Juvenalas Penitatas
Lesson 2 – No Fighting

"The hardest thing for you to do will be to settle in," Talek's father told him on his second day. The truth of that took a few days to truly sink in, but it was becoming painfully real with each new morning.
For all the fire and fury he'd endured on his first day, the days after were marked by a certain degree of patience. Nothing displayed that better than the first time he had to empty his bowels, only for his father to stand and watch him do it. Talek had tried to put it off, but it seemed like there was always a parent present, in the room or outside it, or escorting him around downstairs. "can't you at least turn around?" he pleaded, squirming in desperation.
"if you can't, or won't use the potty, you will be put in diapers," Shon told him with a calm, detached tone. "What do you think will be more humiliating? Doing your business, or having to ask me to change you when you're soiled?"
It was, to his knowledge, the first time Talek had cried while doing his business. "I know you hate this, Talek. But it'll be easier next time."
It was easier. Humiliating, yes, but bearable, and thus by degrees did being degraded come to be accepted as the norm.
In fact, there was only one instance where Talek was actively shamed for the use of the toilet - on the morning of the third day, when he decided to have a 'boy tinkle' and peed standing up. His mother was apparently furious by this seemingly innocuous act, and made him clean the entire toilet and bathroom area with sanitary wipes, then sat down to give him a long, thorough handspanking.
“Momma, no!” the boy had wailed when his fate was announced. “I didn't pee on the floor! I didn't!”
“That's irrelevant!” Liki snapped back, her blue-green snout locked into a disciplinary scowl. “I told you that little boys have to sit to pee, and you disobeyed me!”
Immediately, the little Karrian boy found his pants around his ankles, revealing the scaled child's lower half to the room. His scales were a soft green, with a random speckling of white across his belly that earned him the nickname 'Talcum' from his sister. His boyhood, ever a source of embarrassment, chose that moment to stand at half-mast, providing a little pink finger to point forward towards his impending discipline.
“If I find out that's pointing because you enjoy getting into trouble, then we will have to see just how much you like a full, hard-timer spanking!” Liki scolded as her hand found his rump, smacking the harder, firmer surface of her palm into the nine year old's rear. The open-palmed slap echoed across the room, followed instantly by a second on the opposite cheek. The steady SLAP-SLAP double beat echoed through the living space, with six delivered swiftly before Liki fixed her gaze upon the eight year old, cream coloured girl watching quietly from a beanbag chair. “Rilka, you know our rule! Get over here and put those panties round your ankles!”
The girl scurried over, dropping her underwear as told and raising her skirt for good measure, exposing her lower half to her brother and mother as the unfortunate boy sobbed meekly over the lap. A good two dozen hard smacks were delivered onto his tush before his mother relented, satisfied that the whines and blubs coming from her son's maw were a sign the lesson had taken hold. “You go and sit on the hard stool now, Talek. You can have the flat-top, but I want to see your legs up on the foot-rest and your paws on your head, so all the weight goes on that sore little rump!”
“C'n... can I h-h-have a cu-ddle?” he whimpered out the question, having learned quite swiftly that being hugged and gently rocked was a great help after his punishment.
“When you've finished your corner time. Your sister needs a quick reminder first,” Liki answered, and Talek retreated to the stool with an extra blub of misery. He wasn't told which way to face, so he faced the wall, if only to give Rilka a little more privacy.
He was still new, it being his third day and all, but he could already tell what the back of a hairbrush striking butt-cheeks sounded like.

Despite all the horror stories of spankings and switchings and strappings, it was quickly becoming apparent that most of penitatas life was just... boring. After all the drama of the that morning his mother let him watch a single cartoon on the holo as a treat and to remind him that, as a juvenalas, Talek was entitled to a little more leeway than his sister. Afterwards he returned to the Penny Room, and was forced to occupy himself for several hours.
Rilka was crouched on the kiddy's play-mat with the boring history book in front of her and a couple of dice taken from a board game in hand. As Talek watched she rolled them in singles and doubles, speaking to herself. "Word... Twelve. Line... Two. Page.... One... Sixty.... Three. I think you are... 'The'!" she opened the book, located the page, and counted out words. A cry of disbelief slipped from her cream-scaled snout. "One word off! I can't believe it!"
"What are you doing?" Talek asked.
Rilka gave him a shy little smile. "A game I made up. I pick a book, then I have to guess a random word in it."
"Sounds kind of dumb," the boy responded bluntly.
Rilka gave him a harsh scowl. "I have lived in this room for two years, Talcum. There's only so many times that I can read the same boring schoolbooks, or do the same, solitary jigsaw puzzle, or play Ups and Downs on my own! I get ONE book of puzzles every birthday, and that's my treat!"
"We could play something together?" the boy replied, trying to extend an olive branch, but Rilka snapped it off.
"No! I'm happy sat here doing my own thing. Go make your own fun."
He tried sitting down in one of the beanbag chairs, but Rilka took her dice and book over to the bed, her back turned from him. "Fine," he growled softly, "be a pouty bitch."
Alone now, with one less book to choose from, Talek consulted the library. The diary was right out; he'd not make that mistake again. His own was promised, but not yet delivered, so that left him with a selection of the least exciting books he could possibly have asked for. He read a few aloud as he rejected them. “Ethics and Morals: proper behaviour and conduct for penitatas. Nope! Advanced Mathematics – Grade RE3. Urgh, no! “The Wind Upon The Ocean... that's a thousand years old! Can't they give us a proper book?”
The library rejected, one option remained – the book of puzzles. Sure, most were done, but there were still a couple of untouched pages. He flicked one open and furrowed his brow at the contents. “Combinations,” he named them, for the page contained several rings of mostly blank boxes, with dark lines for dividers and a few given as clues on how to solve the rest. A reasonably challenging one might take fifteen minutes or so to solve, so that would eat up some time.
He was most of the way through the chosen puzzle when a shriek echoed through the house. He almost dropped the book in alarm as Rilka raced over, her little Karrian face a mask of fury. “That's mine!” she yelled, snatching at the puzzles.
“Mom and dad said we share our stuff now!” Talek retorted as he tried to keep hold.
“You don't share this! It's mine! Let go!” The book jerked in their grip, and Rilka stumbled onto the floor with two little fistfuls of paper. The rest of the book remained in Talek's grasp, now with gouges through several pages, both solved and unsolved. The girl looked dumbly at the paper in her hands, then at the book, and let out a wail that brought both parents striding hastily upstairs and into the room.
“What is going on here?” Shon growled.
A distraught and barely coherent Rilka thrust an accusatory paw towards Talek. Her limb was shaking, and nothing that came out of her mouth was remotely coherent.
“Talek!” Liki gasped. “Did you destroy her book?”
“No! I was just doing the puzzles and she went crazy!”
“They're mine!” Rilka shrieked, red in the face from her outburst.
“That is enough, Rilka!” Shon warmed.
“I tol'im!” she pressed the matter. “I told him itwasmine f'r my b'thday!”
“She's lying!” Talek retorted on instinct, and knew at once it was the wrong thing to say.
Shon towered over the boy. His arms, bared to show his dark green scales, folded slowly across his chest. “Think carefully, young man,” the father intoned, each word enunciated with slow precision. “Did Rilka tell you that book was a birthday present, yes or no?”
He let his head and tail droop. “Yes... but you said we shared everything now!”
“And before you destroyed her book, how many puzzles had you solved?”
“Just... just one. Honest.”
Focus now turned to Rilka. “You could have come downstairs and spoken to us.”
“He... but... it's mine...” the poor little girl was a sad little mess, broken and defeated.
All excuses heard, all evidence considered, the parents conversed in quiet whispers while the two rejuves – a bawling penitatas, and an anxious juvenalas – awaited their fates.
“Rilka, did you fight with Talek over the book?”
The girl gave a guilty nod, “but-”
“No 'buts'! You know better than that! Your shouting, screaming and carrying on are utterly unacceptable under any circumstances, much less because your new brother wanted to do a puzzle!”
“But dad-”
“And I'm going to guess you had a part to play in tearing it up as well, didn't you?”
“Yes, but-”
“If you value these books so little, perhaps you shouldn't get any more of them!”
The threat was like a claw around her throat, choking any response out of her. Perhaps seeing the mortal terror in her face, Liki stepped forward with a gentle hand on her husband's elbow. “Let the girl speak for a moment, dear. I want to hear what she has to say.”
The lifeline was snatched at instantly. “Mom... dad... I... I wasn't thinking. I was sore and grouchy after the spanking before and when I saw him with my... with our puzzle book something snapped. All my friends know how special that book is to me! They'd never touch it without asking! Talek... I'm sorry. I thought you understood. I know I should never, ever h-have acted l-like tha-at!” she gave up trying to apologise as pain and grief took over.
“Let me see how bad the damage is, Talek,” Shon chose his words carefully, so his taking the book would not be construed as a confiscation. “Rilka? Deep breaths, sweetheart. Looks to me like you've lost... four puzzles. I think that's fair, don't you? You can have the rest of the book as yours and yours alone.”
The damaged book was offered to her, and Rilka clutched at it like it was a gift from God.
Peace momentarily restored, Shon turned back to his wife. “Now, how do we resolve the problem of their little scuffle? Long and hard, or swift and harder?”
“Talek hasn't seen just how bad 'hard time' can be yet,” Liki noted. The boy didn't understand what that meant, but the whimper from Rilka suggested she had an inkling. “I want to see two nude little children stood by the bed with claws on their heads. Face the bed, and put your backs to the corridor – I don't want you to see what's coming.
“No...” Rilka whimpered as she followed the thrusting finger. “No no nonono!”
“What's going to happen?” Talek whispered as they approached their fate.
Rilka let her dress flop to the floor. “B-blisters!” the word sent a shiver down Talek's spine. “The o-only th-th-thing they h-hide fr-from me's the b-bl-blistering p-paddle!”

When the parents had finished gathering the tools of their trade, Rilka was ordered to lay down on the edge of the bed. Talek was placed in prime viewing position, and he saw to his sickening terror that the girl had guessed correctly. As well as a large, heavy paddle and a thick, cruel looking cane, Shon tested the weight on a hefty wooden paddle whose face bore multiple holes. Those gaps would catch the soft scale of a Karrian child and cause the formation of ugly, stinging blisters. Shon looked directly at his trembling son, even though it was Rilka he spoke to initially, “Rilka, we're going to start with you. Twenty good smacks from the 'big girl' paddle, then twenty from the nursery cane. After that, you will be getting a 'No Fighting'.”
Rilka was already sobbing so hard, Talek felt sure she'd already been spanked. Liki sat beside the broken child, with one clawed hand holding her tail out of the way and the other stroking Rilka's night-blue hair. “This is all on your tush, dear. No thighs or tail torture! We're going to get this over as quickly as possible.”
“After we're done, you've got a whole day of cuddling to look forward to,” Shon added. “My little lady is going to be worn out from all the hugging and snuggling.”
The sudden change of tone left Talek confused, but Rilka dared to glance back towards her father. Stern as he was, and hard as his tone had been, she even managed the tiniest of smiles. He caught the gesture and grinned back. “That's right, Rilka. Just think of this as you being a good sister, teaching your brother what being a Penny is all about so he knows to mend his ways.”
With all comforts offered, Shon set to work with the 'big girl' paddle. Its hefty wooden face thudded rather than cracked, the deep tone of the impact drilling a bone-deep ache through the soft scales and jiggly flesh beneath. The wails began at once, and became absolutely frantic when Rilka discovered the brutal pace her father had chosen. The paddle came back down again without any discernable pause, slamming full-force into her helpless backside over and over. In just twelve seconds, Shon had delivered twenty hefty blows to his daughter's bottom, and the fury had drawn a single, unbroken howl of misery from her little throat.
Panting from the effort, Shon put the paddle aside and went for the cane. He flexed his arm to get some feeling back before taking careful aim. “See, pet? You're halfway done already!”
The caning was no less frenzied. Talek had no idea if this was cruelty or kindness, but the girl's rear hadn't even finished reddening from the bruising paddle before thick, searing streaks began to form in her scale. The already pale scale turned bright white with each impact, the came blurring before Talek's eyes as it hammered home over and over, another twenty given with such impetus that Rilka struggled to get her breath back. As Talek watched, awful colour returned; a deep, abused shade of red took hold, with a messy clump of lines that bore faint hints of purple layering over the crimson bruising.
Rilka's blubbing, pleading words were muffled and garbled, but their intent was obvious. After that, the poor girl would surely want it to be over. But there was the last touch left.
Talek gawped in horrible awe at the blistering paddle. Shon hefted it aloft, arched back almost comically, as if he were posing for some terrible art piece. Then it came down, whooshing through the air of the room, and met the girl's cheek with a thunderclap. “NO-” Shon barked, though his words were drowned out by Rilka's banshee shriek.
“-FIGHTING!” the Karrian father finished as the second thunderclap sounded. Talek couldn't imagine a child could make the kind of sounds Rilka was making. She shook from snout to tail, gulping and spluttering in an ugly, broken fashion as Liki ever-so-gently helped her off the bed and into a promised hug. She made extra special care not to put a hand anywhere near the girl's rear, instead cradling her back and holding Rilka's thick tail out, just in case she accidentally relaxed too much and stroked her own tush.
Before Talek's eyes, two little white splotches seemed to form. They were the merest of pin-pricks, but he knew with dread certainty they would be shining blisters soon enough.
A foul shadow fell across the trembling boy. Shon's movement blotted out the light, and as Talek looked up at the dark form of his father he heard what would become the most terrifying words he would ever hear in his new life as a Juvenalas.
“No. Fighting.”
The boy wet himself, right there and then.

Neither parent made any comment about his accident. Shon cleaned him up, let him sit on the bed while the rest of the mess was taken care of, and then he got two good smacks with the worst paddle ever conceived by Karrian kind. No warm-up, no stool time, no corner time. Two good smacks, making two little blisters, and that was all he got. At least, all he got by way of punishment. He got a lot of cuddles afterwards. Both of them did; even after the pair had stopped crying and their snotty noses wiped clean, comforting continued. To Talek's amazement, Rilka even seemed to nap in her mother's arms, however briefly.
“I'm... sorry,” Talek said at last, about an hour after the spanking. He'd said the same words several times prior, but such words seemed less sincere when desperately barked out by a little lizard boy whose bottom was on fire. Said calmly, quietly, with the worst of the pain behind him, the words meant more.
“Rilka won't bear a grudge, and neither will we,” Shon assured him. “That nasty paddle only comes out for special occasions. Rilka's had that paddle since she turned eight, but this is the first time we've used it. You're a bad influence, young man.”
“N-no I'm not!” he blurted out, squirming in terror. His father quickly shushed him back to calm.
“It's okay, Talek. All penitatas are bad at first. We beat that out of you right quick! I don't think we'll ever have to take the blistering paddle to your bottom again. I mean that, son; I believe you will learn from today.”
Being so new to the life, Talek asked a question Rilka would never dare utter. “Can... we have some of the nano cream?”
Shon and Liki looked at one another, a rather sadistic pair of smiles upon their faces. Rilka had tensed up in Liki's lap. “Alright. Cream for both of you.”
“W-what's the catch?” Rilka whimpered, making both parents chuckle.
“You both get a good-night spank,” Shon replied. “We'll make sure you both cry yourselves to sleep, but it won't be due to the blisters.”
“Which you will now sit on while we get the cream,” Liki added. “Big girl gets the pointy stool. Oh come on, it's only for a few minutes!”
Those 'few minutes' were absolute torture, and Talek felt sure his parents were being extra slow in fetching the promised relief. Both children were crying in pain once again, having put their full weight on such hateful little spots, when mercy was finally given to them.

It turned out there were two other, unspoken punishments that day: the first was that, in all the excitement, the two missed lunch. They were exhausted and starving by the time dinner rolled around, even if the pain had lessened.
The other was that every single book, bar Rilka's diary, vanished from the room. Along with every single toy and board game. Bottoms mercifully blister-free once the magic of nanotechnology did its thing, Talek and Rilka sat naked on their bed, surveying a room devoid of distractions, with only the reflection of the active 'panopticon' window to break the monotony.
“This... doesn't feel like catching a break,” Talek sighed.
Rilka gave the tired sigh of a woman ten times her physical age. “Welcome to being a penitatas, Talcum. Now we get to practice how to fight boredom with nothing to do.”
“We could-” Talek began, but Rilka just sighed again.
“Unless your idea is 'sit quietly', I'm not doing it. The only thing I'm leaving this bed for is that toilet, and only if I'm really desperate.” She flopped back onto the sheets, head landing just shy of her pillow, which prompted her to shuffle into a comfortable position. “I'm not even getting under the sheets without permission. We're not 'forgiven', Talek! We've been given a long, long rope!”
“To hang ourselves with,” he replied, remembering the all-too-recent words of the judge that sentenced him. He decied to follow suit and rest, eyes fixed on a pale ceiling that seemed to grow less interesting by the minute. Boredom was coming, he could feel it. Worse, it was bringing a friend; one that lived in his crotch. The unwanted it made him whine aloud,  “Damn it! Can't I even have a bored wank?”
Rilka giggled next to him, a pleasant sound given the circumstances. Suddenly, she said aloud, “Twenty questions. What am I? Go!”
“Uhh... are you an animal, mineral, or vegetable?”
“Mineral... I think. Technically.”
“A made thing?”
“Mhmm.”
“A made thing I would very much like to throw in a big fire?”
“Definitely!”
Talek grinned, “you're a blistering paddle!”
“Bingo!” Rilka laughed, and that was the beginning. The game got old, naturally, but they both had long forgotten their misery by the time the paddle came back to deliver a goodnight kiss.