Back To School? (Patreon)

Tom, David and Will had been dreading the summer break coming to an end and September rolling back around. Even though they were going into their senior year of high school they weren’t exactly optimistic for what the year would hold. Sure, maybe they’d ace their finals and get into good colleges for the following fall but between this September and the next was a whole lot of misery waiting for them, all because they were three of the most unpopular boys in the school. It wasn’t just the jocks pushing them around with ease though; the drama kids turned their noses up at them; the computer geeks scoffed at them for failing to match their grades; even the teachers seemed to find the trio annoying and they ended up getting in trouble more often than any of them thought was deserved considering how much mischief their classmates got away with. 

On one of the final nights of their summer break the trio gathered together in Tom’s back yard to camp under the stars and exchange ghost stories, a tradition they had kept since they had become friends some five years earlier when they had been in junior high. David always had the scariest stories - the other two joked that his brain wasn’t quite right - but Will was the best speaker of them all and to his credit Tom always managed to come up with something entertaining. It helped ease the growing anxiety they all felt about going back to the building that had been nothing shy of a prison for them since day one. They’d heard stories of guys who had struggled in high school but flourished at college and could only hope that the three of them would find themselves in that category. While they didn’t exactly have high educational expectations for themselves, none of them wanted to be a loser having to live in his parents’ basement and work crappy jobs just to make minimum wage. Didn’t life owe them something more than that considering what it had put them through over the years?

As the clocks on their cell phones all lined up with four zeroes, the three teenagers were cut off mid-story by a sudden flash in the otherwise dark sky above them. As they all stared up into the night sky, they were amazed to find a number of stars lighting up in different colours: blue, green, pink, yellow. “You’re all seeing this, right?” Will asked, wanting to reach for his phone but finding himself physically frozen.

“Is it aliens?” Tom pitched in, only half-joking. He’d never seen stars do anything like it before - none of them ahead.

“Shared hall… hallu-- fuck, do you guys feel that?” David grunted, doubling over from the sudden pain that had begun in his gut and spread through his body, cutting off his own suggestion that they were experiencing a shared hallucination. It felt like he was being stretched in all directions at once, making him taller and wider. Bigger. 

Within moments his friends were in the same position, the trio all writhing around on their blanket as the stars continued to dance between hundreds of colours above them. Their slender frames all began packing on hard muscle, each developing a pair of pecs and a ripped set of abs while dropping in body fat to leave them all looking well cut. To anybody that might see them they all looked like guys who stuck to a strict low-carb diet and worked out regularly, even if no such thing could actually be said about them. Among them only Will had stepped foot in a gym before and he hadn’t lasted long due to his anxiety around such masculine specimens. Now though they would all appear at home in such a venue with their well-muscled bodies.

Their visages changed slightly too during the process, losing much of the youthful innocence in their faces and replacing it with the hard lines of manhood. Thick stubble grew on David’s face while Will’s closely-cut blond hair began growing out to a more popular style and Tom’s cheekbones became more pronounced, giving him a runway model appearance. Each appeared to be some five years older at the very last - all eligible young bachelors with bright futures based on looks alone rather than awkward teenagers feeling uncertain about their futures. 

As the stars above them finally settled to their usual shining white, the pain that the trio experienced dissipated. They slowly began to rouse from their dazed states and stared among themselves, amazed and aroused by what they saw. After several moments of stunned silence, Tom began to laugh. “You know what this means, right?” he asked, grinning like a fool as he glanced between his best friends. Each shot him a questioning glance and he laughed again, relishing in his realization. “We don’t have to go back to school next week, dudes!”

David’s eyes flashed in excitement. “Nobody’s going to recognize us,” he realized. "They wouldn't believe it if we showed up and said who we really are."

“Nah, that's not us anymore anyway! We’re whole new men!” Will agreed, jumping to his feet and beginning to feel up his new and improved body. He was already getting some ideas on what he could do with all of his newfound goodness - in fact all of them were. Their futures all suddenly seemed to be as bright as the stars above. 

In a pleasant twist of fate, it wasn’t high school that gave the trio of young misfits the opportunities in life they deserved, it was instead the stars themselves and they couldn’t be happier that they were all getting to start their next chapters in lives together, just like best friends should!