Modelling

At the end of morning classes, Zurra came up and presented him with a huge plate of spaghetti and meatballs.

"How in the world are you getting ingredients from Earth out here?" Gerald asked.

"It's a secret," she giggled.

Cha'Rolette's chefs brought out Grilled Taman infused with a century old cognac and steamed danub.

"Isn't it expensive to feed me like this every day?" he asked.

"Don't worry, it's tax deductible."

"Oh, I'm so relieved" said Gerald sarcastically.

Cadbury squawked loudly and laid another egg.

"My gift is the one that keeps on giving," Ilrica boasted.

Gerald faked a smile as best he could as he looked at the meals before him.

Trahzi appeared and dumped some more vending machine stew on top of everything. The chefs where aghast. Zurra screamed and bounced up and down like a rubber ball. Ilrica thought it was hilarious.

"So, which one are you going to eat first?" they all asked in unison.

Gerald rolled up a fork-full of stew-covered spaghetti, speared a piece of Taman, and dipped it in the egg, putting all four in his mouth at the same time.

"They're all delicious," he praised.

"Looks like it's a tie this time," Ilrica said.

* * *

Gerald moaned in pain as afternoon classes came to an end. "I'm going to die if I keep eating this much every day," he groaned.

It barely registered in his brain when Zurra walked up in her adult form and placed an old worn out magazine on his desk. "Geri, I need to get your opinion on something."

"Blue," he burped.

"No, I want to know what you like."

"Like?" He sat up and saw that laid out before him was an old Victoria's Secret lingerie catalogue.

"Zurra, what are you doing?" he asked, pushing it away.

"That armor is not going to protect them very much," Ilrica appraised as she looked at the pictures over his shoulder.

Cha'Rolette was appalled. "Gerald! How dare you bring something like that into this classroom?"

"I didn't."

Zurra began flipping through the pages. "So, I was thinking you'd probably prefer the bustier and fishnet stocking combination, but this lacy camisole and thigh-high set looks nice too."

When Zurra flipped to the bras and panties section, Cha'Rolette blushed brightly and covered Gerald's eyes. "Don't look at it!"

"I wasn't."

Trahzi walked over to see what the commotion was about. "What are these?" she asked curiously. "They do not look very comfortable."

"I'm just trying to find out my bride's tastes in underwear," Zurra explained.

Cha'Rolette was as red as a turnip as Gerald struggled beneath her hands. "This is completely inappropriate to bring into the academy!"

Ilrica crinkled her nose. "What kind of male would like this? It's so... frilly."

"There is no such thing as too much lace on your underwear," Zurra explained. "Do you know who said that? George Washington."

"He said no such thing!" Gerald yelled from beneath Cha'Rolette's hands.

Trahzi flipped to a page filled with different kind of thongs. "So, this attracts human males... fascinating."

"Why is everyone ignoring me?" Her ta'atu unraveled and the magazine was sliced by a thousand invisible blades into confetti.

"Hey!" Zurra pouted. "That was a collector's item, an historical artifact."

Gerald finally managed to pull Cha'Rolette's hands off of him. "Not something I'd really be proud of to see in a museum about my people."

Zurra put her hands on her hips. "Fine, I don't need pictures to model." Her uniform morphed away until she was wearing nothing but a strapless pink bikini. "I was looking through the swimsuit section, and I thought you'd like this one."

"Are you insane?" Cha'Rolette hollered.

"Zurra, please put some clothes on," Gerald pleaded, trying not to look at anything but her face.

She blinked. "Clothes?"

"Yes, you are practically naked," Ilrica complained.

Zurra laughed. "Naked? Seriously?" She grabbed the waistband of her bikini and stretched it out like it was made of rubber. "These aren't clothes, this is my skin. I just shape it to look like clothes." She changed her shape so that she was wearing a pink school uniform, then grabbed the collar and stretched it out as well. "Even when I'm in uniform, it's still just my skin. Don't you get it? I am always naked, so I don't see why it bothers you now."

They all stared at her.

"You are the most ghoulish little thing I have ever seen" lamented Cha'Rolette.

"Shut up, squid lady!"

Cha'Rolette was thunderstruck. "S... s-s-squid lady?"

"I just want to know what Gerald likes so I can wear it when I'm around him." She reformed herself so that she was wearing a pink garter belt and corset, pushing up her bustline tantalizingly and creating a lot of cleavage.

"Doesn't that hurt to mash them up like that?" Trahzi asked curiously.

"Who cares?" Zurra said, striking a modeling pose to show herself off. "I was basically raised on earth, and of the men there, there's not one of them born that can resist a good-sized rack."

Trahzi turned to Ilrica and snickered knowingly.

"Shut up, Trahzi," Ilrica snapped, folding her arms to hide her diminutive chest.

"Not all men are like that," Gerald defended.

"Oh yeah?" Zurra's breasts tripled in size, jiggling and bouncing before him. They now surpassed even Trahzi's enormous bust line. Gerald's eyes went wide as saucers, and he blushed from head to toe.

As Gerald tried unsuccessfully to look away, Zurra leaned forward and showed off her now ridiculously busty figure in a bathing suit that could barely contain it. Several of the boys in the room whistled and cheered. Zurra gave them a wink and blew them a kiss. The girls all looked on with murder in their eyes.

Tomar looked up from his book and gasped. A small trickle of blood came out of his nose. His face went pale, his orange eyes rolled back into his head, and he passed out, an expression of pure joy on his face.

Zurra stood up and struck a new pose, causing her curves to jiggle. "You see, I may not have money like squid-girl over there, or power like a Trahzi, or shed fur all over the place like a Bertulf..."

"Hey!" Ilrica objected.

"...But I have something you gals can never have. You are stuck in a single form. No matter how hard you try, you are only you. I can be whatever kind of woman Gerald wants me to be. I can be any race, any celebrity, anyone."

The other girls looked at each other nervously.

"Round five goes to me," Zurra boasted.

"No!" Gerald said, slamming his fist against his desk. It took him a moment, but he got himself back under control. "Look, girls, you've got it all wrong."

"Look how flustered he is," Zurra purred. "My bride is so bashful, it's adorable."

"No, what's true is that I don't like any of them."

They all looked at him in silence.

"Does that mean he prefers no underwear at all?" Ilrica asked.

"Ooh, how scandalous!" Zurra said, clapping her hands together.

Cha'Rolette put her face into the palm of her hand.

"NO! It means I don't want to see your bodies, scantily clad or otherwise. I'm studying to be a priest, for Soeck's sake! That is my goal."

"Pfffttt, whatever," Ilrica scoffed.

Cha'Rolette made a mental raspberry. "Such a liar."

"He's fibbing," Zurra laughed.

"Any man would die to see me in a swimsuit" boasted Cha'Rolette.

"Why would he lie about that?" Trahzi asked, confused.

Gerald grabbed the sides of his head. "Ugh."

Ilrica slammed her hand down on his desk, suddenly looking quite irritated. "So, you mean to tell me, Gerald, that you're a purebred herbivore?"

"You mean he's a vegan?" Zurra asked.

Ilrica took a second to download the meaning of that term from Central. She shook her head. "No, he's not preachy enough to be a vegan. No, you see, among the Bertulf there is the occasional male that takes no interest in challenging the alpha of his pack or starting his own. He just mills around eating grass and ignoring the females, so we call them herbivores."

"Sounds cute."

"Hardly. They are probably the most detested part of Bertulf society. They take up space, eat up the spoils of the hunt, but contribute nothing to the birthrate." Ilrica closed her eyes and looked very disappointed. "They have no place in the bonfire circle."

Trahzi tilted her head. "So how does that make you feel, Gerald, knowing that you are a hated grass-eater?"

Gerald shrugged. "Those are her standards, not mine."

"Ooh, he's still got a hide as thick as a rhynox, doesn't he?" Zurra praised.

Ilrica cracked open an eye and grinned at Gerald affectionately. "Yes, he does."

"You shouldn't waste your time trying to educate him," Cha'Rolette said, still quite embarrassed by all of the commotion. "Humans are so hilariously primitive that they only have five senses." She looked at him harshly. "You'd have to be a fool to like him."

"Well, that's not true," Gerald defended, not sure why she was so mad.

"Isn't it?"

"Well sure. We have our sense of timing, our sense of justice, our sense of direction, our sense of humor..."

Cha'Rolette was not amused, "Don't forget your sense of irony, which you seem to lack, Dyson."

Gerald was surprised by the iciness of her gaze, so he did what he always did when he was uncomfortable. He deflected. "See, that's a common misconception. This situation is not actually ironic."

"No, it's just sad."

"No, check it out. Zuri, do you remember on the history channel, there was that Canadian chick who wrote that song called 'isn't it ironic,' but none of the situations the song describes are actual examples of irony?"

Zurra placed her finger on her chin. "You mean the girl who wore the swan dress?"

"No, that was Björk." Gerald hummed a few bars of the song while the rest of them downloaded it from Central. "No, you see," he explained, "a black fly in your Chardonnay, for example, is mildly sucky, but isn't actually ironic. Now, if it was a special kind of Chardonnay you had genetically altered specifically to repel black flies, and you were in the midst of giving a toast at the award ceremony for your creation of fly-repelling Chardonnay, then that would be irony."

"I had no idea you humans had such a rich musical culture" said Cha'Rolette.

"Really?"

"No. That was sarcasm"

"Maybe humans don't have a sense of sarcasm either?" Trahzi quipped.

"You know we do."

"All evidence to the contrary" said Cha'Rolette angrily.

Gerald grew concerned. "Cha'Rolette, is something wrong? Why are you being so cold today?"

She gave a superior sniff. "I'm not being cold."

Gerald watched her as she floated away.