Chapter One: The Arrival

The Arrival:

Sitting in the front passenger seat of her father's car, Emily adjusted the hem of her skirt, and picked off a tiny piece of lint. For the dozenth time she flipped down the sun visor to check her hair and makeup in the small mirror. She tried telling herself that she wasn't nervous, but that simply wasn't true. Apprehensive and excited certainly, but nervous just the same. With every mile that passed under the tires bringing her closer to Rattangrove, it was an understandable feeling.

All her life she had lived under her parents' strict and watchful gaze. Every report card scrutinized, her curfew always earlier than those of her friends, and every misstep swiftly and soundly corrected; almost always with her vulnerable bared bottom paying the price. Even at 19 her parents maintained a very firm and unwavering commitment to corporal punishment and she had long abandoned any hope of changing that. Attending the famous Rattangrove Academy held so many possibilities for freedom for her, despite its somewhat fearsome reputation.

Rattangrove Academy was well known as a very old fashioned school. Academically, it was unquestionably outstanding, but their famously "spare the rod, spoil the student" philosophy was arguably more famous than their academic record. For most students it would have been an unthinkably regressive and punitive place, but to Emily it was the gateway to a level of freedom she couldn't have dreamed of having at home.

Certainly she would be supervised, and almost as certainly she would end up punished from time to time, but being one student among thousands had to be easier than being her parents only daughter.

Thinking of her parents and their strict adherence to their inflexible moral code, Emily's hand wandered up to touch the shiny silver key that hung on a slim necklace around her neck; the metal cool against the skin between her breasts. It was the key to the steel chastity cage that she had worn for almost as long as she could remember, and a totem of her position in society.

Very seldom removed for anything apart from hygiene, and even then only for very brief periods, it meant that while Emily certainly wasn't a blushing virgin, at least as a bottom, the small and incredibly sensitive little organ inside the cage had never known any pleasure apart from the very infrequent touch of Emily's own hand. That wasn't going to change at Rattangrove, and indeed it was rare that she was allowed to touch the key at all.

Even on the rare opportunities Emily was allowed out of her cage either to wash or for... relief, her father was the only one who handled the key. She had caught him glancing at her nervously in the passenger seat, the very idea of her having possession of it, even sitting in the seat next to him, made him visibly nervous.

Idly, Emily wondered what would have happened if she'd announced she had to pee when they stopped for gas an hour or so ago and then ducked into the ladies restroom. Would her father have burst in after her? What if there had been other women in the room? She smiled at the idea of her father blushing and offering flustered apologies and explanations, though she'd never have really tried it.

However uncomfortable it made her father it was a Rattangrove tradition that locked girls arrived with their keys displayed on a necklace. An easy way to tell the locked girls from the free ones, both for the Rattangrove faculty, and for anyone else who happened to be watching. Emily wasn't thrilled about announcing her status to the entire student body upon arrival, but she would be far from the only locked girl at Rattangrove.

It was no good complaining about it in any event. She wanted to go to Rattangrove, and she knew better than to tease her father when he was already on edge. She wasn't sure if it was just seeing her with her key, or if it was the fact she'd be away from home for four moths straight. She had no reservations about giving him a hard time, but he was clearly a little on edge and the idea of getting a dose of her father's belt on the side of the highway in full view of traffic was a sufficient deterrent.

Instead, she contented herself with watching the countryside fly by through the window and thinking about her future life at Rattangrove. She reached up and touched the key again, aware that her father was almost certainly watching her do so. She didn't bother looking back, but she maintained a tiny spark of hope that the school might not be quite so attentive, and that the opportunity might present itself for her to slip into an unattended restroom for a few moments of illicit pleasure. It had been months since she had been allowed anything like that at all. Her attending Rattangrove was all about opportunities, after all.

For girls like Emily, the world held one of two possibilities: At age 18, a girl's parents or guardians would decide for her whether she would be Free or Locked.:

Free girls generally came from more modern, forward-looking, progressive households of Hartia. The luckiest of these girls wouldn't have ever known the tight steel embrace of a chastity cage around their most intimate parts. For most of them, they'd have been locked from time to time, but only for a few days or weeks, and purely as a punishment. They were still a minority of trans girls, but there were more and more of them with every passing year.

These girls would go out into the world at 18 with every opportunity available to them, just as it would be for anyone else. Most would attend schools that were far less demanding and rigid than the one Emily would be attending. Indeed, with Rattangrove's reputation for hard rules and strict punishments, Emily doubted there would be very many free girls among the student body. If you could manage to attend anywhere else, most girls would take that option.

For most girls, including Emily, that meant being registered as Locked when she had turned 18. That meant a harder life, and most likely one of servitude. Emily harboured no illusions or hopes of her parents spontaneously deciding to free her at age 18. They had been very clear from the start that she would be a locked girl for a good portion of her life; her cage removed intermittently at best, and depending on her future key-holder maybe not at all.

Most locked girls would "graduate" from her parents holding her key to a Master or Mistress who would keep her on a tight, strictly supervised chastity regimen, just as she had been at home. Locked girls, the traditional narrative went, couldn't help themselves otherwise. A successful transition, one where they abandoned all masculine aspects and fully embraced their femininity, had to be supervised. Enforced.

Locked girls needed a firm hand, one who would guide them to the feminine ideal that they sought, in exchange for a lifetime of servitude and submission. Locked girls were too headstrong to fully accept the changes it would take to complete their transition. Denial and chastity were the lever by which they would be brought to heel, moulded into the young woman they ought to be. It wasn't cruelty, or even slavery, at least not exactly. It was societal tough love that theoretically ensured a flawless transition.

As a result Locked girls generally had their key sold off after they came of age. The more sensational stories about Hartia insisted that it was done at a public auction, which occasionally still happened, though it was rare. Far more often a girl's key was sold to a family friend or acquaintance that their parents trusted would treat them well. Going for anywhere between $325,000 up to $500,000 the girl would follow her key to whoever bought it; serving as their maid, nanny, or concubine in exchange for supervision and guidance.

It wasn't slavery, the girls themselves weren't property and they were paid a wage. In theory, a girl could choose to take only a small part of her wages in cash, using the rest to pay back her key price and earn her freedom, but it was a very large debt to pay off. The pay wasn't great either; once her key was sold, the girl had virtually no bargaining power; she would take the wages offered, no matter how humiliating.

It wasn't unheard of for a girl to pay off her key price, but it was far more common for her to eventually give in and start taking her full wages in cash, discouraged by a debt that could take 25 or 30 years to pay off while living as little more than a slave.

It was a very old system of indentured labour, and one that was strongly slanted in favour of the Master or Mistress. Most treated both the key and the girl attached as investments: ones that earned a small amount of interest. A girl could take her full wages in cash, but the price of her key would rise over time, and her chance of ever getting it back would approach zero after a decade or so as the price slowly rose.

The other option was to accept The Collar Service: She would get room and board, clothing and all the basic necessities provided, but 95% of her wages would go towards paying off her key price, and it was the work of decades to earn it back. Emily knew more than a few girls from her graduating class who had chosen that option. She had considered it herself, even taking a gap year to think it over after high school, but she was sure it wasn't for her.

Rattangrove offered Emily another option: She had just barely earned the grades she needed for the scholarship, and had worked hard in her gap year to raise the rest of the cash, but she had managed it. Girls who were attending or who had graduated from a college couldn't have their key sold without their permission, so she was safe for as long as she stayed in school. Better yet, once she graduated the government would purchase her key from her parents for a flat $250,000 and hold it interest-free for up to 20 years while she worked to pay it off.

Better yet, she was free to negotiate her own employment contracts. She could take a normal job just like anyone else, and pay off her key almost like a mortgage. Or she could take a placement with a Master, but she would be able to negotiate her wages and her chastity schedule, at least a little. It would take years to earn her freedom, but compared to even the most generous traditional indenturement it would take less than half the time.

The program was fairly new, and came with so many benefits. Not only would she have her freedom sooner than she could otherwise have hoped, but if she didn't accept an indenturement she would be able to live in her own little apartment. Admittedly, probably with roommates, as paying off her key price would take most of her income, but it was still a wonderful dream.

She would have a government inspector who would drop by for surprise inspections, and who would be authorized to use corporal punishment to keep her on track, but from what she understood those inspections were rare. Even better she would be unlocked monthly in the post-grad program, assuming she chose not to accept indenturement somewhere. A nearly private unlock, up to fifteen minutes all to herself with the inspector supervising through a one-way mirror. It seemed like such an impossible luxury, but it wasn't even the best part.

After 5 years in the post-graduation program she was even allowed to bring a date to "help" with her monthly releases. She wasn't allowed penetration, but she was allowed almost anything else. She closed her eyes and imagined having the cage off, letting her fingers glide over her skin, so incredibly sensitive from a lifetime of denial. She imagined the sensation of having a lover gently touch her for the first time; teasing her to firmness, not worried about her admittedly rather petite size, stroking her... she felt the cage tighten as her shaft tried to harden in its little steel prison.

Emily bit her lip and opened her eyes, trying to clear her mind. It would be absolutely mortifying to have her father look over and see her having a "private moment" like this. Blushing furiously, she turned to the window and tried to focus on the scenery flashing by outside the car's window. It was definitely a goal to aim for, but it was a very long way off even if everything went perfectly to plan.

In time, the ivy-covered brick walls of Rattangrove Academy appeared on the horizon, and her father looked over at her with a proud smile. He didn't say anything, but he reached over and gently squeezed Emily's knee in a warm, paternal manner. She smiled back at him. He was a strict man, and Rattangrove was certainly an exciting new world, but she was going to miss him very much. Suddenly, for all her excitement, she realized that she was going to be homesick, and how much she was going to miss both of her parents.

Emily's father slowly navigated the narrow cobblestone lane that lead onto the campus, a road that was already barely wide enough to accommodate a modern car was clogged with proud parents dropping off nervous daughters for their first day of school. Finally spying a spot to pull over, he swung the car in against the curb with the satisfied sigh of fathers everywhere who manage to get a better parking spot than they hoped. They were only a few feet from the front doors of the school, parked behind a long, black, and extremely expensive-looking sedan.

Emily got out of the car and gave her dad a long hug goodbye. The school didn't allow much for outside belongings, so apart from her phone, her laptop, her charging cords, a couple of books, and her toiletries, she would have no comforts from home. It all fit comfortably in just a small backpack. She could see her father struggling not to cry as she gave him one last excited wave and walked up the stairs into the school.

Aurora sulked in the back of her father's car. This school was a dump. Her lip curled into a derisive sneer as she watched a dark haired girl with braces stand almost in awe of the ugly, dumpy brick building. How could she have ended up here? None of her friends were going to attend Rattangrove. They had reasonable parents and were all off to more fashionable schools where they could have a car, and wear their own clothes, and have a life.

Her grades hadn't been perfect, admittedly, but 54% was still a pass. She probably shouldn't have gotten expelled from her first high school either, but that happened to a lot of girls, at least ones who didn't slavishly obey every single little rule.

There were always so many stupid rules! To Aurora's mind rules were for the locked girls, not free, modern girls like herself. Well... formerly free. As she climbed out of the car she could feel the metal ring of the cage chafe against her skin. She couldn't believe that her father had registered her as Locked. Admittedly, for all her bad behaviour she really hadn't seen that one coming.

Aurora hadn't worn the cage growing up. That was for... other people. Lesser people. The sort of girls that Aurora had ruthlessly bullied in the locker room. Definitely not her or her clique, who were the prettiest, the most popular, and for the trans girls in their little group: universally unlocked. Her family definitely didn't need the money from selling her, and she had grown up used to having her freedom. To end up here... like this... it was humiliating. She slammed the car door without saying goodbye to her father and stamped up the steps to the school, still fuming.

The school had insisted that since she was registered as Locked that she arrive caged with the key around her neck like all the other locked girls. She saw the way other girls without keys around their necks looked at her. She knew what they were thinking: just another pathetic subservient girl just waiting for someone to come along and collar her. It made her want to be sick. She pushed down her anger and frustration and forced herself to meet their eyes straight on. She wasn't going to look away, cage or no cage she knew who she was. Besides, she had a plan.

She had been forced to sell a little bit of jewellery... and go on some questionable "dates"... but she had managed to put together an extremely tidy amount of cash. The knowledge that it was there at the bottom of her backpack kept some of the looming dread at bay. From the looks of this place they probably didn't pay well. Certainly a few thousand dollars in the right hands would ensure that this whole "Locked" business was all just a silly misunderstanding and she could go back to the way things ought to be. She was young, rich, beautiful, and this silly little mistake would all be sorted out shortly.

Failing that, she could just suck off whoever was in charge. That usually worked. As long as her grades were where her father needed them to be, the details were almost certainly irrelevant.

She stopped at the threshold of the school, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her father had five years to change his mind. Or rather, she had five years to change his mind. She could be re-registered as Free right up until her 24^th birthday. All she had to do was graduate from Rattangrove with something close to a respectable GPA, and she could go back to the life she knew. Her father had promised her that, and even if he was a fucking prick who had sent her to this dreadful school, he would keep his word.

She couldn't look at it as a problem, or as a punishment. This was just a brief, mildly unpleasant stop on the road to somewhere better. She would flirt and bribe her way to the closest thing this wretched place had to a luxury apartment, keep her head down, write a few tests, get her stupid piece of paper to satisfy her father, and put this whole nightmare behind her. She looked back up at the doorway, a newfound resolve in her green eyes.

With confidence, as well as a little residual anger, she stepped through the well-worn oak doors of the academy, into the dimmer confines of the Great Hall. Aurora had to admit that even she was impressed. Compared to the dowdy and uninspiring exterior of the school, the Great Hall was both beautiful and imposing. Century old Tudor panelling the colour of honey were bathed in the warm, multifaceted light that shone through mullioned stained glass windows.

The floor was pale marble, well trafficked but spotlessly clean. The place looked... monumental; like it had been built to last much longer than the hundred years or so it had existed. Everything from the water fountain taps to the doorknobs were heavy and well-worn brass, the benches were thick planks of the same oak as the walls. It gave Rattangrove an aura more befitting a cathedral than a school. Aurora begrudgingly admitted that she might have misjudged Rattangrove just a little. Her reverie was broken by a rumbling but very polite voice.

"Your bag, miss..."

Aurora spun on her heel, surprised, and found herself facing the largest human being she had ever seen. He wasn't fat... exactly; he certainly wasn't thin either, he was just... huge. He positively towered over her, his upper arms far thicker than her thighs. A little bit of surface fat couldn't hide his strength; muscles swam like krakens beneath his skin with even the slightest movement.

A mountain of a man had seemed an impossibly trite description to her up to this point, but the phrase sprang unbidden to the front of her mind. He was an incredibly imposing figure, his security badge seemed a child's plaything when pinned to his continental chest. At his full height he positively loomed over her, and as he leaned down to speak with her Aurora took a step backwards.

He frowned, seeing her nervousness, and then smiled in a reassuring way. With a single thick finger he pointed at the sign hung on the wall just to her left. "No Outside Goods Past This Point." it read.