So far, so good!, thought Yuiko, as she paraded through the halls of Emory Private High School. It was her first day, and already, she had been proven to be sociable and popular, too some chagrin of her master, Kagami. Practically every guy in his class flocked to her, and there were no small amount of female admirers as well. Kagami wondered whether Yuiko liked all this attention, until the two finally broke through the crowd and Kagami found Yuiko hanging on his arm, like usual.
"So, Kagi-sama, what class do you have next."
"Well," he said, "I have gym next. What do you have next, Pretty Kitty?"
Yuiko responded, "Hmm, let me check…"
She pulled out her class schedule and bhy now Kagami was no longer surprised to see all the "AP" tags in front of her regular courses; Yuiko was a genius, despite being a nekomimi, a cat girl.
"Oh, I have Gym next, too!"
"Oh, wow, how about that! Well, here's hoping that your uniform fits."
"Uniform?" Yuiko asked, "Aren't I already in uniform?"
Kagami laughed and said, "Yes, you're in the class uniform. But gym usually requires a different uniform. I think this year, they're assigning lockers, so you should find your gym clothes int eh locker they give you."
Yuiko squealed, a combination between a purr and squeak, and clung to Kagami even tighter.
"Oh, I can't wait!"
Kagami shuddered, then said, "Yeah, me too…"
☼§☼
After roll call and locker assignments, Yuiko found herself standing in front of a obtuse looking door. There was no handle, only a metallic looking red bar with a black piping all round it. She was watching everyone else getting swimsuits out of their lockers, and was getting frustrated. She didn't know how to unlock her locker! The Nokoa home was a traditional house, no nanomech anything, and most of the doorsa were traditional Japanese paper doors. She had never as much troubloe opening such a contraption before, and she was getting more than slightly vexed.
"Having trouble?" asked a girl next to her, whose name tag on her swimsuit said, "Amy Praski".
"Uh, yes, I don't know how to open this…"
"Oh, that's easy," Amy said, "Just slide your index and middle finger down the red stripe. The bio-metric scanner will unlock it when it knows its you."
"Oh, thank you!" Yuiko said cheerfully, and went and did just that.
She slid her index and middle fingers down the red stripe of the door. A whirring sound was made from within and an electronic voice declared, "Bio-metric print recognized. Welcome, Yu-iko Nokoa." With that, the door melted away with a slishing sound, which frightened Yuiko to no end. She leaped backward from her place, tail and ear fur raised in surprise and promptly landed on her rear. The whole locker room saw this, and many girls started laughing at this. Yuiko, by now thoroughly embarrassed, felt the warm spring of salt that told her she was about to cry. It was then that she heard the clippity-clop of hoof beats. She looked up and saw a young woman with dark skin and the ears and horns of a gazelle looking at her, a hand outstretched in comfort.
"Need a lift?" said the gazelle girl.
"Y-yes, please. Thank you!"
The gazelle girl lifted Yuiko from the floor with a single tug, and Yuiko was amazed at the strength she possessed.
"Okay, everyone, that's enough! You can't look me in the eye and tell me you have been frightened when the nano-wall door opened up on you for the first time!"
The laughter stopped and those that were jeering now looked rather embarrassed themselves. Apparently, what the gazelle girl said was true; the whole of the girls locker room had at least one fright from the nano-wall doors.
"Don't let 'em get you down, girlfriend. Everybody freaks out when these doors do that."
"They do?"
"Pretty sure. I know I did, and my dad's a Nanoformer Operator, First Class! Oh, my name is Giselle. Giselle Bunchen."
"Giselle Bunchen." Yuiko repeated, "Oh, Giselle the Gazelle!"
"Yeah,t hat's right make jokes…"
"No, no, no, a mnemonic! I'm not so good with names, sometimes…"
"Oh, gotcha. And you are…?"
"Nokoa Yuiko! Just remember Yuiko the Kitty-cat!"
Giselle laughed, slapping Yuiko hard on the shoulder and said, "I don't think I'm forget that handle, Yuiko!"
They both laughed hard until Coach Daniels, the girls swim coach, called down to get class underway. Yuiko quickly went back to her locker, stepped out her uniform, camisole and petty coat, took off her underwear and fished out the swimsuit she found within her locker. Like the others, it had a name tag near the collar of the suit, hers had her name on it, correctly printed as "Nokoa Yuiko". She wondered if she could get the locker to get her name right. She slipped into her swimsuit, a Mizuno-style one piece, and rushed off to join the others at the pool.
☼§☼
Kagami stood there quivering. He hated the water. He hated swimming. But most of all, he hated swim class. He did fine out on the ocean with his board, because the ocean was in control, all he ever did was try to stay on top of it. Now, he had to gain control over his body's movement in the water, and didn't like that prospect one bit. The good news was, most everyone's attention was affixed to Yuiko, who even Kagami had to admit, looked splendid in her swimsuit. Why he had never noticed her like this before, he didn't know. He could only surmise that having lived with her for six years (and having baths and changing clothes together as well) that he had thought all that he saw of her was perfectly normal. Now that she was attending his high school, everyone seemed to be drawn to her, and Kagami was feeling a tinge of jealousy, even though he would be hard pressed to admit it. Still, he had thought of her as a sister after a sort, not as a separate female being in his presence. Now that she was being admired and doted on by the whole school, he had to wonder if his feelings toward Yuiko were brotherly or something else.
"Okay, gentleman, in the water." bellowed Coach Daniels.
Kagami gritted his teeth and went in as one with the crowd, hoping to hide his discomfort and his fear…
The girls went in shortly after, and Yuiko couldn't help but notice a few of her fellow students breaking from the group into a tight new group that followed the other swim instructor, Mister Anderson. Yuiko realized that those that broke off were other kemonekko whose bodies were mutated in a fashion other than bi-pedal. Giselle was among them, as she had four legs instead of two. Giselle's swimsuit was similar to Yuiko's own, but was tailored to her unique anatomical configuration. This allowed Giselle's four legs to move freely. Yuiko wondered if all kemonekko uniforms were tailored in the same fashion. Then she wondered if hers was tailored in the same fashion. (There was a gap in the seam in the back of her suit that allowed her tail to stay free.) But before she could formulate any answers, she was abruptly broken from her chain of thought by the coach.
Yuiko took to the water like a duck. She listened intently as Coach Daniels put everyone through their first swimming lesson. Despite living in Hawaii, and residing in Lanai or Pineapple Island, it seemed the State of Hawaii wanted all school-age children to take a swimming course during their school years. Kagami had managed to dodge it, going to schools on Lanai, but now that he was going to school on The Big Island, he could no longer avoid the inevitable.
"KAGI-SAMA!" he heard Yuiko yell, "Look at me! I'm swimming!"
"T-That's g-g-great, Yu-Yuiko! You're d-doing e-e-e-excellent!"
Kagami, though, was floundering something awful. All of his coordination on land did nothing for him in water. I'd be better off surfing. he thought to himself, At least while I'm surfing, there's a board underneath…
All in all, swimming class was hell for kagami, pure Heaven for Yuiko. later, back in the locker-room, Yuiko opened her locker, this time not surprised when the metal of the door melted into nothing. She changed back in her school uniform and met up with Giselle afterward. They talked about what they liked best about class before going their separate ways, Yuiko to AP Calculus, Giselle to Home Economics.

This took two days and countless hours of prodding my desktop to work faster to complete. I had to coax every once of processor speed in order to get this drawing inked and colored, so I do hope it worth the effort.
The inking on this is more painterly than I have ever done because I used the brush emulation function for GIMPs Stroke Path tool. That explains why you might see the yellow wall tiles seep through Yuiko's hair…
Methinks this is the sexiest Yuiko I've ever drawn. There's an attitude in her face that I can't ascribe to anything other than pure, unbridled confidence. But I like to hear what you all think.
I tried to make her swimsuit similar to the Japanese mizugi style that most Nipponese schools issue. In fact, I tried to make it a «Mizuno» inspired swimsuit. But without reference, I had to make an ad-hoc bit of work. But hey, this is set in the middle of the XXIst century, so I'm thinking maybe Mizuno might have merged with Speedo or something in the next five decades or so…
I didn't know if the background would work or not, but it looks like it did. And before anyone askes, the door "handles" are bio-metric fingerprint readers. They open up nano-wall doors (Think the living wall in "Doom" movie) thus opening up additional floor space. Cool, no?
Okay, that's the end of my description. You can now drool to your hearts content.