Then these little squiggly letters that don’t match her hand-writing must be… I’ve got it! Time for you boys to get a little history lesson yourselves.”

We all sat down upon the desk with our legs crossed underneath our robes as the blue ogre put on a smug grin and laid it all out for us.

“Y’see, there used to be this other Goddess of Education, really built for the role. Little fairy godmother lookin’ ass with saggy tits and a big gray wig, whatever. Supposedly, she was real good at her job. Only, some kind of scandal happened and she got kicked out… lo and behold, that’s when my dad, Judge Sugoku, bought up the school and named Taihen as the new Goddess of Education. That’s when my sister left my gang, cleaned up her act, and set up shop here– it was like a 180 overnight. My sister betrayed me and became a total nerd. Short time after that, I got sent here by Pops, to be instructed by her! And I’ve been humiliated ever since!”

I offered my own theory: the original Goddess of Education was blackmailed or strong-armed by Judge Sugoku. The father probably wanted a way to put one of his daughters into a prominent position and erase the embarrassment of the two both being delinquents in a gang.

“Ain’t nothing embarrassing about being a delinquent! It’s the coolest fucking thing you can be!” Majide protested. “But you’re probably right. Dad hated us living free and wild, so he bought off or scared the old bag and then flipped my sister. These notes, then, are everything that Fairy Shitmother left Taihen so she can pretend to be a smarty-pants teacher. That’s why she always has her notes in one of these planners and why she always ducks into this office… It’s to read forward as far as she can!”

I told her one thing didn’t make sense: these notes seemed to describe things in terms that a toddler would understand. Things like one plus one equals one. For Taihen to need notes like these, she would have to be…

“Nah, I think that old crone didn’t know what Taihen knew or not. She just knew it was… uh… not a lot. Like, my sister can read, but we’re basically just as smart! The only difference between her and me is she sucks dad’s dick. Well like. Not literally. I hope.”

I made a mental note: the ogre sisters were both as bright as a bag of hammers, with Taihen seemingly having a slight edge, if not in smarts, then at least in loyalty to their father. That was probably why Judge Sugoku had picked her for the position out of the two. She’d ended out with the much sweeter deal, being the only one of the daughters to end up with the actual title of goddess, and apparently being respected among her peers for that. Majide, on the other hand, had been made to look like a rube, studying under her sister for years– it would be hard to ever wash that shame off.

Majide’s angry face confirmed my thoughts. Her fangs were bared and her teeth were grinding. “That dumb-ass… She’s just as much of a dumb-ass as me but she gets a cushy tenured teacher job, a fancy car, and all that other shit! Did you know I live here at the school?! In the stupid live-in dormitory section! In the meantime, she’s got her own flat in the city!”

I had to admit, it didn’t sound fair. I wanted her to have retribution, but I wanted her to focus on our human plight as well, and I told her as much.

“Hm… I have to admit, you did give me some good info. And also… truth of the matter is, I can’t read, and I sure as hell can't write any of the little flowery loopy shit that’s in this book. We’re going to have to work together on this.”

Work together on what?

“My new plan. My sister really is as dull a tool as they come. So we’re just going to modify her lesson plan a bit!” Majide snickered, pushing aside what I’d now come to realize was the morning planner and revealing the evening one. She opened it up to the beginning. “We don’t have time to rewrite this whole book, but let’s try having some fun! You guys write whatever stupid stuff you want her to do in the book and I’ll bet she’ll do it, regardless of what you put in there.”

Would she really be that foolish? After all, she’s gone through these lesson plans countless times. Surely she’d notice if something had changed?

“Only way to tell is to try, right? I have a feeling you guys are underestimating just how stupid and out of her depth my sister is. Besides, even if she realizes she can’t follow your stupid instructions, she’ll still be shit out of luck without her notes, and I’ll bet she reverts back to her dumb-ass self!”

It sounded promising. We were all willing to give it a shot. We placed Majide on the mundane duty of holding up the central pages such that we could write on two pages at a time. Three men and I took the responsibility of scrawling out cursive letters to try to match the former goddess’s handwriting, using our pens to scratch out and replace certain phrases. Four others took an equally important responsibility: finding any mention of our punishment to come at the hands of Taihen and making sure it became utterly unreadable.

I trusted those men with their mission, allowing me to focus, as the leader, on dictating what ought to come at the front of the binder. We needed something that would immediately allow us to tell if our modifications had worked or not. I had a few ideas in mind.

While writing, we came to another note: frequently, it was mentioned that Taihen needed to secure or otherwise check something she called a “smartphone.” That probably meant she had it on her person. If the opportunity arose, we needed to get our hands on it. Or, well, we needed to give it to Majide. It would surely be large enough to flatten us.

“Oh, yeah. Actually, I found that in her bag. I guess she thought keeping it in this locked room was the same as securing it,” Majide offered, holding up an oblong rectangle of plastic, patterned on the outside as though with the coat of a tiger. “I can’t get in though. She’s got a freaking password set.”

A password, ah. This must be another form of securing it. I still didn’t quite understand the nature of this smartphone, but thankfully, one of the others pitched in a suggestion: she should try entering her own password.

“Huh? I know you guys are like… brought back to life from all across time and stuff, so you don’t all know how smartphones work, but my password unlocks my phone. Her password unlocks her phone. Try to get with the program.”

The gentleman bid her to try it anyways.

“Fine… One-two-three-four. Wait, what?! It opened!”

I heard the hooded man chuckle a bit, then promptly stop when it seemed like she might give him the Eggbert treatment.

Turning her attention away from her snickering subordinates and back to her sister’s phone, Majide ran her thumb across the glass front of the device. “There’s like… fifty contacts in here! What the shit,” Majide gasped. “I can’t read the names, but a lot of the font is like… shrunk down to the same stupid size you guys can read. You guys read it.” She set the phone down for us to do just that.

These appeared to be other gods and goddesses. From what I could tell, they were each contributing some funds in the form of their own energy in order to help different aspects of the school operate optimally. There were well over five-hundred names. Majide simply hadn’t been very good at counting. I found that I could peruse them all by directing her to slide her thumb up and down upon the screen.

“So what you’re telling me is… Like… She’s not even an actual goddess? She’s just getting donated all of her powers by five hundred sponsors?”

I let her know it might not be so simple. Many gods were said to derive strength from the faith of followers and outside sources. With the many powers listed here, Taihen could definitely be considered a true goddess. It was doubtful even the woman herself knew how many powers she had at her disposal. One of the men pointed out that, according to this, she ought to have fully functional security cameras in every office. I didn’t know what that meant, but everyone seemed terrified once they learned of it.

“Well then, I guess she ain’t got ‘em turned on, because otherwise, she’d have stormed in by now,” Majide suggested, kicking her foot idly under the desk. “This phone part’s kinda boring. Nothing we can do, even knowing this, is there?”

I rubbed my beard thoughtfully and offered a suggestion: if these sponsors are the ones giving her all of her powers, might there be a way to strip her of those powers or otherwise reallocate them by communicating with the sponsors?

“Oh yeah… Yeah! We can send messages like it’s her and make the sponsors cut her funding! Damn, Ed, you’re kind of a genius for a guy with the worst haircut I’ve ever seen, minus that bald guy.”

I accepted her praise with a grateful smile. Now, we just had to figure out which sponsors were worth cutting.

“Guess it depends what they’re contributing, huh? Some of these are like… Taco Tuesday in the cafeteria. No way am I losing Taco Tuesday,” Majide sighed, scrolling through each with an impatient frown. “Plus, if we go too crazy with it, Pops might figure out something weird’s going on. We ought to be selective.”

I agreed. For now, we had two weapons: the binder, which our men were in charge of modifying, and the phone, which would allow us to seal off certain powers of hers. That was likely going to be important once she understood that she was being tricked. Actually…

Wouldn’t the other demigods notice? Would they try to intervene?

“Shit, you’re right. Uh… Er… What do we do about that? Some of those assholes are real boy scouts. In fact, most of ‘em are. They brown-nose her as much as they can to try to get out of re-education early. That’s the first thing we’ve got to deal with.”

Luckily, I had just the plan.

—-------------------

With the morning class and the day class both wrapped up, the evening break and evening classes were all that was left. Majide took us and the phone, leaving the evening binder where Taihen would surely discover it and use it. We cooperated to lock the door back as we left, leaving the office as close to the way we’d found it as possible. Majide slid back in to her seat right as the bell was announcing the evening break.

Each of us were riding inside her backpack, hidden from view of her sister while peering out like insects. I finally had a chance to see what I’d been waiting for: the face of the red ogre. I’d realized when I saw Majide’s, the face of a young girl, that if you could look past the horns and the fangs, there was a cute girl to be found here. This time, it didn’t take long. She had the same horns (a bit longer) and the same eyes (burning yellow), and sure, her lower teeth curved a bit like tusks, but other than that, she had the sleek features of an oriental beauty. For whatever reason, be it her make-up or the rimless rectangular spectacles upon her face, she looked considerably more mature than her sister.

Her bangs fell lightly upon her face as she stood to her feet and she brushed them with the back of one red fist. I was in awe of her beauty. No longer did visions of heaven’s angels appeal to me… I wanted a meaty red ogre, fit to burst out of her clothes with breasts, hips, and muscle.

I was thankful that Majide couldn’t see me ogling Taihen. She didn’t seem to approve of my amorous attitude towards her sister, unless I properly framed it under the guise of humiliating the woman. Privately, I wondered if our goals would eventually become unaligned. In fact, I even might find myself facing the judgment of my fellow human captives. It didn’t matter. I wanted this woman badly enough to risk hell for her.

And you might say that is ridiculous, given that I have barely heard her speak or taken stock of her character. I have seen nothing but her appearance. On what basis have I decided I will pursue her for the rest of my days?

My friends, you have not seen the woman. If you have not set eyes upon her, then you cannot know her appeal, however I might attempt to put it into words.

For now, I found myself staring at the switch in her hips and the perfect globe of her silk skirt’s back, as she wordlessly walked away from her desk and past her sister. There was no time even for her to question why her tardy sibling had been away– she needed to consult her evening plan.

“That’s the other thing that sucks about Sis lately. She honestly doesn’t give two shits about me. All she’s doing is going along with this stuff for dad. We used to be… eh… Doesn’t matter,” Majide grumbled, staring wistfully out of the window. I detected sadness in her voice. The two were sisters, after all, and had been in a gang once. They must have been close.

And yet, still, she’d chosen vengeance. What we’d filled that notebook with could be considered nothing less. We discussed our plans for just a bit longer before the elder sister returned, along with the numerous demigods making up her class.

The red ogre adjusted her glasses, then opened up her planner, discretely scanning its pages to refresh herself. “Let’s begin. First of all… you are dismissed.”

The other would-be gods assembled each looked at one another in confusion, murmuring quietly.

The ogre cleared her throat, then continued in an authoritative voice. “Today is a special lesson just for my sister, Majide, and the humans attending these classes. All other demigods may enjoy a free study period. Please submit a 500-word report on the findings of your personal studies tomorrow.”

The class seemed confused, but they followed the order. It wasn’t that suspicious, after all. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine that the tight-ass Taihen was going to lay into her sister for missing the entirety of the day class once they all left.

Once they were all gone, Majide grinned, leaning forward on her desk and crossing her arms beneath her chin. “Hey, Sis? Why’d you do that?”

The red ogre’s eyebrow twitched for a moment, then her eyes went down to her pages once more. She sighed, then stood up, carrying her planner with her. “Obviously, my intention is to spend time focusing on your unique case. Your class-skipping has gone out of control– I will not allow you to waste everyone’s time having me seek you out and drag you back.”

“Aw, gee. Sorry! Really! Let’s just focus on your lesson for tonight then, okay? I really want to learn and be instructed!” Majide begged, putting on a show of clapping her hands together over her head and bowing it. “Please, elder sister, teach me, your lowly student!”

“That’s more like it,” Taihen agreed, smiling slightly as she once again consulted her planner. “You know I don’t mean to be hard on you, sister. I want nothing more than to see you graduate.”

“Yeah? Funny way you have of showing it, then, flunking me on all of my tests.”

“That is because you barely turn in any of your tests. You do not fill in the answers. I couldn’t give you a passing grade if I wanted to. Your so called ‘God of Rebellion’ shtick means you won’t complete a single assignment, which means I cannot allow you to graduate.”

“Because I’m the God of Rebellion! We both were gods and rebels, before you started doing all this lame teacher shit.”

I began to feel uncomfortable, as I seemed to be trapped in between the two airing out their dirty laundry as siblings. The feeling that I should not be listening to this, mixed with the impatience for what I knew was about to come as part of the extended test of manipulating the goddess’s planner, made me restless. No matter how impatient I might be, there was no getting between the two. Even if I was the right size to intervene, I’m not sure I’d survive standing between two ogres.

“This puts us back on the matter of your skipping classes. As a teacher, it now falls to me to administer punishment,” the elder sister sighed, hitting her long club up and down upon one open palm in a threatening manner, like she was planning to use a weapon. “As a proper educator, I’ll choose the appropriate manner of discipline.”

“Hey, what did you bozos write?” Majide asked in a hissed whisper, seeming increasingly worried that we’d reworded things to allow ourselves to weasel out of our own upcoming torment without properly fixing whatever was in store for her.

Before any of us could find an appropriate way to answer, the teacher clarified for us. “To teach you appropriately, I’ll lead you through the motions myself. Please face the blackboard and together, we will each perform 100 squats. Do I have your word that you will follow along? I will, of course, be unable to watch behind myself.”

“Huh? Oh… Yeah, sure, cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Watch my form and perform accordingly,” Taihen encouraged her sister, now turning to face the back of the room and moving out from behind the desk. Notably, she remained in a position where she could still read her planner if she needed to. Next, she folded her hands one atop another behind her jet-black hair, the long nails lost among her follicles. Finally, the part I’d personally been waiting for: she squared her legs into an “A” shape, then slowly bent her knees, bringing her hips downward in a practiced motion. “One,” she spoke simply, without a hint of exertion.

To look at her thick leg muscles, I found it likely she did this sort of thing regularly. It was still a spectacle to behold. With no breaks in her motion or flaws in her form, the goddess of education proved her ability to follow through with physical education, perhaps more adeptly than she would other types of lessons. For my part, I was transfixed by the rippling, thick muscles of her thighs and glutes, gradually becoming more and more visible as she spread her legs regardless of the fine silk skirt, allowing it to rise just a bit higher with every squat. I watched with dry lips, knowing God would punish me for shamelessly indulging in such devilry, but I suppose that’s how I became so blessed to be in this place.

“Okay, while she’s busy, let’s figure out what we’re doing next. It’s good that this works, but you guys kind of blew it: squats aren’t embarrassing for my sister. She can easily do 100 without breaking a sweat. She’s kind of a meat-head,” Majide whispered to us. “Did you guys find anything on the phone that’d be cool to do? Like, I dunno, pull the funding on her car so she has to take a taxi? No, wait, that isn’t that funny, is it? Shit!”

For a so-called Goddess of Rebellion, our patron seemed to be having a hard time thinking up suitable punishments. Luckily, I had indeed come up with an idea. One of the patrons was apparently inputting significant funds into the school to instill a magic field that caused all human beings enrolled in the school to shrink to 1/100th their size. My chief concern was getting this repealed so that we could reach our full height again. Privately, this was so that I could properly enjoy the sights, but publicly, I announced that this was so that we could more easily assist Majide in her mischief.

It seemed like the shrinking magic was being enacted upon other resources within the school, too, but that was neither here nor there. If the other demigods were being shrunk beneath their usual size, they'd probably appreciate being restored to their original forms. Hopefully.

"Hey, smart! I didn't realize this wasn't your regular size, actually. Never seen humans that weren't smaller than my pinky. Does it matter that Sis is gonna see you, though?"

I had built a contingency into the lesson plan. Once she finished her squats, she'd see a note, warning her that she needed to reserve her power for future lessons. As such, any harm or execution of humans would need to be postponed indefinitely. I hoped that would be believable enough to trick her seemingly feeble logical reasoning.

"Yeah, probably will be. So who's the bastard in charge of the shrinking magic?"

We read it out: the God of Dollcraft. It would make sense that such a person would have magic specialized in making things smaller.

The next phase would require us to communicate with this God of Dollcraft and convince them to pull funding. I still didn't entirely understand this "smart phone" and no one had the time or patience to describe its inner workings to me-- I basically considered it another form of magic, like everything else in this place. From what I understood, it was designed to allow long distance communications. In short, it was like sending a letter... we could send a letter to this god so offensive that he would be **** to pull funding.

"I think I know what to type," Majide whispered with a grin on her face. "You guys just move on the glass to the right letters, okay?"

We obeyed her command, skating around as well as we could on the slick surface. When she told us what she wanted to type, we decided to workshop the idea a bit to get it to something she could spell quickly and easily.

"Dolls suck ass."

To our horror, the response was not a letter in return or an immediate withdrawal of sponsorship like we'd hoped. Instead, the massive smart phone started to vibrate, sending us scattering across its surface. This was what the others called "a direct call."

"Shit! What do I do?!" Majide questioned, panicking.

Thinking quickly, I came to an answer: nothing. Just let it buzz. Failing to answer the communication would be the easiest way to annoy him and would also hide our true identities.

We all watched the phone, thankful that Taihen seemed not to notice it, focusing on her squatting exercise instead. By this point, she was up to fifty and had worked up a shiny sheen of sweat, causing her alluring red skin to glisten. If I could just see her from the front, I was sure that her heaving ogre bosom would be a true spectacle, jostled by the exercise. I wanted to watch more, but there was no time to divert to that-- we had new messages coming through.

"PICK UP." "PICK UP NOW." "DOLLS DONT SUCK YOU SUCK." "DOLLS ARE PRETTY." "YOURE JUST JEALOUS." "DO I NEED TO CALL YOUR FATHER?"

And other such petty messages. As they continued to come through, I guided Majide on a response. This time, I mounted her finger, hitting either side with my fists to indicate where she should go. This proved to be much faster than relying on the other men, saving us valuable time as the teacher reached into past the 70th squat.

"U suck ass."

For a while, the squats kept counting down with no response from our tormented doll-master. The single letter "you" had been a way to save time, but I worried it was not enough.

Finally, it seemed to have the desired effect. To our mutual relief, a message came through reading "EAT SHIT," and then, just like that, the sponsorship was pulled.

"98... 99... hm?"

The "hm" was Taihen's rather muted reaction to the total breakdown of order in her classroom, starting from the back. A cluster of lightning bolts touched down, seeming to materialize in the air rather than down from the ceiling or sky, and when they cleared, the forms of robed humans became evident, now at full size matching that of the classroom. In a panic, they all ran for the door, not filing out one-by-one, but instead, pushing and tripping over one another in their attempts to all exit at the same time. When they finished getting through, only one was left: the crumpled, doubled over figure of the bald Eggbert, who'd been flicked to the back of the class earlier.

Next, we were each hit by the bolts. The others began to jump off the side of the desk when it became clear we were in danger of each expanding on top of one another, and by the time they hit the floor, they were full-sized, robed men. I ended up in the strangest position, straddling the entire desk on my stomach with my buttocks in the face of our rescuer. Most embarrassingly, I'm afraid to say the girl's arm was still trapped between my legs from my earlier position and she could certainly not fail to notice my rather pronounced erection unintentionally rubbing her forearm.

"Why do you have a boner?!" she hissed, struggling to pull her arm free. The action only provoked me further, rubbing her hand up and down my bulge.

I should have gotten up and moved, but I was too distracted by what was happening at the front of the class. For some reason, Taihen had been hit by one of the bolts as well. That was most strange... her sister was remaining the same size, about 5'2" to my 6'2," now that I recognized feet and inches for what they were. The sister, who had been the same height as me, began to grow, becoming nearly a head taller than I was and settling somewhere around 7 feet, now so tall that she'd need to grow through the doorway.

If it was just that, I probably could have corrected myself and freed Majide from her crass entrapment. Instead, my eyes were rooted on the red ogre, who was having a most unexpected wardrobe malfunction. Our own robes had grown with us, so I assumed that her smart silk ensemble would as well. That appeared not to be the case.

She'd taken off the silk blazer before beginning to do her squats, which was probably for the best, as her newly grown biceps-- no larger in proportion, but now larger in sheer scale, burst open her sleeves, reducing them to tatters. Next to tear was her skirt, with a sharp ripping noise that opened the fine silk from the hem at her knees all the way to the waist, so that it nearly split into two halves. The sides of her thick, sweating red thighs were on display now. I'd call them a feast for the eyes, but truly, they were more like an appetizer. I heard the buttons begin to pop off the front of her blouse.

Heaven answered my earnest prayers. As she spun around, her dangerous breasts swung with her. The shirt had opened up completely at the chest, letting her glorious, over-sized breasts hang free, clad only in a tiger-patterned bra that matched her phone case and didn't fit a teacher in the slightest. In fact, it literally didn't quite fit her. It seemed it wasn't expanding along with her body and as such, the tops were threatening to spill out, if the whole thing didn't come unsnapped and shoot off of her first. The magnificent jiggle and heft of those... and my hands now big enough to hold them! I couldn't get enough of the thought.

"D-Dude! Your boner's twitching on me!" Majide protested, pulling harder on her arm.

"What is this? Humans?" Taihen questioned, adjusting her glasses as though she was having a hard time believing what she was seeing. The glasses, as a side note, appeared to be the only part of the ensemble that adjusted to its appropriate size. To keep up her remaining modesty, the woman attempted to close the front of her shirt. It was a bad move-- the blouse was reduced into two even strips, as it ripped across the back and came off in her hands. If we weren't already transfixed by the sight of her bosom, we certainly were with the addition of her sweat-coated, rippling abdomen. "Shit," she grumbled, growing a shade closer to pink than red as she crossed her arms at her chest, hiding it as best she could with the tattered blouse. It wasn't totally working-- those glorious breasts of hers were just too large to keep out of sight.

I felt something push me from behind, then fell forward, landing face-first on the floor. Majide had evidently lost patience with my not-so-covert attempt to use the friction between my member and her forearm to assist me in jacking off to her sister.

The blue ogre attempted to assert herself as the one in control of the situation, despite her small stature and the purplish blush on her face from prolonged interaction with my rod. "Ha! That's right! These guys are my hell-riders, my do-or-die rebel army!"

Looking cross, Taihen reached for her club... then thought the better of it. The lesson plan had told her not to punish humans, after all. "I should have figured this would be your doing. This childish rebellion nonsense of yours. Surely you realize humans are of no real aid to you?"

"I dunno. You can't really afford to use up your energy dealing with them, can you? Not if you want to actually properly discipline me, that is," the goddess of rebellion snickered. "Cute bra, by the way. I guess some parts of your style haven't changed!"

The sister grimaced, clutching the remnants of her blouse tighter to her chest. "You've gone too far this time, Majide. I'll see you thrown in detention for this!"

"I spend just about every day there anyway, dumbass," Majide laughed, kicking her feet out onto her desk and leaning back in her chair. "So what, does your stupid lesson planner have any details about how to handle a badass rebellion like this one?"

Taihen's golden eyes widened. She quickly grabbed up her binder and flipped to the appropriate page, making it way too evident how reliant she was on these documents to keep up her guise of being a teacher. "It says... I should continue the lesson, being receptive to all questions and feedback from the students. Surely not! This is what the Goddess of Education should do in such a scenario?" she asked, her lower lip quivering a bit as it curled over the lower side of her tusk-like fangs.

"Yeah, you show that stupid lesson plan what for. Teach your own way! Speak your truth, Sis," Majide goaded her. "Who needs that stuff anyway? You're the bonafide Goddess of Education! Who knows more about teaching then you?"

Taihen's eyebrows lowered and her teeth clenched. She'd only gotten to this position, supported by countless sponsors and respected by her peers, because she followed the adaptive lesson plan to the letter. Now, due to our modifications, it had essentially abandoned her to our whims. The only question was how far we could push her... if she decided that she really was tired of following its instructions, she could wipe us out at any time. I was quickly getting the impression that the red ogre was by far the physically stronger of the two sisters, perhaps due to being the only one with real godhood.

We might be adult, human males, but I highly doubted we'd stand a chance at overpowering her either.

"Yes, well... I can certainly agree that the lesson ought to continue. If there is anyone in this entire dimension, or any other dimension, who requires education, it is you lot. I count... eight humans in total, one dead, and you, Majide. You all will now suffer through some of the toughest curriculum I have to offer, befitting your upstart attitudes," Taihen warned us, looking physically imposing despite her state of undress. "... After I take a short break to go change into different clothes."

I offered the feedback, as a concerned student, that it would be more impressive if she were to weather the difficulty and continue to teach in her current wardrobe.

To my astonishment, it seemed for a moment like she was actually considering it. She flipped through her binder for something that could help her discover if that was a good idea or not. When she couldn't find anything, she decided to go with her gut instead. "No, I will not. You all stay right here. I will return in a moment and the lesson will resume."

The red ogre turned, shoulders squared, fists at her side, with confident, long strides. Just then, as the third of those long steps concluded, the skirt gave the rest of the way out, tearing at the waist and fluttering down to pool at her red toes, which had at some point become bare. Underneath, she wore just a tiger fur loincloth, covering a small amount of the cleft between her cheeks and resting in a triangle over the front as well. I wished now that I could momentarily be small again... the underside of her fantastic ass-cheeks were pretty fully displayed, but if I were only a miniature human once again, I might get a peek further beneath!

"Wow, Sis. You wear a loincloth? That's oldschool."

"I-It was a pair of panties! They were panties before..."

"Before your puss turned big and tore the underside? That's hilarious!"

The red ogre became a brighter shade of pink, practically blowing steam from her ears in mixed frustration and embarrassment. "Majideeee... When I tell Dad about this, you're gonna be so fucked!"

"Oooh? That doesn't sound like something a good teacher would say!"

"I mean... Ahem... I meant to say, when I inform our father about what has transpired here, you are going to be in a considerably sorrier state," Taihen corrected herself, covering her bottom with both hands as she scurried off to the teacher's lounge. She briefly returned, grabbing the key out of her skirt, before quickly hurrying out again. Her huge breasts flopped with every rapid motion. I felt I'd gone from hell to paradise... I'd become a true ogre chaser, perhaps the first in human history.

Speaking of which, there was one ogre still with us. The smaller of the two sisters grinned triumphantly. "That. Was. Awesome! I mean, apart from the part where you guys were drooling over my sister. I really got one over on her! Plus, she's totally lying about the 'I'll tell Dad' thing. There's no way her pride would let her crawl back to him. She's gonna try to solve all of this herself, heh heh heh! That dumbass! She's a total dumbass, right?"

I could see that there might be some difficulties going forward. I was utterly smitten with Taihen, driven, admittedly, by pure lust for the flesh. Majide, while very on-board with humiliating her sister, did not seem to be keen on my pursuing Taihen that way. I made a mental note that, at some point, our motivations in all of this may cease to align, even though I wished to keep the admittedly cute blue ogre as an ally. I grabbed up Taihen's phone myself, as casually and innocently as I could manage.

I told her I'd hold on to this. With my reading and writing capability, I could easily send messages, much more quickly than by our cooperative method. This would also prevent Taihen from reclaiming it.

"Good thinking! Although, she's probably realizing right now that she doesn't have it. Crap, what do we do?"

The answer lay upon Taihen's desk. For once, she'd left her binder. Being left in her underwear in front of the classroom had broken her composure and she'd forgotten all about it. This would give us a vital chance to make a few more edits that could be useful...

... Or not. I forgot: we all grew to our usual sizes. That meant that the notes inside the binder were now much smaller than anything we could write or read!

"Oh shit! That ruins like... most of our plan going forward, doesn't it?!"

I rubbed my thick beard thoughtfully and pondered the phone in my hand. The binder had just been a means to an end. As long as we had this, we held a great deal of power over Taihen. Perhaps there were more ways to utilize the sponsors gifting the elder sister their magical blessings? We'd need to figure it out quickly. I gathered the other humans and piled them together around one desk, allowing them to instruct me in the proper usage of the smart phone.

I further warned them that they would have a dire task in the hours to come-- I would need them to distract the teacher and obfuscate my movements so that I could freely use the phone in class. I must use it and she must not be allowed to see it in my possession.

A short period of time later, the goddess of education returned, now dressed in what one of the men would later describe as "sporty attire." It consisted of a black exercise top, very elastic, with matching shorts and ankle socks, but no shoes. It struck me that the tight fit of each piece of the outfit was nearly as erotic as the tiger bikini she'd been wearing a moment ago. The shorts were exceedingly short, showing the lower side of her cheeks just a bit and fitting snugly to her toned butt. The top was doing little to restrain the near constant bounce of that mythical set of breasts, and it was cut low enough to show her cleavage pushed together as well.

She spotted us gawking and crossed her arms defiantly, tilting her chin upward. "You humans have no place in this quarrel between my sister and me. Your eventual punishment will be more severe than you can possibly imagine," she warned us, glowering over her shining, rimless glasses.

This battle of sister vs. sister had started long ago, but we humans were just crossing the threshold into it. On the side of the goddess of rebellion, facing off against the goddess of education, we'd need to use all our wits to survive.

But I wanted more than survival. I wanted to twist this for everything it was worth and turn this place into my personal heaven, the sort of place I thought I deserved to go after loyal service and faith throughout my lifetime, apart from the occasional lustful misstep. Across from this red ogre, perhaps I was the true devil, for my mind remained entrapped upon the idea of sating my fascination with her in the most erotic manner I could devise.*

-- Your earnest servant,

Edwin Guillaume, former missionary, date unknown

*A footnote: if a good, Christian servant of our lord and savior has happened upon this text, please, do not do as I do. The classroom is no place for such behavior and I am ashamed of my words and deeds in this place of learning. Honor your instructors in school, the women in your life, and your god. My adventures, chronicled forward from this point, have very little to do with honor, nor faith.