Liz the Gassy Skunk Revamped

Liz hopped off the bus and paused on the sidewalk, taking a moment to drink in the exciting new environment around her.

Anthro University wasn't quite like anything she'd seen before. The same went for all of Anthro City, if she was being honest. Liz's upbringing in the quiet, unobtrusive town of Violethaven hadn't exactly been sheltered, but it had left her largely oblivious to big city life. Anthro City had always been the closest city of any kind of renown and even this was a whole two states over from Violethaven.

Adapting to her first semester at AU could be something of a challenge, as Liz wasn't like other girls, or even other skunks.

And not in a brooding, listening to emo music and blogging about inner turmoil kind of way, she really wasn't like anyone else due to a particular condition she'd had since birth.

Liz was born without the ability to produce a skunk's signature spray, and to make up for the lack of stink in that department, her digestive system worked overtime to provide impossible amounts of another kind of stink.

Liz was extraordinarily flatulent; in scientific terms, gassy as hell.

Her gut produced about a hundred times the amount of bacteria as the average fur and as a result her gas supply was pretty much limitless. She could just about fart on command, without any pumping or butt-inhaling necessary.

Of course growing up a girl with a condition like this wasn't easy, but Liz was always one to hit the ground running and play the hand life dealt her. Liz had always been a tomboy through and through (it's not like she had any chance of being anything else), but through high school she'd always managed to escape the pit of mock or derision by owning her natural affliction entirely. Folks back in Violethaven couldn't help but find her abilities impressive. She was something of a celebrity around town and regularly brushed shoulders with the popular kids in school. Heck, she'd even been captain of the cheer team and regularly implemented her god-given talents in her cheer displays, much to the amusement of fellow classmates and lament of staff.

But this was something different. A whole new environment. Liz had taken a couple years before heading to college and by now there was always a fifty/fifty chance of other people in her age range finding her farts funny or juvenile and disgusting.

As she marched across the quad and toward the Williams building that would be her home for the next few months, the worries that had been eating away at her the entire bus ride over about her roommate bubbled up again. (Or was that just gas? It was hard to tell sometimes.)

She lugged her suitcase through the double doors and into the stairwell. It was a lovely old building with that lovely old building smell, one Liz was certain she'd be reworking before too long.

The way she saw it, she had two options:

One, do her very best to hold in her farts at all times. Be sneaky. Scurry to the en-suite to release fumes. It sounded miserable.

Option two, she lay everything out for her roommate and pray that she'd have a similarly childish sense of humor about the whole thing.