An Almost Merry Game Between Friends

by I He She

One day, Suzuran asks Lappland if she can borrow the lupo's library card for a while. One way or another, this simple request ends up leading the little vulpo to sit at a table where -by mistake, admittedly- a decidedly adult-oriented version of Uno is played. Much to Mon3tr' chagrin and Shamare's annoyance. Rosmontis, on her part, has somewhat mixed feelings about it.

An Almost Merry Game Between Friends

A knock on a door. A simple, common noise with nothing to make it stand out particularly, neither the intensity of the knock or its rhythm, nor the material of the door. The same couldn't be said about the one who had just knocked, however. A little vulpo with blonde hair and fur, the latter fading into a more neutral white towards the tip of her tails. All nine of them, an amount a few people found concerning, an handful saw as unsettling and most merely thought of as highly unusual, with a tendency to consider them as cute and endearing. There were a couple of other opinions still about them, in truth, but by recounting each and every thing the dwellers of Rhodes Island thought of Suzuran's tails we would inevitably end up sidetracked, so let's leave that for another time.

Suzuran. She had just knocked on a door, a not so little box in her hands. She could still turn around and leave if she so wanted, the slight angle her ears were bent at displaying her light unease for all to see -had there been anyone around, that is- but she decided not to. Doing so would mean going back on her word, which would be akin to betraying Shamare's trust given the circumstances which had led her there, and that was not something she was really willing to do. Well, Shamare herself wouldn't have minded given said circumstances in the first place, but Suzuran was of a different mind on that matter.

The door then opened, a smiling and ever so faintly surprised lupo appearing in front of her.

"Good afternoon, miss Lappland" she greeted with a small bow.

"Morsel! It's a bit late for lunch, isn't it?"

"Ah, no, I have already eaten. ... you haven't?" she added, now a bit worried.

Lappland, on her part, made no attempt to keep her shoulders from dropping a little bit upon hearing those words.

"I have, morsel, I have" she replied with a wave of her hand, retreating back into her room and waiting for Suzuran's tails to have entered as well before closing the door "So what did those hacks force down your throat this time?"

"Miss Lappland, I truly believe you should stop using such words. I understand that you have some reservations about... "

"Ah! Some reservations you say?" she interrupted her with a chuckle.

"... that you feel personally offended by some of the dishes occasionally served at the canteen, but you should understand that it's not a personal attack on you. Or on siracusan cuisine. Oh" she quickly added as she noticed the slight twitch in the lupo's ear "It was yanese food. The dumplings were really good!"

"Good enough, I guess"

Taking the large way around the small but well furnished kitchen she had installed in her room, Lappland made her way to her bed and sat down on it.

"You're here for something, right? Ask away"

"What makes you think that?" she asked back, a bit nervous at having been found out already.

"It's written all over your fur, morsel. You're way too easy to read for your own good" she smiled as she leaned forward a bit "Makes you look all the more appetizing"

Suzuran blinked, wondering if maybe her numerous tails truly made her body language that easy to read. Then again, one could argue it was pretty normal for someone her age to wear their heart on their sleeves without even meaning to anyway. And she could actually remember some people saying they could never tell what her father was thinking even back in Higashi, so the tails probably had little to do with that. Oh, maybe it was about the fur of her hears then? No, she was getting sidetracked.

"Before that, miss Lappland, this is for you" she stated the obvious as she placed the box down on the kitchen counter, as there were no other flat surfaces aviable other than the floor and the bed itself.

Lappland raised an eyebrow, jumping back to her feet.

"Morsel dear, we're not boss and subordinate. You don't have to grease my gears to ask me for a favor" she explained as she walked up to the box, without going into the details of what would have happened if some hypothetical subordinate had actually tried a stunt like that with her.

"That's rude!" she complained with a pout on her face, a little twitch of her tails to further express what she thought of that statement "I just wanted to give you a present. Thought it's... true that I have a favor to ask... " she then added somewhat reluctantly, her gaze falling to the floor a bit.

"See? Told you" Lappland shot back with half a chuckle as she unwrapped the present.

A little plant in a pot, the whole thing being shorter than an open hand in height. She blinked a couple of times, taking the vase and rotating it a little to examine it. The pot itself was made of ceramic but, rather than soil, it'd been filled with gravel and small stones. Sticking out of them was a little wooden stick, and tied to it was a small plant of what she assumed was supposed to be basil. Made entirely of folded paper, with a craftmanship not everyone would find worthy of writing home about, some parts colored a bit with pastels to make it easier to understand what it was supposed to be.

"It's broken" she flatly pointed out, her finger aimed at two little branches which had apparently snapped off and were currently held in place by a few stitches and a tiny bit of scotch tape.

"I, uh, those... " Suzuran stammered, fidgeting with her fingers a little bit "I know, but... I thought it would make it look more... lived? Like an old scar or two?"

Lappland turned around to meet her gaze, and for a few odd seconds they simply stared at each other, one inexpressive, the other clearly nervous, to a degree at least. Then the lupo spun around on herself as she strolled to the wall, where her swords were lying. She grabbed one, spun back to the origami plant and swung her blade, only to then spin and swing it again in a different direction. Suzuran didn't actually see how or why, in truth, Lappland had moved quickly. By the time her eyes caught the lupo's arm again there was a cold tip pressed against her nose, the sudden feeling making her jolt a little. Then, just as she opened her mouth to speak, she felt cold steel slide against her ear, the noise it made as it sank into the floor combining with the feeling of its large, oddly shaped guard coming to rest exactly on her head to make her ears twitch wildly for a second or two.

"Here, morsel" Lappland then chuckled as she let go of her sword and showed her one of the origami's leaves placed on her index, a suspicious red dot having died it a different color, a cold but not unpleasant smile on her face "You can keep this bit"

"... thanks... ?" she replied as she grabbed the small piece of paper, not quite sure what to think of that.

What she did know was that taking a step or two away from that sword seemed like a good idea, lest she cuts herself on it by accident. That seemed to amuse Lappland though, as she laughed at the sight. Actually, maybe she had already cut herself a little somehow, she could feel a little sting on the back of her neck.

"So, morsel. What do you need?" Lappland asked as she retrieved her sword and took a long, generous sniff of its blade, Suzuran's scent lingering on it a little.

"Miss Lappland, may I... may I borrow your library card?"

The lupo nearly dropped her other blade, which almost made Suzuran panic for fear she might cut her foot with it. Now, Lappland was nowhere near that clumsly, but that still didn't keep the little vulpo from worrying over such things.

"What makes you think I have a library card?"

"You don't?"

Now wasn't that funny, Lappland thought.

"What do you need mine for?" she asked as she stuck her second sword next to the first one and made her way to the bed, sitting back down and patting the mattress between her spreaded legs to call Suzuran forward.

Her tails waved a little bit, but the young vulpo walked up to Lappland and, after a little bit of maneuvering to accomodate her tails, sat in front of her, paying attention to not lie back against her chest. That'd have been rude. And her ears would've ended up right in her face.

"You see" she began to explain as Lappland unceremoniously buried her face in the vulpo's air and in her ears' fur "The library has recently introduced a limit to how many items a person can borrow in a month, and I got a little carried away taking books I wasn't actually all that interested in so now I have to wait almost three entire weeks before borrowing anything again. So I was wondering if you could maybe... lend me yours?"

Her tails waved a bit against the lupo's legs and waist, her ears twitching every time Lappland audibly smelled her fragrance.

"Ain't this cheating?" she asked, not quite flatly but nearly so.

"I-it's just to borrow a few books, I promise I will not cause you any trouble"

"Still cheating, morsel. And I wonder, is that truly it?"

Lappland moved and hand up and down along Suzuran's body, tracing an aimless line over the cloth covering her belly and chest until her fingers settled around her neck, index and thumb pushing down a little from nearly opposite ends. She had no need to measure her pulse to tell something was off, but she saw no reason to not do it anyway. The feel of little morsel's blood pumping within those petite veins of hers was surprisingly pleasant under her fingertips. As for Suzuran herself, being touched like that gave rise to conflicting feelings within her, some remarkably pleasants, some not quite as enjoyable, the former ultimatly winning out over the latter.

"I'm putting my name on this little criminal activity of yours, morsel. I mean, can't go around saying you actually stole from me if someone asks why you've got my card, now can I? So not telling me the truth is bad manners"

"Awa!"

Jolting at the touch of sharp teeth gently -but not terribly so- grabbing hold of her ear, sending the other one in a twitching frenzy, Suzuran felt a shiver run all the way to the tip of her tails.

"There... there is a section of the library I can't enter because the access is restricted to the adults and... "

"Fine by me!" she cut her off with a chuckle.

In the blink of an eye, Suzuran found herself turned around and lifted up, Lappland standing on her feet and holding her by the waist with a wide smile on her face, her tail waving a fair bit behind her.

"This sounds fun! I'll get the paperwork or whatever done and hand it to you, but! Just don't go and borrow any weird stuff, morsel. If the library's even just half as bad as the canteen then it's sure to be full of nonsense" she laughed "And don't get caught!"

"Thanks a lot, miss Lappland!"

---

Rhodes Island's libary was built, then expanded, then reorganized, then expanded again, renovated, expanded yet again, then again, and then once more still through its somewhat short life. Despite what that brief summary of its history might suggest, however, the library wasn't actually all that large -relatively speaking, at least-, each extension only increasing its square footage by somewhat small amounts. Perhaps because of that, there was only a single door leading in and out from it, though given its size calling it a gate would probably be more appropriate. Especially because a few smaller, more ordinary doors had been constructed into said gate to allow people to come and go without having to leave the entire thing open all the time.

As for the library's structure, its main area consisted of a large open space divided into subsectors by rows of tall bookshelves, and in the middle of it was a spiral staircase leading up to the other two floors the library occupied, suspended walkways heading from the stairs to a dozen or so inner balconies overlooking the entrance. Two counters were placed at the entrance, one of which was equipped with an automatic check-out machine for those days nobody was manning the other one. The floor consisted of fake parquet, probably to match the wooden shelves, and there were a fair bit of lamps hanging all over the place to illuminate the library at all times, natural light being unaviable due to its location within the landship. If one were to stray far enough from the spiral staircase, however, they would find the later additions to the library: a messy labyrinth of small halls and hallways and yet more tiny halls whose walls had been torn down to join them to the main structure in a somewhat hurried manner, the bookshelves themselves used to cover up the parts where the hastiness of the job done would've otherwise been more visible. Now, nobody had ever actually gotten lost inside there -... officially, at least- but, some people liked to joke about that happening from time to time.

There was still another part of the library however, one which mostly mirrored the overall structure just descibed while being separated from it, although by nothing more than a simple wall built just for that specific purpose, and even then in some parts the only thing keeping the two areas divided there strategically positioned shelves. Entry to the library was free, and the place was open at every hour of every day barring a few particular circumstances, but access to this other area was restricted by an id scanner, and the reason for that was a very simple one.

There were a tad too many kids on Rhodes Island.

And so everything not suitable for them had simply been put into a separate area of the library, the doors leading there opening only to those whose badge proved they were old enough. There was a bit of everything there, in truth: erotica, obviously, but also novels with either themes too heavy or descriptions too vivid, as well as certain history books, Arts texts and medic manuals little children were better off not reading, religious books and much more. Not everyone was happy with that solution, admittedly, even the exact age required to enter that area was occasionally argument of debate in some circles, and there were also rumors going around saying that whoever had approved of that division in the first place had some other, hidden motive to split the entire library that way, especially because a good third of the stuff on that side didn't actually seem that unsuitable for kids, but nobody had even found any proof of that, much less found out who was truly behind that arrangement.

A few days after Suzuran's conversation with Lappland, at a carefully selected hour of a carefully selected day, two little vulpos were standing in front of said library, each carrying a modest shoulder bag with them. They had taken turns for the last two weeks or so observing the flow of people -to Suzuran's insistence, as Shamare would've taken a different approach- and concluded that friday afternoon was the most ideal time to try and sneak into the adult section without getting caught. Now, despite its size and the amount of people living on the landship, Rhodes Island's library wasn't exactly what one would call a place bustling with activity. Not to say it was usually empty, far from it, but... let's just say digitalization was proving itself as a fearsome competitor in that sense.

Suzuran was looking around to see whether there was anyone in sight, walking in place as her tails fluttered nervously, her anxiety being on full display for all to see. Not a good way to start an infiltration operation, no. Shamare, on her part, was ever so slightly annoyed. Suzuran had decided she couldn't keep asking a certain someone to bring her stuff from the forbidden area of the library, as doing that would've been akin to exploiting her kindness, and so she had looked for another way to get books from there, even going as far as promising Shamare she would find a way in for the both of them. Shamare wasn't entirely sure where exactly Suzuran's train of thoughts originated from in the first place but, since she wanted to keep her own personal incursions into the adult sector a secret from Suzuran, she decided to go along with her plan instead.

"Lisa" Shamare called her from right beside her, Morte firmly held in her hands "We're still in the hallway. Keep your agitation for later"

"... you're right, sorry"

A somewhat odd way of calming someone down, arguably, but it did help Suzuran relax. She took a deep breath and pushed one of the doors carved into the larger gate open, making her way into the library, followed by Shamare and Morte.

Just as their stakeouts -if we want to actually call them such- had suggested, there weren't all that many people around. They could see some coming and going here and there, a few sitting at the indoor balconies reading, someone making rounds to put returned books back in their shelves by the looks of it. They could spot around twenty or so people in total from the entrance which, considering Rhodes Island hosted a few thousand people within its walls, was a decidedly low number. But between the fact that most people were still busy with their work at that hour and the growing aviability of digital books in the landship's network, that wasn't too surprising.

"Breathe in. Breathe out" Shamare told her from behind, whispered almost.

She was confident nothing bad would happen so long as they were within the library. Her divination had told her as much. It was what would come later that worried her, even though technically that should've been the smoothest part of the entire operation. Or rather, the operation would've been over already at that point.

"Right. Alright, let's start"

And so the two went their separate ways as they looked for what Suzuran somewhat overdramatically referred to as their "scapegoat excuse to hide their bad behaviour in case they got caught". Which is to say, a bunch of ordinary books they had some genuine interest in, which they would keep inside their bags and use to hide whatever they would grab later in case someone where to take a look at what they were borrowing for whatever reason. Whether that was a good idea or not was debatable, but that part of the plan concluded without a hitch either way, the two vulpos meeting up again around an hour later, exchanging a few completely innocent words about what they had picked. A picture book, a collection of poems, a... somewhat dubious fashion magazine, admittedly, an history book, stuff like that. They took another look around, confirming that it was harder to both spot others and be spotted when within the maze the bookshelves were arranged into, and made their way to their real destination, moving swiftly but carefully.

Truth be told, while Shamare didn't actually seem any different from usual, anyone could still tell just from a quick glance at Suzuran that something was up, agitation visible in her every step. As luck -or lack thereof- wanted, however, nobody happened to spot them as they reached one of the doors to the adult section. A perfectly ordinary door, that one, that wouldn't have stood out at all if not for the id scanner installed next to its handle. It was placed a bit close to the floor, admittedly, probably to accomodate for the durins, Sussurro and Shaw. Perhaps some others too, but right there and then Suzuran could only think of them. Anyway, she pulled Lappland's brand new library card from her pocket and slid it into the scanner, two beads of sweat running down her forehead, her ears standing tall to catch any incoming footstep, her tails lying low to not stand out. A small warning light turned green and the door slid open, baring the section of the library only adults could enter to Suzuran's curious eyes.

... and the sight was... somewhat of a letdown?

Thinking about it, it shouldn't have been surprising for that section of the library to look pretty much like the other one. What changed was the stuff in the shelves after all, not the shelves or the walls or the stairs themselves. And yet Suzuran had kind of expected that area to look more... mature? Refined? She wasn't quite sure what that actually meant herself, in truth, but she couldn't deny a certain vague sense of disappointment.

"Lisa" Shamare softly pushed her forward, because they really couldn't afford idlying there.

"Ah, y- you're right" she interrupted herself to avoid speaking too loudly as she hurriedly walked forward, the door closing on its own once they had moved far enough from it, stopping in a small section which seemed to host board games rather than books for some reason.

"You look disappointed" Shamare commented flatly as she dropped Morte to the ground, the doll twitchingly springing to life as her fingers left it.

"I'm not sure what I was expecting" Suzuran admitted, somewhat embarassed by her own reaction -or maybe by how childish it made her look?- "But this is still a library after all. What about you?"

"It's a library"

"Right" she laughed a little, the ever so small sway of Shamare's tail having told her that she had just made a joke, a little thing that helped Suzuran relax.

Now, to tell the whole truth, Shamare had already been in that part of the library before, multiple times too. But she had a feeling Suzuran wouldn't quite approve of her methods for getting inside, and so she had refrained from ever talking about it with her.

"The adult literature section should be that way on the ground floor" Shamare whispered almost casually as she pointed her finger, her words making Suzuran's face turn bright red "The medical texts are over there on the same floor. And the Arts texts are around there on the second floor"

"H-how do you know about it?"

"The library's planimetry is kept in the other area"

Not a lie, but not quite an honest answer either. Though Shamare truly had never been to the adult literature section herself.

"Oh, that... that makes sense. Thanks" Suzuran replied with an awkward twitch of her tails "This place here is hidden quite a bit from sight. Let's meet here as soon as we are done, ok?"

Shamare simply nodded.

"Morte will lead your way. If it sees someone approaching it will warn you. Be careful"

"Hold on, what about you?" she asked back, having thought up until then that Morte would be going with Shamare.

"Don't worry. I won't be caught" she replied, a faint light pulsing for but a moment in her eyes.

Somehow, that short answer sounded both warmly reassuring and chillingly dreadful.

"... alright" Suzuran agreed because, as much as she worried about her, not trusting Shamare at that point would just hurt her.

And so the two parted ways. Shamare walked quickly, almost swiftly even, something that could be either confidence or lack of care in her steps, her gaze constantly moving around, perhaps to make sure nobody would spot her, perhaps to inspect the books as she went past them. Suzuran, on the other hand, was treading much more slowly, almost measuring every step as she followed Morte across the rows of shelves, too nervous to even read the titles of the tomes neatly stored all around her, her mind completely focused on getting to where Shamare had pointed her to without getting caught. And, as it turned out, Morte's presence truly made everything a whole lot easier. The living -or seemingly alive, at least- doll walked roughly four meters ahead of Suzuran, stopping at every crossroad to take a look around, resuming walking in case it didn't spot anyone, even regularly turning around to make sure the young vulpo was still following it. With ears up high and tails as clumped together as she could manage to hold them, Suzuran focused on the scents surrounding her, since she figured she would probably have a better shot at noticing someone approaching by relying on her nose rather than on her ears, her own scent hidden under a fair bit of perfume just for the occasion. And they did admittedly avoid a few encounters along the way thanks to those measures, although Suzuran had some mixed feelings about Morte waving around a knife and running up to people a couple of times to drive them away. A toy knife, hopefully. She could never tell whether it was one or not.

It did also run away itself too once, but Suzuran didn't manage to understand who they had nearly stumbled into as she was too busy hiding.

That one avoided incident aside, they made their way to the medical texts section and Suzuran started looking for something about treating grievous bite wounds and preventing infections. Quite the specific subject, admittedly, and arguably not one she really needed any further knowledge into since her... activities with Lappland -and Shamare too, as of late- had already turned her into somewhat of an expert in that field, at least as far as human bites went, but she wanted to check whether she was doing something wrong just in case. She didn't find anything about that particular kind of treatment in the end -unless she wanted to read up on how to treat wounds from wild beasts-, which was both unfortunate and unsurprising to be completely honest, and decided to just head for the other sections right away. There were some interesting tomes there, but she didn't want to end up making Shamare wait, not to mention that there were other people browsing the shelves there and doing any kind of search without getting caught was both difficult and time consuming. That, and some of those books were really a bit unsettling. Having opened one exactly on the picture of a particularly bad case of teratoma was, in truth, one of the best things that could've happened to her around there as far as accidentally seeing explicit pictures went.

So, with nothing but a fair bit of disappointment to weigh her down, she headed to the adult literature section, finding it perhaps a little bit emptier than she had expected. The area was much larger than she had anticipated, and in truth Suzuran even scolded herself a bit for not having considered that "adult literature" was not, in fact, a synonym of "erotica". Incidentally, that slowed down her search even further as she had to also look for the particular subsection she was interested in. Her book browsing section was made even more sluggish by the fact that, once she did get to her proper destination, every other book title and summary she red made her blush furiously, her tails going into a waving frenzy as her mind ran wild, usually to much wilder places that the books themselves actually dared to visit in fact. Adding to that the fact that, unlike in the medical text section, she currently had no clear objective in mind and was instead just looking at what was aviable, it's no surprise that she ended up getting a bit distracted from the volumes stored there. So much so Morte had to ram itself into her leg at one point to alert her that someone was coming, and Suzuran just narrowly managed to avoid getting caught by almost-but-not-quite running away and hiding behind another shelf. That did get her closer to someone else still if her nose wasn't lying, admittedly, but the alternative was being spotted right away and that just wouldn't do.

Then, as Morte made sure nobody was following them and she rested her back against the shelf to calm down, the anxiety from having almost gotten caught subsiding a little, Suzuran noticed a particular scent, one she was kind of familiar with. She turned around right away and spotted her, a little feline looking at her from not too far, her own head poking out from behind another shelf.

Relief washed over Suzuran at the realization that, of all people, she had been caught by Rosmontis. The very person who used to provide her with novels from that sector up until the vulpo decided she could no longer exploit her kindness like that, in fact. As for why Rosmontis could enter that area freely in the first place, that was a little accident caused by the degree of clearance automatically granted to all Elite Operators' badges, a little oversight which had somehow been going unnoticed for months.

"... Suzuran" the feline greeted as she walked up to her, a book and a small, rectangular box in her hands "Good afternoon"

"Ah, good afternoon Rosmontis" she replied with a loud whisper as she bowed down, having managed to not call her 'miss' just in time "I'm really sorry but I'm in a bit of an hurry right now"

Her eyes slipped on the two items the feline was holding. The title of the book was covered by both a small box and Rosmontis' arms, only a few letters visible, not enough to make out anything, but the box itself seemed to contain a deck of... Uno? Probably? Now that was a bit weird. Suzuran knew they had a few games in the library, she and Shamare had even walked in front of them earlier, but she was certain Uno was in the other area. Did Rosmontis grab it there and then carry it around as she made her way into the adult section?

"Mnh" she simply said back with a nod "I see. But I thought you couldn't enter this part"

"Th-that's... I-I can now" she flat out lied in a panic, guilt immediatly assaulting her.

"I see. That's good. ... do you want to play?" she asked, nudging the Uno box a little in her arms "I don't think this would be fun with just two people"

"Sure" she agreed with a smile "When?"

Rosmontis bent her neck a little, briefly getting lost in her thoughts.

"This evening?"

"After dinner? Sure, I'd love to. But I can't stay to chat, I really have to go, sorry"

Rosmontis nodded again, waving her goodbye. And so the vulpo quickly walked away, grabbing something almost at random by a shelf as she went by just to not walk away empty-handed.

What time was it? Late. Was it late? Oh dear, what if Shamare was already waiting for her? No, no, there were clocks placed here and there at the library, she could just look for one and there it was and oh she still had quite some time, thank goodness. Unfortunately, the Arts book section turned out to be exceptionally crowded, at least in relative terms. And when one was sneaking around trying to avoid being seen, it really didn't take that many people to make a place feel crowded. In fact, there were at most a dozen people there, but that was still more than enough to keep Suzuran from wandering around that area. What she did instead was skirt around the edges of that section, hoping that someone would walk away and give her more leeway to sneak around, with Morte to help her with both keeping tab on the situation and avoiding running into anyone as she nervously browsed the volumes stored on the outer edge of the section. Now, that was just a public library, a book placed at the very centre of any particular section wasn't there by virtue of being more interesting than those stored further away or anything like that. But... a small part of Suzuran might have thought otherwise, possibly for no other reason than it sounded fun in its own way. With all of that said, her wait ultimately bore no fruit and the little vulpo eventually ended up walking all the way back to the meeting point with a pretty meager haul. On a brighter note, she did manage to find something interesting in that section too in the end. As for whether she could actually make out anything from a volume as advanced as the one she had picked, well, that was an entirely different matter.

... no, she wouldn't.

Back on topic. Finding Shamare already waiting for her at their meeting point left somewhat of a sore taste in her mouth, though she did find solace in the fact that her friend seemed to have filled up her bag quite nicely. Definitively more than Suzuran did, at least.

"How did it go?"

"It... could've been worse"

"... next time I will come with you" Shamare said after a brief silence, as inexpressive as ever.

"Oh, no, really, you don't have to. It'd be really bad if they caught us both"

"Don't worry"

"Of course I worry, I don't want you to get scolded because of me"

Shamare's left ear twitched.

"... fine"

"Oh, I met Rosmontis. She invited me to play a card game with her after dinner"

"I'm coming" Shamare stated flatly, so swift her response that it nearly startled Suzuran.

"Sure" she agreed, happy to see that Shamare was going out of her way to interact with other people "Oh, but I should ask Rosmontis if she's fine with it first. Ah, don't get me wrong" she nearly shouted as she frantically tried to explain "It's not that Rosmontis hates you or anything, she's just a bit... ehm... peculiar?"

In truth, Shamare was simply worried. Her divination had told her somthing might go wrong once they left the library after all. But that would come later, albeith not by much by the looks of it. For now they just had to get back into the other half of the library, reach the counter, use the automatic check-out machine with Lappland's card and head back to their rooms. Just as they were about to open one of the doors that split the library in two, however, someone did that for them from the other side.

"Lisa. Turn around for a moment" Shamare said as she picked up Morte from the floor.

"... Suzuran? Shamare? You shouldn't be here. How did you get in?" a confused Eyjafjalla asked, squinting her eyes a little bit to make sure she hadn't perhaps mistaken someone else for them.

Having nearly fallen into a panic, Suzuran simply did as she had been told and turned around, thinking -or rather, hoping- that Shamare had some kind of trick up her sleeve to convince the volcanologist to keep quiet about that while at the same time trying to come up with something to say, an apology for having broken the rules like that.

"Shamare" the caprinae said, surprised "if there was something you needed here you could've -ah, h-hold on, not h- !"

Then some weird noises reached Suzuran's ears, weak and muffled sounds which somehow made her feel embarrassed, accompanied by other sounds which somehow sounded... wet? With a mixture of fear, anxiety, worry and something else still swirling around in her mind, Suzuran spent a good three or four minutes wondering what in the world Shamare was doing just a couple of meters behind her, until curiosity won over and made her decide to turn around. Also because giving her back to Eyjafjalla like that was, in hindsight, a really rude thing to do and she had to apologize for that.

Eyjafjalla was still there, obviously, and fully clothed too of course. But she was lying on the floor, face and knees down but with her butt up in the air for some reason, some kind of fluid having spilled on her thighs apparently. Her face had ended up hidden by her own hair, her breaths were somewhat heavy, and her hips were trembling a little bit. Even more odd, Shamare was crouched down next to her, tapping the caprinae's arm with her fingers following a precise pattern. A short message in morse code telling her that she would properly take care of her the following day or the one after that if she just pretended to have never seen them there, a proposition Eyjafjalla voicelessly nodded her assent to. Having confirmed that, Shamare stood back up and wiped her hand clean with an handkerchief.

"... eh... uh, what... this... how... i-is miss Eyjafjalla alright? S-should I... call for help?" Suzuran asked, all kind of possibilities showing up much too vividly in her mind, all somehow a fair bit more tame than what had actually transpired.

"She is fine" Shamare replied, as flatly and inexpressively as ever, silently musing over the fact that she ended up having no need for either the knife, the scissors nor the other safety measures she had brought along "I will take care of her next time. We've already stayed here for too long. Let's go"

"... a... alright... "

Eyjafjalla waved them goodbye as she began to recompose herself a bit, a bright red decorating her cheeks and making Suzuran feel even more awkward about that brief encounter and the weird way it had just played out.

But from there on everything proceeded smoothly. The two vulpos made their way out of the library with their loot without a single problem occurring.

Until a while later, it could be said.

---

Calling what Rosmontis was currently feeling 'apprehension' would be an exaggeration, but she did feel somewhat uneasy. And the reason for that was quite simple: she only realized she had picked the wrong game after having returned to her room. She did think it was weird for Uno to be in that section of the library, admittedly, and the name written on the box was a little different too, but she had just assumed that to be some kind of variation of the same thing. And it was, in fact, but she was wondering if playing that with Suzuran would be a good idea. She had already red the rules and, when it came down to it, there was just a little addition compared to the regular version she played with the other Elite Operators, but a part of her was just doubtful. Then again, Suzuran had already done similar things with her and Mon3tr once before. Not to mention that she was a smart person, so she definitively knew what kind of game Rosmontis had invited her to despite the feline's own misunderstanding.

Sitting on her bed, she leaned back against Mon3tr, the creature's hard shell making for a somewhat physically uncomfortable surface to rest upon while the heat occasionally pulsing through it offered a much more pleasant experience. Not to mention Kal'Tsit's scent which always lingered on Mon3tr, a scent which made Rosmontis feel especially at ease. The creature, which had at some point taken the habit of spending time with the little feline, was currently curled up on her bed too, half-floating to keep its weight from crushing the relatively frail structure they were resting upon.

There was music playing from a small recorder. A registration of one of Amiya's violin classes. The cautus didn't play the instrument much anymore, busy as she was, and to anyone with a good enough technical knowledge it was clear that even the piece performed during that lesson could really use some improvements here and there, but the simple fact that it was Amiya producing that sound helped soothe Rosmontis's mind to a degree.

She casted another glance at her own room. There was a curtain cutting off a small part of her quarter from the rest, the little corner where she kept the brushes and paint and canvases Mon3tr used -she had no idea why it started making portraits of her one day, but she didn't dislike it at all- but there were curtains on all walls too. A fairly recent addition, that one. Nobody had ever told her outright, but she had sort of... gotten the feeling the walls of her room made some people feel uncomfortable, although not many people ever entered there in the first place. Probably because they were covered almost completely by photos, with the vast majority of them having a date written by pen on them. Despite their number, however, the places and people preserved within them weren't all that variegated.

She liked those walls. Looking at them was a bit like reading through the entries of her terminal. Sometimes she would look at a photo and know exactly what occasion it had been taken at, who was present, what was happening. Sometimes she would spend some time staring at one to recall all of that. Sometimes she just... couldn't even truly be sure the photo had anything to do with her. But that's what the writings in her terminal were for.

She liked those walls.

But sometimes she would look at the way Raidian or Blaze or Misery's face would darken for a moment upon staring at some of those photos, and decided that she'd rather cover them up whenever someone came to visit her than make them feel... that.

Some would call that room a memorial but, while not entirely inaccurate, such a denomiation would make one forget that there were also happy memories hanged on those walls too. In fact, nearly every single photo depicted, at worst, an ordinary moment of life. It's just that not everyone immortalized there was still around.

A knock on her door made Rosmontis' ears twitch, the little feline leaving her own thoughts and getting up together with Mon3tr, which went to hide behind the curtain for good measure. Suzuran and a few others already knew that the serpentine being spent some time there, but the creature didn't seem to have any intention of turning that fact into common knowledge.

And so, after having turned the recorder off and pulled the curtains over the walls -there were cutouts in two of those curtains to account for the main door and the one leading to the bathroom-, Rosmontis went to said door. And her ears stood up a little upon seeing who was on the other side.

"Hello, Rosmontis" Suzuran greeted with a light bow.

"... hi" the feline replied, her gaze falling on the other, silent vulpo standing a step and a half behind Suzuran with an ominous looking doll in her hands.

"This is Shamare" Suzuran quickly introduced her, a very faint unease creeping up her spine as her friend merely nodded in silence "She said she wanted to come too. Oh, but if you don't want she has a backup plan for the evening already" she added.

Rosmontis and Shamare simply stared at each other, their necks bent ever so slightly in opposite directions. There was a remarkable lack of expressivity on both their faces but, while the feline seemed to be halfway between apathy and drowsiness, the vulpo radiated an ever so faint aura of... of rejection, one could say, something stronger than indifference but not quite as distinctive as hostility.

Suzuran's ears twitched, half a drop of sweat running down her forehead for reasons she either couldn't or didn't want to comprehend.

"... wait" Rosmontis then said before closing the door.

She walked to the curtain and pulled it. Mon3tr, which was currently lying curled up on itself on the floor, raised its head to meet her gaze.

"Can you join us? There is someone scary at the door"

Now, deciphering Mon3tr's vocalizations was no easy task, but Rosmontis sort of managed to understand that her request had just confused it a bit.

"I think... Suzuran is not too comfortable with me" she explained "Maybe because of what happened the first time she came to my room. She's at the door. She has a friend with her. Amiya told me I should try to be corteous with other people, so I don't want to turn them away. But her friend looks scary. Can you play with us?"

Mon3tr scratched its head a bit. As far as it knew -and when it came to that little feline in front of it Mon3tr knew quite a bit- Rosmontis wasn't someone who got scared easily. Far, far from it. So... was that more of a request to make sure she wouldn't accidentally do something bad? Her control over both herself and her Arts had gotten better, considerably so, but under certain circumstances she could still have a sort of outburst, was that possibility what worried her?

Honestly, Mon3tr wasn't exactly fond of children either for that matter, Rosmontis was a rare exception. Suzuran too, to a lesser degree. And it wasn't too thrilled about card games either. But... sure, it could do that for the feline. Did that also fall within Kal'Tsit's general guideline of "taking care of her in your free time", it wondered? ... probably more than all the other stuff the two of them did together, actually. Regardless of that, Mon3tr nodded its approval as it floated off the floor and past the curtain. Rosmontis walked back to the door and opened it again to find both vulpos still standing there, one as inexpressive as before, the other seemingly a bit agitated. Which in turn made Rosmontis herself feel somewhat bad for one reason or another.

"Sorry. Come in" she invited them.

"Thanks"

"... mnh"

The first thing the two guests did upon entering was, of course, looking at Mon3tr. Suzuran had already met the creature on a few occasions, and even had a very -very, very- close encounter with it once, of the kind she would not be comfortable telling her parents about, so she simply greeted it as if nothing was out of the ordinary, to which Mon3tr answered with a soft, slightly hoarse noise which sounded somewhat like a greeting too, at least when combined with its body language. As for Shamare, Suzuran was sure she had seen Mon3tr at least once but, now that she thought about it a bit more, she didn't know of any actual interaction between them. The two simply stared at each other, although in a way that seemed more relaxed compared to what had happened a few minutes earlier with Rosmontis, then just nodded as if to acknowledge each other's presence and turned their gaze elsewhere. Mon3tr wordlessly mused that the vulpo did have some sort of unsettling atmosphere surrounding her though. Suzuran's ears twitched, relieved that nothing had gone wrong but also somewhat saddened by Shamare's usual lack of interest in interacting with the overwhelming majority of people.

Of creatures, rather.

Which felt especially odd considering that she was the one who had asked to come along in the first place, but... sometimes Shamare could be hard to understand. Suzuran figured she just had to try harder.

And so, with an exceedingly low amount of pleasantries being exchanged, the four sat at a somewhat large table -one of them did so only figuratively since it had to stay four times as far from said table due to its own size- as Rosmontis, who had taken care to sit opposite from Shamare, shuffled a deck of cards in a way that probably didn't do all that much in the way of randomizing them. Nobody complained though. Then she shuffled another deck, this one distinguished by a different back of the cards, much to Suzuran's confusion.

"Ahem, excuse me Rosmontis, but what are those for?" she asked as she pointed to said second deck while the feline began to hand out cards from the first one.

"Those are actions. If you win the round you draw two cards, you use one and give the other one to who had the least cards left after you"

"Oh, I didn't know about this version. Sounds fun!"

She had played a game once that had players draw penalities along the way, silly little challenges such as keeping a card balanced on the elbow, never lifting your chin off the table or holding a card between your knees until the end of the game, and that had been a rather enjoyable experience. Up until Ifrit lost her temper, at least.

"... how does this game work?" Shamare then spoke for the first time in a while, her confusion nowhere to be seen on her face as she stared at her starting hand.

"Ah, sorry" Suzuran apologized immediatly, managing to do so in a collected manner to avoid upsetting either Shamare or Rosmontis as she knew neither of them liked sudden, loud noises "I thought you knew already? But it's simple, really" she said, quickly explaining the rules of Uno without missing anything.

Shamare, who would be playing after Mon3tr and before Suzuran, simply nodded once her friend had finished her brief illustration of the mechanics of the game, and the first round began.

It really didn't take long at all for Suzuran to start feeling a bit uncomfortable. She knew that Rosmontis wasn't all that talkative, and Mon3tr couldn't quite talk in the first place, but she had hoped Shamare would open up a bit since she had asked to come along herself. That, however, didn't happen at all, both she and the feline simply playing their cards in silence while looking at either the table or the other players when someone put down something like a skip or a draw two. Suzuran was trying to liven up the atmosphere a bit, but she couldn't for the life of her tell whether she was having at least a little bit of success in that regard or not. Both Rosmontis and Shamare did answer her when she spoke directly to either one, but the former seemed to be somewhat on edge herself for some reason, while the latter was kind of... staring with odd intensity at the feline, while casting occasional glances at both Suzuran and Mon3tr.

In the end, the first round came to a close rather quickly, and in a pretty uneventful way too for the standards of that game. Just a reverse card, a couple of skips and draw two and a fair bit of bad luck for Mon3tr as it drew eight cards before finding something to play at one point. Hoping for that mysterious second deck to somehow salvage the situation while at the same time wondering what exactly had made said situation take that turn in the first place, Suzuran congratulated Rosmontis for her win, the little feline replying with a quiet thank and a small but genuine smile as she looked at the two cards she had just drawn, blinking once and tilting her head a little.

"I'll keep this one" she said as she gave Shamare the other one.

Then she also handed the first card to Mon3tr, which stared at it for a few moments, its expression hard to decipher. Then, to add to Suzuran's puzzledness, the creature reached out with one of its limbs and rested its hard palm on Rosmontis' head, patting it with just the right amount of vigor, a motion it had a lot of experience with.

"Sorry but... what does the card say?" Suzuran asked.

Mon3tr hissed a response, only to then simply show the little vulpo the card. The text said "Pat who gave you this card". Suzuran tilted her head a little, not quite sure what to think of that.

"What do I do with this? In detail" Shamare then asked from her seat.

Rosmontis leaned into Mon3tr's caress a little bit before answering.

"You give it to someone and they do what's written on the card"

"Can I give it to myself?"

Both Suzuran and Shamare's ears twitched.

"... you can"

Shamare stared at her card for a few moments after that, then she set it down, stood up and took off her shoes under the gaze of an increasingly confused Suzuran. Who, on her part, took the card to read its text too. "Take off an article of clothing for every card in your hand" it said, which in Shamare's case meant just one. She wasn't sure what Mon3tr would've done had he received that card, but Suzuran herself would've had to take off five pieces, which would've been pretty... awkward. She wordlessly thanked Shamare for that.

"Is this normal?" she also asked, arguably more worried by both Shamare and Rosmontis' apparent lack of concern than by the card itself, albeith the fact that Mon3tr seemed sort of troubled too gave her some weird kind of solace.

The feline nodded, not quite understanding why Suzuran was getting a bit flustered. She took the two special cards and placed them in a new pile, then grabbed the regular cards and started shuffling them with the rest of the deck, handing out another hand to everyone and starting the new round, all the while feeling Shamare's gaze occasionally settling on her.

The second round turned out to be a little more lively, thankfully enough. Shamare still remained silent for the entirety of it, but Rosmontis did speak a little every now and then, even Mon3tr had started to vocalize a bit. Though Suzuran herself ended up dead last thanks to an unfortunate series of bad draws. The winner of the second round was Shamare who, as far as Suzuran could tell, wasn't feeling annoyed or bored so much as she was on guard. Was that because of Mon3tr? If that were truly the case then it would make sense, Suzuran thought. Shamare had seen it once before, yes, but getting used to the creature's presence could take a while. She herself wasn't entirely accustomed to it either, after all.

That was, however, not at all the source of Shamare's raised guard. Still without saying a word, simply nodding or shaking her head when someone -which is to say Suzuran- said something to her, she drew two cards from the second deck and stared at them, both her ears twitching exactly once. She handed one to Rosmontis almost immediatly, speaking at last to tell her that was the one she wasn't keeping, and then used her own on Suzuran. It was, surprisingly enough, an exceptionally simple "shake hands" order.

Then Rosmontis used her card on Mon3tr again, the serpentine being moving its gaze between the little piece of paper and the children surrounding it a few times as the feline got off her chair and walked up to the creature, reaching up to its head as much as she could without actually managing to touch it. Mon3tr looked arount itself briefly, scratching the back of its head with two of its four limbs, their usually sharp tips having twisted into malformed hands back when the game had started. Suzuran's presence kind of bothered it, but they had already done much more than that with the vulpo present anyway. Shamare, on the other hand... whatever. Rosmontis was asking, and Rosmontis would receive. It gently grabbed her beneath the shoulders, lifted her up and twisted its head to the side, softly closing its jaw around Rosmontis' mouth. While that mostly hid what went on afterwards, Suzuran had seen it personally before. She knew that Mon3tr was running its tongue around Rosmontis' one and all over the inside of her mouth, the long, surprisingly sturdy muscle dripping a thick, somewhat viscous red substance which Rosmontis happily lapped up and drank, taking deep sniffs of Kal'Tsit's scent and savoring her taste as it stuck to her throat, a gentle warmth building up unnaturally quickly within her.

Too embarassed to keep looking despite not being able to actually see anything, Suzuran decided to gather the cards and shuffle them to distract herself a bit, her ears twitching with every sound that reached them. She looked at Shamare, who on her part simply tilted her head a little while keeping any possible complain she might've had to herself. Morte reached up to her from the ground, and she shook its hand for a few moments.

After what felt like an eternity but which couldn't have possibly been more than a couple of minutes at most, Mon3tr put Rosmontis down, its tongue retreating back into its mouth as it savored her saliva. A bit dizzy from the effects of the creature's secretion, the feline grabbed the table for a moment to support herself then went back to her seat, a somewhat dreamy expression on her face, a not too faint flushness to her cheeks.

"Are you done?" Shamare asked, somehow even more flatly than usual.

"Mnh"

"D-do you play this game often?" Suzuran asked as she handed everyone their cards, her tails waving a fair bit behind her.

"I play Uno with Blaze, Sharp, Touch and the others from time to time" she replied, without explaining that they only switched from poker to Uno when Rosmontis herself was at the table, which also caused every bottle of liquor to immediatly get swapped for bottles of milk instead "But I have never tried this version before"

Oh, thank goodness.

The following round played out with a bit more back and forth compared to the others, with an especially memorable moment when a grand total of six draw two cards got stacked and landed on Mon3tr, the poor thing having to more than double its hand size all of a sudden. Rosmontis seemed a bit more at ease too, Shamare... not really, while Suzuran was a little more on edge than before. But as the round went on for a fair bit longer, the oddly more relaxed atmosphere got to her too, her worries about Shamare and Rosmontis not getting along fading away to a degree even though nothing had really changed in that regard.

Then, however, Suzuran won. And the two cards she drew from the deck made her tails wave, only once but quite vigorously.

"A... awawawa... "

"Is something wrong?"

"Not-nothing" she stuttered to answer Rosmontis.

... hold on. The text written on one of those cards was relatively vague, so she could probably get away with choosing that. The realization that her mind had gone to something decidedly less family-friendly right away made her blush even further, but she decided to not talk about that at all as she used said card on Rosmontis and gave Shamare the second one. Suzuran's pick simply talked about "manual stimulation", so she figured something like a little shoulder massage would do. Rosmontis -and someone else too- seemed rather surprised by that, probably because giving massages wasn't exactly something they associated with the vulpo, but nobody complained.

As for Shamare, her card was a slightly more troublesome instruction to drink someone's saliva. Suzuran had decided to give her that one thinking she would pick her, since while they had never quite had a proper kiss, they had done a few arguably more intimate things together already, the kind of activities that required a small to... not so small degree of medical aid afterwards, but as it turned out Shamare had something else in mind. She didn't quite want to choose Suzuran because the thought of doing such things with her in front of other people had something vaguely bothersome to it, something faintly unpleasant. Doing that just because a card in a game said so, however, felt truly annoying, so much so Morte started running around in semicircles around her chair apparently. And she didn't really want to pick Rosmontis either, since... well, Shamare needed a reason to want to pick someone for that rather than a reason to not want to in the first place, but in the feline's case she sort of didn't like the way her attempts at becoming friends with Suzuran, overall successful as they might've been, could turn out. Case in point being the very game they were playing. Or, most notably, the fact that the very first of said attempts ended up in a foursome involving Suzuran, Rosmontis, Mon3tr and even Specter. So there was only one choice left, really.

"Ah, wait!" Suzuran nearly shouted as she saw her give the card to a rather puzzled Mon3tr.

"Can't I?" Shamare asked back, wondering if she had misunderstood a rule or something.

"That's, you see, mister Mon3tr, his saliva is... "

"... she can choose him if she wants to" Rosmontis eventually chimed in -some faint, odd mixture of caution and curiosity in her voice- when Suzuran failed to find either the words or the boldness to finish her sentence, her hands rubbing the feline's shoulders with a bit more intensity instead as she was still massaging her.

Silence briefly fell over the room, a silence which felt really awkward but only for a single person. Seeing that Suzuran apparently had nothing else to say, Mon3tr opened its mouth and pointed its head downward right above Shamare, its tongue protruding from between its lips -if we want to call them such- and coiling on itself a little, its tip ending up at around the same height of Shamare's chin as its thick, viscous, red saliva began to seep out from the tongue itself rather than dripping down from its mouth. Still, Shamare had no intention of actually licking that so, after a first probing touch of her fingertip, she cupped the glass-like tongue with both hands and ran them up along it, Mon3tr leaning further down to make things easier for her as she gathered enough saliva to fill her palms. She brought it to her face, taking a quick sniff of the substance more out of instinct than conscious choice. Finding Kal'Tsit's scent emanating from that came as a small surprise, she knew the two were related but she still ignored what the actual relationship between the creature and the head of the medical department was exactly. She didn't actually care all that much either way though. And so, to get it over with, she poured the equivalent of a glass and a half down her throat almost all at once, calmly licking the bits left on her hands off and silently appreciating its consistency since, while it did make bits of it stick to her throat, it also made it really easy to fully clean her hands of it.

Then something pulsed deep within her, a faint spark which immediatly combusted into a fire, small but lively and warm, sending a weird and very specific kind of tingle through her body. It was faintly similar to what she felt when touching Suzuran, but different. No, examining it a bit more, it was more... physical, more base, closer to the feeling she had whenever she and Eyjafjalla -no, she didn't really want to think about that at the moment.

Her left ear twitched twice. Her right one did so thrice. Her tail remained perfectly still.

"Shamare, are you... ok?" Suzuran asked, fully aware of the... stimulating effect Mon3tr's saliva had on people.

"Yes" she replied, swiftly and casually enough to make Suzuran truly believe she was somehow not affected by the substance.

Surprised, a bit puzzled but mostly at ease, Suzuran walked back to her seat and a new round soon began. This time, however, the one somewhat on edge was Rosmontis, because Shamare had started to more openly stare at her. She did speak up a bit more too, but something about her demeanor had changed a little. Not surprising at all, honestly, she had just drunk Mon3tr's saliva after all, but the feline felt sort of targetted anyway. Because of that, she couldn't help but worry a bit when the game ended with Shamare in second position, Mon3tr hesitantly drawing two cards and sort of wondering just for how long those three were planning to play for. As for the cards, the choice presented to it was, all things considered, a rather simple one. It showed Rosmontis one card, because while it had some sort of prior experience with Suzuran the creature had a strong feeling Shamare would get really upset had it picked her -Shamare herself hadn't even been considered- and the serpentine being believed that would end up affecting Rosmontis somehow, and gave the vulpo the other one.

"... can I sit on the table?" the feline asked after having red the instructions, getting a suddenly concerned look from Suzuran.

Nobody seemed to have anything to say, however, so she got up, pushed the cards away just enough to not sit on them and made herself relatively comfortable, Mon3tr bending its body and hovering much closer to the ground to slide its mouth underneath Rosmontis' dress. The feline leaned back a bit, a weak meowl leaving her lips as the creature's tongue smoothlessly entered her privates, aided by both her fluids and its own secretion, with the latter stoking a certain kind of need within the little girl, heat spreading from between her legs as she simply allowed the familiar sensation to lull her into a pleasant hug, pushing her head up against Mon3tr's palms when the creature went to pat her head too, just like it always did whenever they partook in similar activities together. Resting another large hand on the table next to her while paying attention to not actually put any of its weight onto it to avoid breaking or toppling it by mistake, just to let Rosmontis rest her own hand on its smooth, hard one, the creature slid its tongue further within her, knowing exactly where to touch her to please her, knowing exactly how much vigor to put into its strokes to not overstimulate her.

Suzuran, in the meanwhile, had both hands on her face, though the fingers that should've covered her left eye were open just enough to allow her to still observe what was going on at less than a meter of distance from her.

"You do these things with Lappland" Shamare whispered, her way of asking why exactly she was acting so flustered.

Somehow, the redness of Suzuran's cheeks grew even more intense.

"Th-that's... this is... I-I mean, you're right, but miss Lappland is... a-and it's just the two of us when she... "

"You had sex with these two once" Shamare added "There was a fourth person too"

Her voice was as flat as ever, but the slight bend in her right ear told Suzuran something.

"Shamare, are you... angry?"

At last, the vulpo turned towards her, bending her neck a little.

"Should I be?"

"I mea- "

A slightly louder meowl from Rosmontis interrupted Suzuran, not because it covered her words but rather because it reminded her of what was happening and that made her briefly want to find an hole in the steel floor of the landship and hide inside of it. Mon3tr pulled away from the feline, taking care to avoid looking at the other two girls as it floated back to its place, taking advantage of the length of its limbs to keep patting Rosmontis' head the whole time. As for Rosmontis herself, she took a couple of deeper breaths and then got off the table, wondering if they shouldn't have stopped with that game. If only because, while she did understand that Mon3tr had stopped because they couldn't keep Shamare and Suzuran waiting, she also would've liked for it to lick her for a while longer.

"... sorry" she said upon seeing the small wet stain left on the table where she had sat down.

"Wait" Shamare stopped her from sitting back on her chair.

She said nothing else, simply giving her the second card instead. Rosmontis nodded, a bit surprised admittedly as she wasn't sure why someone who seemingly felt animosity towards her would pick her instead of Mon3tr or Suzuran. The latter in particular, since those two seemed to be on good terms. Shamare's reasons were pretty simple however: for one, she was feeling a certain kind of need, one she usually got rid of by playing around -... if we want to describe it in such fashion- with Eyjafjalla or, more recently, with Lunacub too. Neither of them were aviable at the moment however, Mon3tr was sort of unalluring when it came to that kind of activities and Shamare didn't want to involve Suzuran with that particular side of herself, at the very least not due to something as stupid as an instruction in a game. As for her second reason, she figured that if one player became too exhausted to play the game would just end. That way she could get Suzuran away from there and the two of them could go back to spend some alone time together. It didn't really matter what they did, so long as it was just them.

And so she walked up to Rosmontis, ready to make full use of the "mutual masturbation" card. She had neither needles nor scissors nor anything else readily aviable, so she would have to just make do with her hand.

And what happened then was something neither Suzuran nor Mon3tr could quite understand. Not even Rosmontis herself, in truth. Not because it was difficult to grasp, but rather because it was simply... unexpected.

"Should I take the dress off?" Rosmontis asked as she wondered how to describe that evening in her terminal later.

"No. I won't either" Shamare replied, an ever so slight twitch of a single ear to indicate something, though what exactly only Suzuran could hope to tell.

And so, with a bit of awkwardness from one of them due to how the other one was behaving, they both just sort of slid an hand underneath each other's skirt or dress. Rosmontis was almost surprised to find a faint trace of wetness on Shamare's underwear, though she couldn't actually quite recall what exactly that was supposed to be indicative of. Shamare, on her part, was neither interested in nor surprised by how soaked Rosmontis' panties were. If anything, it sort of annoyed her. And so, before the feline could actually do anything, the vulpo acted, her fingers sliding past the drenched underwear and right into the tender privates.

Something loud escaped the feline's lips almost immediatly, her tail and ears standing right up, her fur on edge as her knees gave out nearly instantly, Shamare dropping to the floor with her to not break contact as her fingers kept working on the little feline, Rosmontis' own hand having stopped acting before having even really started and looking for something to hold on to, something which ended up being none other than Shamare herself. Mon3tr and Suzuran looked on with equal amounts of surprise and concern as Rosmontis broke down further, a loud mixture of moans and meowls and something else freely escaping from her throat as Shamare kept reaching for the most sensitive spots, bending her fingers in the most stimulating ways and applying the most pleasurable pressure while reminding herself to not go any further than that. At most three seconds went by before Mon3tr reached out to break them apart, because the last time Rosmontis got sexually overstimulated she accidentally released her Arts and sent Mon3tr -and herself, still in its embrace- flying across a few walls of Rhodes Island. Not something anyone had any need to see happen again, especially because Mon3tr doubted the vulpo would survive that.

"That's enough for me" Shamare casually said as she turned around while Rosmontis began to slowly catch her breath, Mon3tr gently caressing her while glaring at the vulpo.

"... Sh... Shamare... what was that?" Suzuran asked, utterly bewildered as her friend wiped her hand clean with an handkerchief, a motion she was sure she had seen once before, just that same day too.

Shamare turned her way and blinked.

"... she fell down"

"Shamare, I'm serious"

"... I just did what the card said" she replied, cutting the conversation short by going back to her seat.

Shamare was greatly annoyed now. Mostly by herself, since she hadn't meant to show that side of herself to Suzuran.

To Lisa.

She always made sure Suzuran wasn't around whenever she played that way with either Lunacub or Eyjafjalla -or, on a few rare occasions, with someone else coming knocking at her door just for that-, in fact, and she had even managed to keep her completely in the dark as far as Eyjafjalla's involvement went. Suzuran did know something was up with Lunacub, but she just thought those to be weird games like spending half a day locked up inside a wooden chest. Odd for sure, but Suzuran wasn't really one to judge so long as she thought it was safe. What she had just seen Shamare do, however, had made a little doubt sprout up inside her mind. How stupid, she reprimanded herself. That warmth she still felt deep within had made her act without thinking. She shouldn't have done that. Not that intensely, at the very least. In hindsight, her entire course of action had been wrong, which made something exceptionally similar to resentment towards herself well up within her mind. At the same time, however, that made her wonder what exactly was her problem with Rosmontis.

In hindsight, Shamare thought, taking care of Eyjafjalla in such fashion earlier that day had been a pretty gross imprudence too.

What an horrible few hours, those were turning out to be.

As for Suzuran, she figured that pressing Shamare further would earn her nothing and turned towards Rosmontis instead.

The feline's breath had stabilized already, but her legs still looked a little unsteady as Mon3tr helped her to her chair.

"Rosmontis, are you alright?" the vulpo asked, worry overriding her embarrassment for the most part.

"Yes" she replied, rubbing the lower part of her belly "That felt... good. Too much so I think" she added, making Suzuran's cheeks flare up "... you are scary" she then said somewhat flatly to Shamare, who simply tilted her head a little.

Shamare used to hear that a lot, a whole lot, and from everyone. So much so those words didn't even really mean anything to her anymore. But the reason behind them used to be wholly different, admittedly. Shamare was fairly sure she didn't care about that either though. So she simply refrained from answering in any way.

"So... do you want to continue?" Suzuran asked, though to who exactly was hard to tell even for her.

Shamare looked at her, Mon3tr looked at Rosmontis, and Rosmontis looked at the clock.

"A little more. If you want to" the feline replied.

"Sure!" Suzuran agreed, putting on the brightest smile she could pull off at the moment to hide the fact that she didn't actually want to continue playing, albeith only because it was clear by then that Shamare had something against Rosmontis.

And so, with a weird mixture of wildly different moods mixed together, the odd group resumed playing. Suzuran tried to say something every now and then, but the only one who really replied in any way to her was Mon3tr. Rosmontis and Shamare were both trying to not pay too much attention to each other, for nearly opposite reason admittedly, and that resulted in them sort of ignoring the other two as well, although even that stemmed from different reasons. It came to the point that Mon3tr remained silent upon getting to a single card in its hand without anyone noticing, nor anyone calling it out when it dropped that last card on its next turn.

Had it been up to the creature, both Suzuran and Shamare would've been sent back to their rooms -with... different degrees of courtesy- and the rest of the evening would've been spent cuddling the little feline. Or doing something a little more intense if she so wanted, which Mon3tr itself really wouldn't have minded either to be totally honest. But as things were not up to it, it simply drew two cards and wondered what to do with those. One of them would land in Suzuran's hands and, while Mon3tr did hold a bit of animosity towards her for having brought along Shamare, it also doubted she had actually meant for things to turn out like that. So it used one card on Shamare and handed the other one to Suzuran.

Shamare didn't really show any reaction upon seeing the card presented to her. She just got up, turned around and moved her tail out of the way, something about her apparent, complete lack of care bothering the serpentine being. To make things even weirder, she didn't react at all even after its large palm delivered a single, firm spank to her rear. If anything, the one to yelp had been Suzuran, from a mixture of surprise and second-hand embarrassment. Now, Mon3tr had naturally used only a fraction of its strength, it had to intention to kill or even just actually harm Shamare, but it still saw her body shake a bit from the impact. If that was just self control, then it was truly an outstanding display of self control.

"Didn't that hurt?" Rosmontis asked, something that could be either curiosity or worry in her voice.

"Yes" Shamare answered, which in turn made Mon3tr feel oddly conflicted about what it had just done.

"Ahem... are you ok? That sounded... strong" Suzuran chimed in, getting exactly the same reply as Rosmontis.

And, if nothing else, Shamare did sit back on her chair as if nothing was wrong. So Suzuran finally took a look at her card and promptly froze upon realizing that it was another copy of a previously seen card, her gaze then falling on the other three present one at a time. Rosmontis had said earlier she could give the card to herself, but that was definitively only true for actions she could actually perform either on her own or on herself, which wasn't the case for that card. So she had to pick someone.

Mon3tr was kind of out of the question. The creature would've been the least troublesome one to choose, mentally speaking -which was in itself concerning, one could say- but Suzuran feared that picking it right after it had spanked Shamare might send the wrong kind of message. As for Shamare herself, the situation regarding her was sort of complicated. She and Suzuran had already been physically intimate before, at least so long as one considered Suzuran biting Shamare hard enough to draw blood and drink it from the source in an odd display of affection as physical intimacy, but even leaving aside the fact that Suzuran herself still wasn't entirely sure what she truly thought of that, the action required from the card was a really different one, and not one the vulpo quite wanted to go through with with Shamare, not under those particular circumstances. And so, with that in mind, she gave her card to Rosmontis, who simply aknowledged the command with a small nod of her head and got off her seat.

"D-do you mind if I... if I stay here?" Suzuran asked as she turned her chair sideway, because as much as her remaining there would make things a bit more awkward for Rosmontis, it would at least let her mantain a minimum of decency in the form of beind hidden from Mon3tr and Shamare's direct gaze.

... maybe not Mon3tr's given how far up its head was due to its size, admittedly, but Suzuran somehow managed to not think about that. As for whether that was truly better than sitting on the table and giving those two her back, well, that was debatable.

"No" the feline answered, getting on her knees and rolling up Suzuran's dress "... can you lift your hips a bit? I have to pull these off" she added, her hands carefully grasping the vulpo's pantyhose and panties.

"Ah, s-sure" she answered, the searing feeling of Shamare's gaze on her making a cold sweat run down her spine.

After a little bit of maneuvering, Rosmontis managed to bare the vulpo's privates, a thin but unmistakable layer of transparent fluid covering them. To compensate, Suzuran brought both hands to her face to hide it, because for all the times Lappland had done that to her she still found the act to be beyond embarrassing.

Her voice leaked out a little when a jolt ran through her, Rosmontis' barbed tongue running along her entrance and poking her clit for a brief moment, the rough texture making up for the softness of her touch by scraping her in a decidedly pleasant way. Her tails fluttered when the feline licked her again, gently holding her hips in place and feeling her tremble with every stroke, a warm and fuzzy feeling beginning to build up within her. A part of Suzuran felt glad that those chairs weren't meant for someone with as many tails as her, since that made them a little uncomfortable for her to use and that helped her not focus too much on what was going on between her legs. Rosmontis, on her part, simply thought the vulpo's silence meant she wasn't doing a good job and became a bit more aggressive in an attempt to compensate, interpreting the sudden buck of her hips as a sign of appreciation of the way she had just used her tongue to push down the stiff, sensitive clit, sending a sudden spark through Suzuran's mind and making her voice leak out a little.

Still, while Rosmontis had much more experience than one would suspect, said experience came almost entirely from her time spent with Mon3tr, and that wasn't too helpful at the moment as reference material. She knew what would feel good for herself, but knowing how to actually do those things to someone else was a little different, and in fact Suzuran failed to keep herself from thinking that being eaten out by Lappland was a much, much more intense experience.

One thing Rosmontis had over the lupo was the aforementioned barbed tongue, however, which sent another acute shock through the little vulpo as she slid inside her, lapping up some of the flowing juices more out of instinct than conscious choice, taking ample sniffs of Suzuran's intense scent from as up close as physically possible. Her aroma didn't make her feel safe or at ease, unlike that of Kal'Tsit -or, by extension, Mon3tr- but there was some odd kind of alluring sweetness to it which Rosmontis found pleasing, a sweetness which grew more intense with every stroke of her tongue. Her ears twitching whenever Suzuran leaked a soft moan or an half-suppressed whimper, the feline continued stimulating her, although a faint sense of hostility coming from another seat made the entire act feel weird.

Suzuran, on her part, was making a conscious effort to ignore Shamare out of fear of what her face might look like at the moment, her friend's presence making her even more conscious of what she was doing, her tails waving more with embarrassment than anything else behind her. But Rosmontis kept licking her, running her tongue over her dripping entrance, poking her stiff clit, rubbing her insides, each touch sending warm shivers up her spine and forcing little noises out of her lips, the rough massage bringing her closer and closer until the pleasure tipped over at last, her entire body growing stiff for a few moments, her teeth clamping down relatively gently on her own hand to keep herself silent -to a degree at least- as her legs closed around Rosmontis' head to either hold her in place or pull her that little bit further against herself, a reaction which Lappland loved but which the feline found a little startling. Not enough to complain about it, however, as she simply waited for Suzuran to ride out her climax, her breathing resuming in a matter of three, maybe four seconds as her body relaxed, the warmth within her beginning to abate.

"Was that good?" Rosmontis asked, out of both genuine curiosity and hope that she hadn't disappointed Suzuran.

Whose face turned even redder at being asked such a question. Suzuran tried to say something, but when she opened her mouth to speak only a jumbled mess of meaningless noises came out, which led her to force a cough to regain a bit of composure.

"I-tha-well, you... you were very good, Rosmontis... ?" she eventually managed to reply.

"Mnh" was all that the feline said back, apparently relieved by by that answer.

"It's getting late" Shamare chimed in "We should make this round the last" she suggested as Mon3tr dealed the cards, her proposition being accepted pretty much immediatly by everyone.

Her voice had been rather cold, as per her usual, but the specific way her ears were bent -at different angles and in different directions- told Suzuran a lot. A whole lot. Enough to make her seriously consider just calling it quits right there and then and talking things out with Shamare, because there was clearly something on her mind. But she gave up on that idea when her turn to play came, as all the other three had already begun the round.

Which ended up being neither long nor short, all things considered, and saw Rosmontis place down her last card first, Suzuran coming in second with just three cards left in her hand. The feline drew the two final cards from the other deck and pondered who to pick and what to give the little vulpo. One of the two options had her a bit curious, but she wasn't sure who to choose for that. Well, not Shamare because she was a bit worried about what might happen in that case, but still.

"Do you mind if I give you your card now? I'm still deciding who to use mine on"

"Oh, not at all"

And so Suzuran received hers. A rather tame card that one, at least relatively speaking, as it simply said to kiss someone.

So she picked Shamare.

That was, in all honesty, the most embarrassing choice she could've made, but she kind of just... wanted to avoid making her even more upset? She wasn't even really sure why Shamare was annoyed in the first place, though she wasn't exactly clueless either, but maybe that would help somehow.

Judging by how silently Shamare stood up, walked to Suzuran, gave her a very quick peck on the cheek and went back to her seat, however, her hopes could reasonably be described as a little pile of dust on the floor. Her ears dropped a little, which in turn made Shamare's tail flutter a bit behind her, out of sight.

Rosmontis watched the scene play out without saying a word, just bending her head a little in confusion as she kept thinking about her own card before eventually giving it to Suzuran again. She was curious, after all, and Mon3tr was aviable much more often than Suzuran. Or, well, it actually wasn't, but Rosmontis still spent considerably more time with the serpentine being than with the little vulpo.

"... a-ahem, this one is... " Suzuran tried to find the words as she looked at the final card of the evening, a bitter lump forming in her throat.

For a short while, nobody said anything. Mon3tr was simply waiting for that game to end so that Shamare would go away. Shamare was wondering if there was still enough time to do something with Suzuran later, maybe carve something on an apple. Rosmontis was asking herself how exactly she had angered Shamare, and if it really was a good idea to not ask her directly.

"... Rosmontis, can I... can I skip this one?" Suzuran eventually asked as she put the card back down "I'm sorry but this is... we're friends, but this is not something I'm comfortable doing with a friend. It's... it's more personal than that"

The feline tilted her head to the side.

"It is?" she asked back, admittedly rather puzzled that Suzuran had reacted that way to that of all cards.

"Yes. This is... h-how do I put this... it's a really intimate thing, for me at least"

"... yes. I don't really understand, but it's fine"

"I'm sorry, I didn't want to end the evening like this"

"Suzuran" Shamare then chimed in, her gaze having moved from Suzuran's face to the card she had put down and then back to Suzuran "I did it wrong. Let me try again"

"Eh? Ah, ehm... sure... ?" Suzuran agreed with a sudden blush and a wave of her tails, almost but not entirely sure of what Shamare was talking about.

And so Shamare got off her seat and walked up to her again, putting her palms almost on Suzuran's cheeks. The little vulpo stared at her in a brief moment of confusion then nodded, if somewhat hesitantly, and only then did Shamare cup her cheeks.

Then she leaned down and placed her lips on Suzuran's.

Her tails waved with vigor but exactly once, her ears standing tall and her fur doing the same as the sudden, perhaps not entirely unexpected contact shook her, her mind blanking out for a moment before reconstructing each and every single detail of her surroundings. Shamare didn't do anything else, she simply remained still as she waited for Suzuran to do something. And Suzuran did eventually act, putting her own hands on Shamare's and... nothing else. But that felt like a sort of message, and Shamare began to kiss her for real.

Even more suddenly than before, Suzuran's mind collapsed on a single thing -her more-than-friend- as everything else faded into pure blackness, Shamare's tongue entering her mouth to touch Suzuran's own, the annoying warmth which had been twitching within her since she had drunk Mon3tr's saliva abathing, replaced by something both more tender and primal.

Out of sheer instinct, to sate a basic, senseless need, Suzuran then moved her mouth back a little and did what she had just refused to do to Rosmontis. She bit Shamare, even if just on the lips, even if softly, even if no blood was drawn from the act she bit her, and the feeling of closeness, of contact made Shamare feel something else still, something hot and gentle and unsettling and alluring, the act of biting then intertwining into their kiss until one of them broke free to draw a long, deep breath.

Shamare then stepped back, perhaps due to Rosmontis' curious gaze, and went to put her shoes back on.

"... a-ahem!" Suzuran -eventually- shook herself, forcing a cough as she stood up "It was a pleasure, Rosmontis" she said, not even realizing how awkward that choice of words had been given the circumstances "I hope we'll get to play again sometime. Though... maybe something a little more... ordinary would be good too"

"Mnh. It was fun" the feline replied as she accompanied both vulpos to the door, taking care to keep Suzuran between herself and Shamare "Thank you"

"You're welcome!"

And with that Rosmontis closed them out in the hallway and turned around to watch Mon3tr.

She guessed she should've taken at least a quick shower before going to bed. Before that still, however, she felt like cuddling a little bit.

As for the other two, Suzuran was relieved but also a little confused by Shamare's sudden mood change. Not much, just a little. And, as they walked back to Suzuran's room -because, if nothing else, it was both the closest one and on the way to Shamare's own quarter either way- she decided to ask just what had happened exactly.

And Shamare apologized. Because she thought -feared- that Suzuran was truly so naive as to do those kind of things with anyone for something as stupid as a line written on a card game. She apologized, because Suzuran had clearly shown that she did have boundaries, if maybe a little oddly placed. That even if she kept making new friends, that was not a threath to her relationship with Shamare. That there were things she only wanted to do with Shamare. ... and Lappland as well, yes, but given the state of her infection whether Lappland would last long enough to see Suzuran grow up was an entirely debatable matter, and one of the three main reasons why Shamare was fine with those two being as close together as they were.

Yes, Shamare apologized.

In her mind.

"Nothing particular happened, Lisa. Morte was hungry. I stirred up a bit of negative emotions to feed it" she said instead, all of her words except for the very first one being technically true.

Suzuran, on her part, knew something else was up. But she could also tell that Shamare was feeling at least a little bit bad about the way she had acted, it was in the way her ears were bent. And so she decided to not push the question.

"I understand, but next time you really shouldn't do that to our host. Actually, isn't there something else Morte can eat? Something a bit more cheerful?"

"... I will look into it" she replied, because even though she already knew the answer to that question was "no" she didn't want to be that blunt about it with Suzuran.

"Thanks!" she smiled back, and for a little while Shamare simply allowed herself to melt into the warm shine that seemed to radiate from Suzuran.

---

As for the things Suzuran had borrowed from the library, Lappland ended up taking a look at them out of curiosity and confronting the little vulpo about the erotic novel she had snatched out, as its plot was apparently about a siracusan girl falling for a columbian after having tasted his cooking and eloping with him. Now, Lappland wasn't so far gone as to get angry at every piece of junk people with far too much time on their hands felt like committing to paper, but that did give her an excuse to, shall we say, spend the night giving Suzuran what she called a "correction course".

The entire night.

Nobody really bought Suzuran's excuse that she had slept in a bad position when asking her why she couldn't quite walk straight the next day due to how much... activity she had seen, but what truly happened was so far removed from what anyone thought possible and Suzuran insisted enough on her version of the story that nobody really gave it much thought in the end.

Shamare, on her part, did realize what happened.

The following day, Lappland reportedly fell down nearly every single staircase on the landship, tripped on her own feet a few dozens times and nearly cut off her finger when a knife's handle shattered and sent the blade flying while she was cooking.

The lupo had a good laugh about all of that.

---

Thank you for reading.