The imperial constitution states the rights of each gender within the empire.
At the top of society are futas, who are sorted into three classes, upper, middle and lower class. A futa of the lower class can reach the middle by diligent, hard work but only the most prominent of futas might reach the upper class by collecting vast amounts of wealth and bribing the right people, or to be inducted by the empress for performing outstanding acts of loyalty to the empire. The middle class can serve as senators but the highest offices, such as governor or minister, are reserved for the upper class. Thus, to form a political party one has to be upper class. The upper class, in turn, are dependent of the votes from the lower classes to win elections.
After futas are females, who have the right to start a business and are allowed to hold lower offices in the government and higher in the judicial system. If a woman wants to marry a male there are two ways she can go about it. The first is to donate a sizeable amount to the church and the other is to move into the borderlands, the former war zones, under the repopulation programme. The repopulation programme was instituted to give incentive to repopulate lands stricken by war. Life can be dangerous there and without incentive few would take the risk.
Women get to vote in the elections but their vote is only counted as half of a futas and they need to attain a certain amount of yearly income to be eligible to vote. Therefore, ninety percent of the votes comes from futas.
At the bottom of society are males, who may work certain low end jobs, or those their mistresses allow them. They have few rights and once bound they're considered the legal property of their mistresses.
When the government instituted the Male Marriage act, which states that futas have to prove their economic ability to provide for their males, many among the lower classes protested. This was solved by offering futas land in the borderlands under the repopulation program and an exception from the rule for those that took part. Many were willing, love is a strong desire among futas, and Jude's mother was such a futa. She moved to the countryside to raise cattle and start a family but it showed that she had a weak uterus and she miscarried twice before she had Jude. The fear of another miscarriage kept his parents from ever trying again.
It had been a happy life. Although Jude remembered little of it, there was one thing he'd never forget. It was the last words his mother spoke to him as she lay bleeding to death in a ditch.
Run, Jude. Run and grow up to be a beautiful, good boy.
A single lamp burned in Merediths office, creating a dim illumination of her office. It was two a.m. and she couldn't sleep. She hadn't slept for days except during the small hours before dawn when she dozed off only to awaken a few hours later, feeling none the more rested.
She leaned her elbows on the desk and closed her eyes as she considered recent events. A profile of a futanari student lay before her.
It was her fault, the realisation weighing on her conscience. She'd been blind and only concerned by shallow attributes when deciding who to pair Jude with in the student exchange.
Ida had seemed like the perfect candidate, her test scores were good and she came from a prominent family. An ideal person to teach Jude what would be expected of him as a future spouse, or so she'd thought. Not once did she consider who the person behind that picture was.
A sadist.
The nerve of that devious cunt.
Ida's family sent a dispatch of lawyers to negotiate and in the typical manner of upper class lawyers they presented her with two options, one option serving as a threat and the other as the amiable option to give her the impression of having a choice when she didn't. How did they put it? Yes, to make the best of a terrible situation for all parties involved.
The threat was to expose Jude had been bound to Ida, this would take away all of his future prospects and disqualify him from the championships. No futa of any importance would consider him for adoption if word got out. They also threatened to contact the schools investors and pressure them into retracting their capital.
The other 'option' was to let Ida transfer to another school with her grades intact and not drag her before the courts. In turn both parties would agree to sign an agreement of non disclosure and a sizeable amount would be donated to the school. Between ruining Jude's future and letting Ida off it was an easy decision. Although, there was no justice to it.
She remembered the day Jude was raped. She stood by the entrance to the main building, conversing with the groundskeeper about repairs of the eastern fence, when she spotted Chris and two other guards rushing past. They didn't stop to greet her, which was strange. An ominous feeling settled over her and she excused herself to follow.
Her heart stopped briefly when they arrived at Jude's room in the dorms and Chris and the other guards tackled the door to break it in.
She grasped in an instant what was going on. Many of the other students came out to see what was happening and she yelled at them to get back inside and mind their own business.
The terrible sight she was met by as they entered the room. Jude, sprawled face first onto the bed, the linen sheeting smeared with blood, dripping down onto a puddle on the floor, his limp body battered and covered in bruises.
Meredith didn't want to think of it but she couldn't get the vision out of her head. That bitch had bound him without his consent. A barbaric practice, abolished over forty years ago. Though she'd heard that in some parts of the empire it was still a common practice, especially in rural areas where nobles exerted their power upon the local populace.
After regaining her senses she covered him with a blanket and ordered Chris to take him to the infirmary, and to stop for nothing.
Meredith cherished all her students and regarded them as her children. She had a soft spot for the orphans though. Growing up in such an environment was tough and it made them timid and slow to trust. Most of the students in her school came from the upper class and had all the resources they needed available since childbirth. To compete as an orphan was hard. In exchange they worked harder than everyone else. Jude was just like that. No, Jude was special. She'd never seen a more hardworking, diligent boy than him in her time as headmistress and although he aced his tests she'd thought of him as average in all other aspects. That was until she saw him dance at the festival and she realised that he was on cusp of his flowering, the time where a boy showed their true selves and the limits of their beauty. What she saw that day was limitless.
At the present there were eight orphans in the school. It was a financial gamble to take them on as they had no families to pay for their tutelage. The only economic incentive they had was during graduation day. The boys of her school was a highly sought commodity among the upper classes, even those without a family name could fetch a good price. The board wanted to remove all orphans from the school to make room for other students from prominent families but she'd been adamant to keep them.
It wasn't that she didn't understand the economic motivations of the board but it was her way of giving back to the community and also, she argued, it was a good way to create goodwill towards the school. Eventually they compromised to let a maximum of eight orphans be enrolled at all times.
Yesterday, she sat by Jude's side as he slept in the infirmary. He looked troubled and twitched anxiously in his sleep, perhaps reliving the terrifying experience Ida put him through. She caressed his cheek but retracted her hand when he trembled to her touch. He looked so frail, his cheeks swollen from crying.
Her eyes stung and she lowered her head onto the desk. Her breathing slowed and she started to drowse when she heard a faint sound. It was the pager on her hip. The nurse from the infirmary had paged her. She considered ignoring it but if there was any news about Jude she wanted to be the first to hear them. She picked up her phone and dialed back.
"Headmistress."
"Nina, is there something you wanted?"
"Yes, Ms Meredith. Um, I think it would be better if you'd come down here"
"Now?"
"Well, I guess it could wait until the morning. It's about Jude."
"What about him, is he okay? Has something happened?"
"He's fine, for the time being, but there's something I'd like to show you. It would be best if you came down here and we talk in person."
Nina had to say no more. Meredith grabbed her coat and set off to the infirmary.
She rushed there, walking the corridors she'd walked so many times in worried anticipation. There had been a tingle of excitement with hints of fear in Nina's voice and she tried to confer with herself what it meant but decided it was futile. She'd know soon enough. Her palms were sweaty as she opened the door to the infirmary.
"Headmistress," Nina greeted her.
"Yes, I'm here now. What was is it you wanted to talk about?"
"I'm sorry to have paged you at this hour but I remembered you told me to inform you as soon as possible if something had changed in Jude's condition and while I can't say anything has changed I did find something very peculiar."
Meredith stared at her, her patience thin.
"If you'd please follow me," Nina said and led her to the lab. There were several showcases containing the test subjects of Nina's research. They stopped by a microscope on a desk with pages spread across next to it. Nina motioned for Meredith to look into the microscope. Within there was what she deemed to be cells oozing around in a container. There were two different groups, one gathered in a corner with the other group flocking around like a pack of wolves that had cornered their prey.
"So, what am I looking at here?"
"Well, as you know Futa sperm has certain properties. When inserted into a male the cells manifests inside them and change the cell structure, this in turn causes the male brain to change the hormonal composition and produce additional hormones. These changes are what makes the male infatuated by their mistress and also what makes them such loyal companions. It's the reason why medical testing can determine whether a male has been bound or not. When you put futa cells in a closed container with male cells, the futa cells will force the male cells into a corner and begin to absorb and take over their cell structure."
Meredith sighed and folder her arms across her chest.
"Yes, this is all very basic. Why are you telling me this?"
"So I wanted to check how Jude's cells would react in such an environment and put them together with futa cells," Nina said, then added, "did you notice something strange when you looked into the microscope?"
"No, it looked normal to me."
"Could you take another look, please?"
Meredith pursed her lips in irritation but did as Nina suggested. The futa cells still preyed upon the male cells, competing to absorb as many as possible.
"It looks normal, there is nothing strange..." Her voice trailed off and she tensed her eyes to see more clearly. She followed a futa cell storming deep into the helpless male cells to absorb them. What happened next made her gasp. The futa cell, thinking it had scored the lottery, latched itself onto several male cells and began to absorb them, but as Meredith expected them to be absorbed it shuddered around the edges and broke into several smaller pieces with the male cells carrying off with one each. The pieces were absorbed into the male cells and then the process repeated itself several times. When a male cell had grown enough, it split into two new ones.
Meredith looked up at Nina.
"What's this? This shouldn't be possible."
"I know, I couldn't believe it myself but I have reproduced the test so many times now and the results have been the same every time. It can't be coincidence."
There are no coincidences in the world of cell biology, everything happens for a reason, but Nina put emphasis on those last words to bring home the point.
Meredith was taken aback and stared at Nina.
"But what does it mean?"
"It's too early to say but the results are unprecedented. It may take years to understand what's going on in that container. In theory though, this should mean that Jude is practically immune to the effects of futa sperm and the binding won't show in tests. Actually, I've done the tests and none of them show any signs of him being bound."
Meredith had to sit down. She'd never heard of a male immune to futa sperm.
"The possibilities of this find are huge," Nina continued.
"What do you mean, what could the possibilities be?"
"These are only wild theories of mine at the moment, but if a male cell can completely resist and absorb futa cells, it could be possible to reproduce and manufacture a spermal poison that takes away the effects futa sperm has on males."
Meredith grasped the significance of Nina's words in an instant. If such a poison could be created, it would tear up all the bindings within the empire and not only that, the very foundation of society might crumble and fall when males suddenly could decide for themselves if they wanted to follow a futas command or not. What horrible dystopian future would follow in the wake of such a drug? She shuddered at the thought and turned to look at the monitors observing the patients. She spotted Jude, he lay curled up underneath a blanket, trembling slightly as he had the day before.
Could this sweet and gentle little boy be the potential destruction of the entire empire?