BXBX NOVEL Chapter 582: Chairway to Heaven
Chapter 582: Chairway to Heaven
-------------
Kat flopped down on the couch mentally exhausted. Sylvie and Callisto were missing, probably up in Callisto\'s room doing something. She could hear Vivian at least, and knew the woman was in her office working. On what, wasn\'t exactly clear but Kat didn\'t want to focus on her hearing and figure it out. It wasn\'t really her business.
She\'d gotten a good deal, or good enough deal, out of arbitration. It was a good chunk of money. Five whole Fireplaces, which was so much more than her debt had been it was a little ridiculous. It really hit her home how much it must have cost her to be summoned to Xiang and why things were such a mess. He overpaid so much that the ritual just sort of worked even though it really shouldn\'t have.
*What do I want to do now?* Kat didn\'t really have any answers for her thoughts. The couch wasn\'t exactly comfortable with her wings. *Wait that\'s something.* Kat hopped upstairs and grabbed the box with her new chair in and carried it back downstairs. When she opened the box she felt her eyes twitch slightly.
She hadn\'t really gotten a proper look at it at the time, but she was led to believe she\'d been given a fairly standard chair. Even in miniature she could see that was a lie. Or, knowing demons, it was a \'creative application of the truth\'. Shutting the box with a slight huff she set it down on the kitchen table and glanced at the couch and lounge chairs.
She had options here, but not many. In the end, Kat decided to just keep it simple and let Vivian deal with anything that looked too horrible afterward. It was her job after all, so she\'d know how to work things out. What Kat ended up doing was separating the two single chairs as much as she could while leaving a path around them before putting her chair in the newly opened space.
As it expanded she could see that it tried to take up more space then was available, pause for a second then shrink ever so slightly to make sure it fit comfortable in the space it had been given. As it was, the chair fit Kat\'s size well enough. It didn\'t have a tonne of extra space like you would expect from a lounge chair but Kat was rather petite if you ignored the wings.
The chair itself was black. The exact same shade as her kimono which could not be a coincidence. Especially not when the wooden base that showed on the edges of the cushions was the same silver as the flowers on the same outfit. The back was stitched with diamond patterning spread out semi-evenly, held in place by red buttons the same colour as Kat\'s hair. The only thing stopping Kat from thinking this was a custom job was the time it had to have taken.
The silver wood on the edges was carved into graceful spirals with slight traces of veins that looked like those you\'d find on a Succubi\'s wings. It was also clear that the silvery sheen was not a paint but the natural colour of the unnatural wood. The black material wasn\'t like anything Kat had seen before though. It didn\'t look like leather, but it seemed to be one big piece. How that happened without any stitching she was unsure.
Settling into it though, and letting her wings and tail phase easily into the back made her decide these questions didn\'t need answering. It was a great chair. More than she bargained for? Irrelevant. *I do wonder how it matches my colour scheme so well. Granted black on black isn\'t really what you want because you can hardly see where the outfit ends and the dress begins, but that just further proves the point something strange is going on.
I think, best guess, is that it can change colours, or have colours keyed into it. Though how the wood can change I\'m not sure. Maybe the wood is the same colour as always and the rest of it was changed to match? Or they happened to have one in stock in the right colours? I suppose it really depends on how much stock they keep. Considering they shrink the chairs they can already store plenty of them with that alone.*
With that thought Kat closed her eyes and relaxed into the chair. Before she could get too comfortable though she heard a knock on the door. "I\'ve got it!" shouted Kat so that Vivian wouldn\'t get up from her work. Her office was right by the door so that when clients had to visit the house, not something that happened often, they didn\'t have to go further then the office next to the door.
When Kat opened the door and saw that it was Lily she used her tail to keep the door propped open and grabbed the smaller girl into a big hug and lifted her up inside. "Lily!" said Kat with a smile. "I\'m glad to see you here."
Lily couldn\'t help the massive grin that split her face. Kat hadn\'t been afraid to hug her in the past but she didn\'t seek it out overly often. The Kat she knew from just a week ago certainly wouldn\'t have just hugged her without any prompting. She loved this change. \'She\' also had shoes on still. "Kat as much as I love this, I still need to take off my shoes" said Lily.
Kat glanced down and to the side to see that Lily was correct. Grinning sheepishly Kat lightly placed her girlfriend down on the ground outside the door and gave her a slight peck on the cheek as she bent over to take off her shoes. This caused Lily to stumble a bit as she was trying to reach her shoes and nearly fell over, only to be steadied by Kat\'s tail.
Lily looked down very pointedly at her shoes as she untied them because her already nearly manic grin had only grown. The level of attention and care Kat was already showing her was filling her with warmth she didn\'t know she was missing. A small part of her mind was warning her they were only just a knew couple. The larger part was determined to never give this feeling up. She would fight anyone and anything that tried to get between them.
Kat, unaware of Lily\'s inner conflict that was swiftly getting resolved just waited for Lily to get done with her shoes while she easily held the door open. Once that was done, they both made their way inside and Lily noticed the chair but didn\'t say anything about it. She just waited for Kat to sit down before taking her own seat… on Kat.
Lily was originally planning to sit next to Kat, but it the chair wasn\'t quite big enough for that, so she accepted the knew reality easily. The back of the chair was a bit low because of its reduced size but that was fine. "So what have you been up to Kat?" asked Lily mostly in an attempt to avoid talking about her own morning. When Kat gave her a slightly guilty look though, the question became real.
"Well… it went like this…" said Kat, and went on to explain the arbitration as well as the few things she\'d learnt about during Arbitration as well as the course of the case itself. She made judicious use of her perfect memory. Recalling memories wholesale was much easier then looking for little details. Especially one so recent, she could simple call it up and basically get it to play everything back for her.
"You know… that all makes a strange sort of sense. Especially with the price to accuracy of runes ratio" said Lily.
"Yeah…" said Kat uncertainly as it just wasn\'t something she\'d thought about too much yet. It did make sense, but only a certain amount. Mostly centring on why D.E.M.O.N.S could take people to and from the Hub with no issues and seemingly transported people without any complications. Perhaps it was just the call and not the response or it was more of a defence measure. "Question though. Would you rather I talked to you about it all before I left? I considered waking you up but decided against it"
Lily bit her lip at the question and let herself sink into Kat slightly. "I dunno. I don\'t think it\'ll really matter too much once we\'re bound together. For something like this… it\'s fine, but if you thought it was dangerous, I\'d have wanted to know even if it would have been annoying to wake up to. Sure this was a potentially dangerous in other ways, but nothing major from what I know… certainly not as dangerous as my mother inviting you over to chat."
Kat was nodding along until the last few words. "I\'m sorry what?"