Mr. Raine stared down at the letter. He’d read it last night and hoped it was just a bad dream, a pile of lies dreamed up by his subconscious. Now? Now he was staring at it again and no amount of exhaustion from days and days of arbitration could make him not see the lies printed and sealed in ink before him.

  Dear Professor Raine,

  This letter of termination is sent on behalf of the English Department of the Archon University. Your recent actions in heedlessly bullying, persecuting, and pursing your vendetta against a student has marked you as a liability to the department and the University faculty as a whole. As of now, you are hereby terminated and banned from your position as a professor and teacher. We wish you the best in other endeavors, but we recommend pursuing fields outside language and academia at this point in time.

  -Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences of Archon University

  He stared over the letter. His hand trembled. It fell from his grasp. He choked back a sob.

  It wasn’t true. None of it was. But what was true didn’t matter anymore.

  He…

  He needed a drink. The first of his life.

  ~~~~

  The NoPlace bar was only special in that it was the closest to his dreary apartment with walls that seemed too small and mocking now.

  Mr. Raine stepped in, and the atmosphere was unexpected, unfamiliar. He didn’t drink, as a general matter of principle. Grandfather drank himself to death, and Mr. Raine hadn’t wanted to follow in his footsteps. Yet that seemed so, so utterly pointless with his life falling apart around him.

  He walked up to the bartender.

  “I need whatever you recommend is strong enough to get me drunk,” he told the girl.

  She awkwardly stared. “Um, I’m cleaning here and this isn’t the bar. Just some display bottles. The actual bar is over there,” she said, pointing behind Mr. Raine at the other wall.

  Mr. Raine looked and felt incredibly stupid, embarrassed, awkward, and frustrated on top of the soul crushing despair he felt in his soul. He ended up just nodding and walked to the grimm, gray haired bartender and repeated his request. The man just stared until Mr. Raine put money on the bar, then he got him a shot of something pale and amber.

  “Take it easy. Or don’t. If you pass out we throw you in the alley to sleep it off and probably not be dead in the morning,” the bartender said.

  Mr. Raine took the shot and downed it. He failed as he never had any form of alcohol before and ended up spitting and sputtering as what liquid did make it down his throat burned like fire. “A—another!” he demanded. He was not going to stay sober, damn it!

  The bartender shrugged and poured another five shots.

  Sometime later, Mr. Raine concluded alcohol sucked but also made his head fuzzy. He was also crying. He was still awake, though, that was something.

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  The bartender was off helping someone else whose life was falling apart around them, which left him alone at the bar for the moment. It was a Tuesday night, so not exactly busy.

  “L—hiccup—life sucks,” he moaned. Alcohol was supposed to make him forget, but while it was harder to think it just made the hurt ache even more!

  “No! Life is EVIIIIIIIIIIL!” a woman said next to him, sitting on the barstool as the world away from them faded.

  “Wha?” Mr. Raine slurred. “That’s….” he paused.

  His entire life, his entire philosophy, had always been to try and be good, to leave the world a little better. And what had it gotten him?

  “Fuck all,” he muttered. “Shit, I think you’re right. Life’s manager is a right evil bitch.”

  “Damn straight!” the woman said. God, this woman must be a fan of the old Joker as she as was decked out in purple, purple, and more purple! “Mind if I take a shot?”

  “Huh? Oh, go right ahead, shit ain’t working, anyway,” Mr. Raine said with a vague gesture. Fucking alcohol supposed to make him no think good, but he still felt awful!

  The woman squealed and downed one shot, and then another, and then another. “Aaaah, that’s the good shit,” she said, and looked to him. Maybe the alcohol was affecting him more than he thought but holy shit her eyes were red. That or she had pink eye, but he didn’t think that was the case. There was also something fuzzy waving behind her, but the whole world felt fuzzy, so that wasn’t anything new. “Why so glum, chum?”

  “Ha!” Mr. Raine laughed, slapping the bar. “Whole world’s gone fucky wucky! I was doing so good. I was on tenure track, I was saving money, I was paying off loans! System’s fucking evil and rigged and I was still going to win! But then, then!” Mr. Raine said, before grabbing another shot and downing it.

  The woman grinned, and was it just him or was her teeth a little pointed? Eh, who cared, maybe she had prosthetics or something.

  “Then! I get the triple fucking whammy! It wasn’t enough that AI language models made my fucking job teaching English harder by making people think it was totes supes easy to write and they can just have a fucking mechanical parrot vomit words on the screen that look right but really aren’t unless you know already, then! I met him.”

  Mr. Raine shuddered and reached for another shot, but found none. The woman pushed one into his hands with a deepening smile. God that was a lot of teeth.

  “Lazy little good for nothing shit stain! Fucking football fratboy star except he’s got no talent just fucking money, you know? Rich dad, rich fucking family, here to party and fuck up girls for life, and then get a cozy job at Daddy’s corporation! He wasn’t here to study, so why the fuck would he even try in my writing class? Fucker just submits the most obvious AI shit possible, even leaves most of the prompt in there. It was on the big fucking essay too, so of course I fail him!” Mr. Raine said, shoving his hand in the air for emphasis and spilling more drinks from his shot glass that hadn’t emptied for some reason.

  “Ooh, sounds EVIIIL,” the woman giggled.

  “You don’t know the half of it! I fucking, I fucking fail this loser? He’s not going to at least try to cheat, I’m not going to play his game. Zero, fail the course, report it. End and done,” Mr. Raine said, wavering. “Except, it’s not done. Wanna know what he fucking did? He disputed! But I got this, I thought! I had the prompt, I had the analysis, it was the most obvious AI shit ever, but when I showed it to them I said that was not sufficient evidence, that I had to accept the essay and give him a second chance. I showed the god damn prompt where he asked to write a college student essay and that wasn’t fucking enough!”

  “I disputed this right back and escalated because this was fucking outrageous. I didn’t go online because P-R-I-V-A-C-Y and we had another hearing over this shit, and another, and another! Then I get a fucking letter in my office, no fucking name, saying I should stop, but I’m a man of principle! This fucker is the most blatant cheating, someone who expects to just get by because WHY THE FUCK NOT? Rich money means me no try! So I kept at it!”

  Mr. Raine breathed, gasped near, his pulse pounding. “I analyzed the shit out of his essay, I got every scrap of evidence, I prepared my case, I GOT THE FUCKING AI HE USED TO MAKE THE SAME GOD DAMN ESSAY FOR ME, and what do I get? NOTHING!” he shouted. “Fucking, nothing. They reject my claim, they say I’m on a vendetta, that I’m unprofessional, that I’m going on a leave of absence, but no fuck me, the job I love, the job I spent over a decade of my life studying for? It’s fucking all for nothing! I’m black listed, not going to be able to teach, not use my fucking English degree for anything but maybe tutoring on fucking sketchy websites!”

  Mr. Raine fell back into his stool. It occurred to him people should have interrupted him for that shouting match, but they hadn’t. Oh well, they were probably busy doing bar things.

  Sumire clapped. “That was such an EVIIIIIIIIIIL story! Ooh, I feel good now! Oh, I know, how about a suitably EVIIIIIIIL reward for the drinks and the story! I could hook you up with a new job and stuff in my world! What do you say?”

  Mr. Raine laughed. “Fuck, why not! Not like I have anything here but debt waiting at home, but I know you’re joking, but sure. Beam me up! Isekai me, and are those tails?” he asked, blinking and realizing for the first time that there were nine waving tails behind her.

  “YES! Embrace the Floof of pure EVIIIIIIIIIIIL!” she shouted, and at this point the tails enveloped him before he could so much as shout or go ‘wha?’

  What happened next was honestly rather confusing. He saw infinity and infinity was apparently foxes on the diatom level yipping at each other constantly. Worlds were destroyed and created ad nauseum. Four great foxes swiveled star-sized heads to watch his progression while even more minor entities watched. Also, he inexplicably tasted caramel candy as his body unmade and remade itself.

  Then, all that faded and reality snapped back into clarity.

  There, below him? Although something felt really wrong there, he saw a kneeling, purple dragon woman staring up in shock as he? Smashed into her face first at terminal velocity, bringing blessed darkness.

  ~~~~

  AN:

  HiddenMaster: This commission from KitsuneObsessedFreak was and is lovely as it gave me a chance to… vent, as it were. No, this situation is not entirely what I have dealt with in academia. If anything, it’s exaggerated to near parody levels, but it’s also not far off the worst I have seen and heard in recent years. So yeah, got to channel frustration with academia here with my poor SoB of a professor character.

  BookDragon: Kitsu baited me in with Yuri! He’s commissioning us and might end up getting us some other supporters as well as we go. It’s fun to do some purely original stuff and build the world entirely as we go!

  HiddenMaster: Yuri indeed. Going to be interesting given my inclinations for dark world building are going to smash against the fluff of Yuri and romance and comedy and a setting that runs on sillyium.

  Kitsu: Hidden will be hiding their face in the titties, probably. To escape the embarrassment of some of the ideas I have. Like [Power Word: Shibari].

  HiddenMaster: And here we have our supports. Dragon and I are trying to go full time with our writing careers, so any support you want to throw our way is beyond appreciated. We also take commissions, so we could take a crack at a fic of your own, eh? Check out our supports/rates below!

  https://hiddenmasterarchive.carrd.co/

  BookDragon: and here’s mine!