The Cat Killed (the Wolf's) Boredom
"I know that this is really sudden, but could you keep this in your room for a couple of days? It'd be a great help"
"Why?"
"Well... my family's coming over for a visit tomorrow, and I want to be sure they don't happen to see these things by accident. I don't think I would ever be able to live it down... it's nothing troublesome, I promise! I haven't even had the time to unwrap them yet so they're also really clean!"
"... fine"
"Thanks a lot! Is there anything I can do to repay you?"
"Suzuran has been busy lately. She hasn't taken care of her fur much"
"Oh, sure, I'll see if I can convince her to drop by for a little treatment. ... I won't say that you asked me to"
"Correct"
"Do you want one too?"
"No"
Despite what nearly every single person aboard Rhodes Island who had ever spent some time with Lunacub would say, the lupo could actually display an admirable tolerance to boredom. Among the many things Agnese had taught her figured how to set up traps and ambushes to hunt, after all, and just like in every other thing she had taught her, the Beast Lord had been thorough in making sure her pupil would learn well. Admittedly, that didn't change the fact that ambushes were possibly Lunacub's least favorite way of hunting, unless she was the one pushing the prey into an ambush set up by the rest of her pack. But since by that point in her life Lunacub had already proven more than capable of chasing prey and directing it where she wanted, Agnese nearly always had her lie in wait instead. She had even purposely made her wait for hours on end before actually allowing any prey to wander within her range, on some occasions. The first couple of times had actually been somewhat nerve-wracking for Lunacub, dinner was on the line after all, and not even just hers but that of her fellow packmates too. Over time, however, she came to consider the time spent waiting as a bore. Not quite the result Agnese had been hoping for, no, but since Lunacub did actually spring to action the moment the opportunity presented itself, her mentor decided she had learned well enough and allowed her to return to her more favorite ways of hunting.
Lunacub could deal with boredom remarkably well under the right conditions, yes.
Those she was in at the moment just so happened to not be the right conditions at all, however.
"I'm dying"
"Silence"
"I just told you I'm dying, how can you tell me to shut up?"
Shamare looked up from her book, a large and heavy volume whose title Lunacub didn't find interesting -"The Trials of Salem" or something like that- and stared at the lupo.
"You are not dying, you are studying"
"It's the same thing! You're just using three more letters to describe it!"
"Don't shout"
Lunacub's ears twitched. She actually liked to rile up Shamare, their games were the most fun when the little vulpo was a little bit annoyed, but she had also learned to tell when she was getting "fun and games" annoyed apart from when she was getting "go sit in the corner" annoyed.
"You promised you would study the whole afternoon. That means until the short hand marks the eighteenth hour" she added -again, much to her own unexpressed chagrin- as she pointed to the ever so slightly odd clock hanged on the wall.
Lunacub's survival instinct wrestled with an entirely different kind of instinct within her, and for once it won that particular fight.
"Sure, sure, let's pretend you're the pack leader" she sort of complied as she sat back down "But what do I even need this stuff for?" the lupo inquired -not for the first time- as she pointed an accusatory finger to the hateful book placed in front of her, "The guide to navigating public areas and social gatherings" its title, with a little "for dummies" added by marker right beneath.
There was some sort of irony in the fact that Shamare of all people was supervising Lunacub's study of such a subject, admittedly, but that was not something the lupo was even remotely aware of.
"The spectral fangbeast chose it. Not me"
Lunacub still didn't know why and didn't quite really care either, but that's how Shamare referred to Agnese. For some reason. As for the answer itself, that was nothing the lupo wasn't already aware of, but the half-twitch of the vulpo's left ear told her that would've been a bad time to pursue further clarifications. And so she begrudgingly went back to reading, fighting a desperate and losing battle against the insidious assault of sleepiness, the lupo falling further and further into its tender grasp with every line she read, yawns escaping her more and more frequently because by the fat of a juicy burdenbeast, was that some boring gibberish she was forcing on her poor eyes.
Her ears then caught something. Footsteps, someone approaching, and quite quickly at that. To give her the due credit, Lunacub's senses were sharper than those of nearly every other denizen of Rhodes Island, with the only exception being her sense of smell because vulpos were simply unbeatable on that front. Still, she heard a person running, their hurried steps getting closer and closer. Definitively a bipedal, for starter. The steps themselves sounded heavy, but not terribly so. A young adult she'd say. Truly, the fact that she had heard someone walking through the soundproofing of a dormitory room was impressive in itself.
"Someone's probably coming here"
Shamare sort of appreciated the warning, but she didn't want to make a show of it for a variety of reason, simply nodding instead. Lunacub was an airhead in her opinion, but that didn't mean that she only ever spoke silliness and nonsense. The vulpo closed her book, putting it down and waiting. A very short time later, someone knocked on the door with a vigor and franticness Shamare could recognize. So she grabbed Morte, got up and went to answer with the doll in one hand.
"Shamare! Popukar! She wants to take her eyepatch off again!" Bubble pretty much screamed.
"... why did you come to me specifically for this?"
"Because you made it all right when she took it off last time and nearly made an huge mess!"
Outwardly, Shamare was completely unperturbed. Internally, however, it would be apt enough to say that she was sighing. Making sure Popukar wouldn't take her eyepatch off was her responsibility, yes, but only when they happened to be together. It wasn't a full-time commitment. And there were many, many others aboard who could deal with it.
... but explaining that to Bubble might take longer than just going along with her. Why did Popukar even want to take her eyepatch off? Did she take too many sweets and lose her head again? Did Aak misplace some of his candies? The thought did worry Shamare to a degree, admittedly. Popukar was quite nice to have around, all things considered, which made the vulpo care for her a fair bit.
"Wait" she told Bubble before simply closing the door and turning around towards Lunacub "I have to go. Keep studying. You aren't allowed to touch any of my belongings without permission. You don't have permission"
Lunacub groaned.
"Fiiiine"
Shamare nearly considered leaving Morte there for good measure, but decided not to and opened the door once more.
"Let's go"
"Hurry, hurry!"
The very moment the door closed again, Lunacub jumped to her feet, the lethally boring book already forgotten, her eyes scanning the room. Leaving altogether sounded like a bad idea: she had no clue how long it would take Shamare to get back, and not being around when that eventually happened would probably lead to her getting another earful from Agnese, at best. She considered trying to follow Shamare through the air ducts, but discarded that idea too. That little vulpo was weird, after all. There was a very, very, so very tiny chance that she might notice her, and that would have the same result as not being around when she returned. What to do then, what do to. Her eyes had naturally landed on the mini fridge in the meanwhile, but both the appliance and its content counted as Shamare's belongings. Messing with those was a little too risky for the lupo.
No, it isn't she corrected herself as she boldly opened the tiny door, letting out an audible groan upon having found it completely empty.
It's not that she was really hungry at the moment, just... food could never hurt.
... alright, there were some kind of foods which could actually hurt, but that was neither there nor then.
Closing the appliance, the lupo ended up walking in circles around the small table she had been sitting at until a short while ago for a few minutes, before eventually settling on what to do. She walked to the corner of the room where she had left her coat, the pouches she usually carried on her belt and her knife, rolled everything up into the coat and carried it back to the table. Sitting down once again, she took a small cloth and a really tiny dagger out from a pouch, lied the cloth down in front of herself and emptied the content of another pouch on it. That really wasn't the use she normally had for that piece of fabric, but given the current circumstances she figured that being able to clean up everything by simply rolling it up on itself would come in really handy were the need to arise. As for the other items, they were originally bones of a not too small fowlbeast Lunacub had hunted during her last trip off the landship. There were more than enough animals on Rhodes Island itself too, to be honest, but those were unfortunately not a viable target due to an annoyingly long list of annoying reasons.
Not like catching that fowlbeast had been any difficult either, granted. The meat itself had been pretty bland and unsatisfying to eat -though it could sort of be argued that modern cooking had done irreparable damage to Lunacub's taste buds and culinary standards- but she had expected at much. The reason she had hunted that one down, after all, were its feathers and its bones. Most of the former were lying in a bag in her tent, which was currently set up only she and Agnese knew where within the walls or Rhodes Island, or at most on its deck. Most of the latter, on the other hand, had been discarded, and nearly everything left was currently lying in front of her, together with a couple of other tools too.
And so, grabbing the little carving knife, Lunacub got back to work. Fowlbeast bones were usually rather soft, relatively speaking at least, but the one she had killed was large enough, its were as sturdy as she needed them to. And they were mostly hollow, which made them easier to work.
The first thing she had made with all of that was a little whistle, with a couple of feathers attached for decoration. It'd taken quite a lot of work to get it right, she had a couple of botched attempts lying somewhere in her tent to demonstrate it, but she was quite proud of the final result. It was compact but pretty, she had even carved a couple of extra lines on the sides to make it look better, and it could play a few different tunes too. Nothing one could actually play a song with, admittedly -... probably- but it was quite pleasant to hear. Or not that annoying, at the very least.
That one was meant for Suzuran. Lunacub hadn't really played with her anymore after that incident with Aak's what-were-they-called-again, his funny candies thingies, but they did occasionally meet and Lunacub didn't really mind hanging out with her a little every now and then.
The second thing she had crafted could reasonably be described as a feather brush, although it was decidedly smaller than those used for cleaning. Lunacub wasn't terribly familiar with the concept of dusting either, to be completely honest, but the feathers felt nice on the skin. They were smooth and cool to the touch, and running them on her back or on her palms made her relax, so she figured others would like it too. That one had been much easier to make, although she had to, shall we say, borrow a few stuff from other people to actually get the feathers to stick to the bone handle properly.
Eyjafjalla's sight and hearing were constantly deteriorating, but Lunacub figured she could still enjoy something that relied or neither. The lupo had first seen the caprinae through an air vent, during one of her many adventures through the ducts of the landship, but they met properly for the first time during a play session with Shamare, and they became sort of friends from there. Eyjafjalla's hair and fur were really fluffy, and she was always warm to the touch. Lunacub liked snuggling up to her when nobody else was looking.
The third item, which is to say the one she was currently working on, was itself a crafting tool of sort, and probably the easiest one to make out of the three. One end consisted of a long, thin and sharp tip with a small hole halfway through the bone's length, while the opposite side had been carved into what seemed to be a small scissor, the blades opening very, very little but still enough to cut things such as threads or tiny wires. The entire thing had a few feathers tied to the core part, snugly waved around it as to not get in the way during use, while both ends of the tool had been left bare. Lunacub only had to further sharpen the tip and adjust the feathers' latching, since as it turned out they were on too loosely.
That one was for Shamare. As a needle it was too big to be used for small, precise sewing, but for other kinds of works it would've been more than functional. Lunacub's relationship with Shamare was a somewhat odd one, admittedly, though Agnese had at least managed to talk her pupil out of calling the little vulpo her dominatrix. Not really because that would've been wrong -which in itself was a constant source of headaches for Agnese-, but rather because... well, it'd have been really, really awkward if someone not directly involved were to hear that. Really awkward in the very best case.
Finishing up that tool took less time than Lunacub had expected, however, which left the lupo with nothing to do once again. There... might've been someone else still she could've crafted a little something for, now that she thought about it, but she didn't have the materials with her at the moment anyway so whatever. As for Agnese, she wouldn't have liked little trinkets anyway. So she gave the other two items another check, she couldn't simply gift someone a defective product after all, her pride was on the line, but even that only took a few minutes at most. She put everything back, cleaned up the few bits and pieces of bones and feathers which had fallen off as she worked and resumed looking for something to do, walking around to see if there was anything to play with.
That's when her nose caught something. A very, very faint scent coming from under the bed, a smell she was sure she'd sniffed at least a couple of times before. She checked under Shamare's bed and found a suspicious cardboard box, somewhat large, not really the kind of thing the vulpo usually kept around as she liked leather chests and that sort of things a lot more. And so, her curiosity piqued, Lunacub dragged it out and brought it to the table. There was a, how was that thing called, there was scotch tape holding the box close, and also sticking a piece of paper to it. Lunacub didn't bother with that however, simply leaning in to take a better sniff at the box.
Yeah, she had absolutely smelled that scent before, but she couldn't quite entirely place it. Still, that had to mean that box didn't belong to Shamare, which in turn meant Lunacub could do whatever she wanted with it. So she pulled the tape off, her ears twitching a little at the unpleasant noise, and opened it. Everything inside was wrapped in matte plastic and smelled of new stuff, it was even arranged quite neatly at that. So she simply grabbed the first thing her hand happened to fall on and took it out.
"Weird" she simply commented as she ripped the first piece of plastic off, revealing two pairs of handcuffs with the keys lined inside the same envelope.
She tossed those back in and grabbed something else, doing away with another packaging and finding a plastic wand of sort with an almost spherical head on one side and a surprisingly long cable ending with a plug on the other. A small leather harness of some sort, a bunch of straps it would seem, was attached to the main body. There were also a couple of buttons and a wheel with numbers written on it on the wand, but nothing happened even as Lunacub tried to push and roll them a bit. She stared at the plug for a little bit and then looked around, trying to remember if Shamare even had electric sockets in her room. She had to, right? A quick search proved that she did indeed have at least one, and the lupo plugged the thing into it. The wand reacted to its buttons getting pushed this time around, the rotund head buzzing, even audibly so as she tried rolling the wheel up. She actually knew what that was, she had seen it on a catalogue in that pretty indoor garden. They called those things electric massagers, and were supposedly good for making your muscles relax. The one time she had gotten a massage from Perfumer, however, the vulpo had only used her bare hands, and Lunacub simply didn't believe that it was possible for anything to feel more relaxing than Perfumer's palms on her back and shoulders. Everyone was probably getting tricked if they seriously believed that buzzing thing could feel relaxing. Her interest in the wand quickly fading away, she turned it off and didn't even bother unplugging it as she went back to the box, taking another item from it.
"Oh, I know this one too!"
It was a leather collar with a chain. She had seen that vouivre girl, Vanilla, put things like that on her pets when walking them around. That one seemed a little small though, maybe it was meant for a very young slug? Maybe a metal crab? Did she have any other critter? Honestly, the content of that box as a whole wasn't really making sense to her. She dropped the collar on the table and pulled out the last thing left, which also happened to be the largest one.
To tell the whole truth, Lunacub couldn't make any sense of that thing at first. It was made of white cloth, one really soft and smooth to the touch but also surprisingly sturdy -she tried tearing it a little bit just becase she could and failed-, but there were a lot of of leather belts attached to it too, plus a weird metallical box with buttons and a glass panel on it on one point. She tried putting the whole thing down on the floor and spreading it as wide as she could before taking a few steps back and taking another look from a distance.
"... is this a shirt? No, it's too large... a jacket?"
That seemed unlikely too, but she couldn't really think of anything else either. And, upon further inspection, she did admittedly find what might be the hole for sticking one's head through and what seemed like sleeves. Boredom and curiosity mixing together, Lunacub decided to try and put that weird thing on. It... did fit around her like a sort of jacket, she guessed, but there were so many details which simply made no sense. She could understand the whole thing being a loose fit since she wasn't exactly a tall person herself, if anything she was quite short, but the sleeves were way, way too long. With how much cloth she had to pull up along her arms to get her hands out, she got the impression that thing had been made for someone whose arms were twice as long as they should've been. Then there was that little metallic component on the front, on her chest. There was a display on it, together with a few buttons, but no matter how many times she pushed them nothing happened. All the belts present on that garment were linked to that little box, either directly or by being linked to another belt which was, and they all went through so many loops in the cloth that Lunacub couldn't really see a way to take them off without having to cut and tear a few bits off here and there.
Maybe those weren't actually belts though, she couldn't see any buckles anywhere, plus she was sure belts weren't meant to run along the sleeves. Or so many times across the chest, in parallel lines. Or... really, there were so many things wrong with that she didn't even know where to start. There were even a few oddly placed zippers. Well, the hole for the tail was comfortable, at least. The cardboard box looked like one of those from the landship's net store -she had followed some deliveries every now and then to kill some time in the past, without being noticed naturally, so she knew how those looked like- but whoever had bought that had to be stupid, the cloth was nice but the garment as a whole wasn't even comfortable to wear. She tried looking into the box again, but all that was left were two very, very tiny books of sort which really didn't interest her at all, a small remote with no batteries and a cable with no apparent use.
Just as she was about to take that thing off, however, she heard something again. Footsteps. Well, she heard footsteps somewhat often in truth, Shamare's dorm room wasn't in some remote corner of the landship nobody ever went through after all, and Lunacub's ears were especially sharp, but she had a feeling those were coming towards her. They were too heavy to be Shamare's though, so she didn't bother putting everything back in place, not even when someone knocked at the door.
"Shamare? Are you in? I came to pick up my things. ... Shamare?"
Oh, Lunacub knew that voice.
"Shamare, are you in? ... the door's not locked though... "
The lupo said nothing. She wanted to see if that little kitty really had what it took to enter Shamare's room uninvited.
Lunacub had it, after all.
... for better or for worse, but she had it.
And, admittedly, she was quite surprised to see the door open and Goldenglow poke her head in to take a look inside. The two simply stared at each other, one pretending to not be impressed at all, the other simply flabberstagged.
"Hello, kitty" Lunacub greeted.
"That's my- !"
For some reason, Goldenglow nearly shouted in response, her face beet red and her fur standing up. The feline nearly slammed both hands on her own mouth to silence herself, quickly walked in and closed the door behind her before resuming to speak, her voice more hushed but still noticeably upset.
"Why are you wearing that?" she asked, nearly pointing an accusatory finger at Lunacub.
"It was in a box"
"What do you mea- ?!"
Goldenglow's gaze only then fell on the cardboard box lying on the table. Lying half empty on the table, that is, some of its content taken out, the vibrating wand even plugged into an electric socket already. Her cheeks turned even redder, her fur stood even straighter up and an unmistakeable tint of anger seeped into her words.
"Those are mine! Who gave you the right to open that?!" she asked, each word making her feel like sinking into an hole in the floor somewhere and either hide for all of eternity or die of shame.
"There was no sign to not open it"
"What do you mean "there was no sign", that box wasn't yours!"
"Nothing's yours until you take it though?" she sort of said, sort of asked back, a little confused, as if she had just had to say something painfully obvious "... oh, wait, that was only out in the wilds I think? Eh, you got duped anyway"
"Wha... how so?" Goldenglow inquired, now a little worried herself.
She had given in to her curiosity and purchased the entire bundle since it was out with a discount on the landship's private web store, but even at a lowered price that box had still come at quite the expense after all. Nothing she couldn't afford, naturally, but nonetheless an embarrassing thing to have on her personal finances' balance sheet, so the thought that she might've even gotten a defective product genuinely frightened her.
The warranty should've covered that, but still.
"I mean, look at this" Lunacub replied, lifting both arms to show off just how many pointless belts the garment had, how needlessly long the sleeves were and how stupid that metal thing on the chest was "It's just silly"
"... Lunacub, do you... do you know what that is?"
"Of course I know, kitty!" the lupo said back with a small pout "It's a jacket! A terrible one at that! Maybe I could use it for my tent though... "
Goldenglow breathed half a sigh of relief. The fact that Lunacub didn't actually know what she had put on was... well, it made things a little bit less awkward.
"You know, I think you're right. Take it off, so I can pack everything up and see if I can get a refund" she said as she took a step towards the table.
Just as she did so, however, Lunacub took a step back.
"... what?"
"You're hiding something"
"Wha- no! What makes you think that?" Goldenglow asked back, panic beginning to take over her again.
"I'm not stupid, it's all over your fur"
"I-I swear I'm not hiding anything"
"... I don't believe you, but I'll pretend that I do because you're a kitty"
Goldenglow's eyebrow twitched, if only barely. That wasn't the first time Lunacub had called her kitty, far from it, and she was getting a little upset about it.
"Would you please stop calling me that? I'm not a child"
Lunacub bent her head a little.
"You're taller than me" she admitted "But your fur's all pink and your ears point down. No way you aren't younger than me, so you're a kitty"
"What... what does that even mean? And even if I were really younger, I have a name and it's Susie"
"That's now what I've heard some call you though?"
"Oh, you mean Goldenglow? That's my codename"
Lunacub briefly recalled the sparks she had seen the feline let out on a few occasions.
"I see, yes. I'll keep that in mind, kitty"
The feline's fur prickled up, for an entirely different reason compared to just a short while earlier.
"Just give me back my stuff and I'll be on my way"
"Then take it"
"... you don't mean... !"
Goldenglow dashed forward, trying to catch the lupo standing in front of her, but her hands grasped only empty air.
"How come you were so well behaved when you came to my saloon? Can't you always act like that?" she nearly shouted as she tried to grab her again, Lunacub easily avoiding her despite the cumbersome jacket slowing her down and the relatively narrow space they were in.
"You can't demand others to respect your craft if you don't respect theirs" she answered -quoting Agnese- "You were doing your furdresser thing back then so I had to be respectful of that"
That reply left Goldenglow a little startled, she wasn't entirely sure what she had expected to hear but those words definitively weren't it.
"I'm an hairdresser" she corrected her "It's called hairdressing because there are more people without fur than there are without hair, at least if we don't count those who turn bald with the years"
"Life can be really unfair"
"I... I'd rather not comment to that... "
"You don't have to. Bye then?"
"No, give those back!"
"Only if you catch me!"
Goldenglow tried. She tried really hard.
And Goldenglow failed. She failed again, and again, and again. Lunacub was like the wind, she kept slipping out of her reach at the last moment, and she couldn't help but think that the only reason she was even getting that close in the first place was that the lupo wanted to show off how slippery and quick she was. The feline didn't really like playing tag to begin with, not anymore at least, so the whole experience was simply making her nervous and tired, while the lupo seemed to be having fun.
"Caught you!"
"Ah?!"
An hand suddenly grabbed her shoulder from behind while a leg tripped her off her feet, and moments later Goldenglow was lying on the floor, right next to the table, a foot on her back to keep her pinned down, though it fortunately wasn't really putting much pressure on her.
"This is my win, kitty"
"I'm not playing, Lunacub!"
"You should, little ones usually grow up to be all grumpy and sad if they don't play around while they can"
"And I've already told you I'm not a kid either. Multiple times too"
"Then catch me and prove it"
"... fine!"
Lunacub's instincts kicked in, making her jump back right away, but a weak shock still managed to run up from her foot along her leg, though it oddly dissipated all of a sudden once it had reached her chest.
"I'll catch you then! And get my stuff back!" Goldenglow shouted, really annoyed by that point, as she reached into the box and pointed the remote at Lunacub.
Electricity surged from her hand, a weak and controlled current which flowed into the remote to power it up through its lack of batteries, if only for a few moments. She clicked a button -she didn't actually know which one she should've pressed, she hadn't read the manual yet- and the signal flowed to the metal panel on the jacket's chest, which let out an electrical sound of some kind.
The device then sprung to actrion, the mechanisms hidden within the belts -or rather, straps- coming to life and pulling and dragging. In a matter of moment, the previously loose garment had been tightened into a snug fit around Lunacub, the long sleeves had rolled off and crossed over each other behind her back, running around her waist before ending up behind her again, getting stuck together, forcing Lunacub's arms together and tightly against her chest as the straps got locked into place all over her upper body, two even winding around her thighs to make the entire contraption even more stable around her -nearly tearing the skirt of her dress in the process, admittedly-, the lupo's arms having been suddenly rendered completely useless.
Goldenglow's face turned bright red again. Sure, she had bought that straitjacket precisely because it could be operated with a remote and programmed to unlock itself with both a timer and a voice command, that meant it could be used for, shall we say, self-indulgence, but seeing it close around someone else so swiftly and efficiently made a little something spark to life inside her once more, the same thing she had felt when she had first watched Lunacub and Eyjafjalla get... well... by Shamare.
"You cheat!"
"... oh-oh gosh, are you alright?!" Goldenglow panicked, because she really hadn't had time to read the manual and didn't know if there were any particular precautions to be taken before use "H-how is it? Are you ok? It's not too tight? Are you getting numb? Is your blood still flowing?"
"Ohy, stop right there!" Lunacub shouted back, balancing herself on one foot while keeping Goldenglow at bay with the other leg, all the while fruitlessly trying to break out of the straitjacket "You tricked me!"
"You're the one who wouldn't take it off!"
"Because you didn't tell me what it was!"
"Of course I didn't, do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to have someone know I bought this stuff?!"
"Ah, you really are a kitty then! If you weren't you wouldn't feel embarrassed over something like this after all the stuff you saw and did with us last time!"
The feline's face turned even redder, to the point that her hair began to look pale in comparison.
"Anyway, take this thing off"
"A-alright, just, just give me a moment and, please just sit down"
Lunacub wasn't sure why she should've sat down, but it was painfully obvious that Goldenglow was way too nervous for her own good, which at the moment also meant she was too nervous for Lunacub's good too. So she strolled over to the bed and sat, keeping to herself her thoughts about how much more comfortable that thing around her was now that it was fastened, her tail wagging a little bit behind her.
As for Goldenglow herself, she took a couple of deep breaths to calm down and quickly threw everything back into the box, the one exception being the electric massager since that was still lying next to a wall while everything else had been left on the table. Then she pulled one of the two little books Lunacub had seen earlier out, grabbed the cable too and walked up to the lupo while quickly going through the pages of the manual.
"So, here it says... "
With a slight but still clear hesitation in her hand, Goldenglow leaned down a bit to get a better look at the panel fixed to the forefront of the straitjacket. Lunacub was already noticeably shorter than her, so in hindsight asking her to sit down hadn't really been a good idea. Still in hindsight, however, how come Lunacub had listened to her on that particular request? She kept herself from thinking too much about it -the second answer that popped up in her mind couldn't possibly have made sense- and focused on the emtpy screen. She touched a button, then again, then she tried another, but nothing happened. The display remained fully black and devoid of words, numbers, images or anything else which might pass for an interface of any kind.
"So?"
"I'm working on it, wait a moment"
"Sure, take your time, you're not the one stuck in this trap"
Goldenglow's ears twitched a little, though given their particular shape it was pretty easy to miss it. Still, while she did understand why Lunacub -or anyone, really- would want to get out of a straitjacket as soon as possible, the particular tone the lupo had said that with sort of irritated her.
"It's not working... "
"You broke it?"
"No! But... ah"
It only then dawned on her. She clearly remembered that batteries for the remote were not included, and she had noticed a line in the manual saying that the jacket itself had to be charged before use, if one wanted to use it as something more than an old-fashioned but modern looking straitjacket at least. She knew she had powered up the remote herself to make it work without batteries, but since the jacket responded to the command she had figured Lunacub had charged it up beforehand. A... somewhat stupid thing to assume, she guessed. Still, the only explanation she could come up with was that when she got Lunacub off her back a bit of current had made it to the jacket's battery and powered it up, if only for just the few moments needed to allow it to work and enable the self-lock function. She tried pushing another button, this one to the side, and a small panel opened up on the side of the box, revealing the socket the cable was meant to be plugged into. Thankfully, that cable was quite long too and the socket the wand was plugged into was a double one too. It took a few minutes or charging, but the display eventually came to life and Goldenglow started to go through the interface with the aid of the manual.
That should've been a really simple, quick process. The mechanism itself was more elaborate than one might suspect, but it wasn't meant to perform such a wide array of functions at the end of the day, the commands were only an handful. And, as a matter of fact, finding the release command didn't take long at all.
Said command wasn't working, however.
... please, please, don't tell me the power went out when it was locking up and it made it glitch... I-I didn't fry some circuit, right?
She had payed extra to have the warranty cover precisely such cases, sure, but she couldn't just walk back to the physical store with Lunacub in those conditions.
"You broke it"
"I didn't! ... I think... "
"You really stuck me into this thing and then broke it down?!"
"I thought you said you could get out on your own anyway?!"
"I can, you stupid kitty, but that's an hassle!"
"Stop calling me kitty!"
"Stop acting like one!"
"Why you- "
Goldenglow stepped back, turned around and took a few deep breaths. Calm down, calm down, relax. In, out, in, out, just like that, yes. She had to stay calm, nothing good ever happened when she lost control.
"I can open it up manually" she said as she turned back around.
"Oh, great, go on then" Lunacub answered as she lied down on the bed and rolled around, since she had noticed that the straps were secured on her back. To make them even less accessible to the wearer, she figured.
"Wait wait the cable you'll tear it!"
"Can you not complain about something for once?" she shot back, briefly rolling back around to allow her to unplug the charger before rolling over again, in a way which would've looked almost cute under different circumstances.
"Stop giving me reasons to then!" Goldenglow replied as she stepped away to put the cable back into the box.
"Just get this thing off already!"
"... sure... "
Goldenglow's gaze then fell on the lupo's tail, on the way it was shaking, on how it was... wagging. The realization that Lunacub had actually been wagging her tail ever since the straitjacket had closed around her and rendered her at least half-helpless made the feline's breath grow a little heavy, the events of that play-session of sort with her, Eyjafjalla and Shamare flashing before her mind and making something spark to life within her.
"I'll unlock it, sure... " she said as she took the wand.
Then she got on the bed, the cable long enough to allow her to not need to unplug the wand and simply drop it on the sheets instead -why she had even brought it there, she wasn't sure-, placing her hands on Lunacub's back to get a feel of the fabric enveloping her. There were no buckles nor padlocks, but the straps themselves could interlock with each other thanks to little metal components which blended in perfectly. The inner mechanism made it automatic, but she could see a few points to press down on to unlock them manually. A very simple thing to do, so long as one had at least one free hand with three functional fingers.
Rather than unlocking them, however, Goldenglow threw one leg over across Lunacub and basically sat on her back, facing her legs. The lupo let out a surprised gasp, the feline wasn't resting her entire weight down on her but she was decidedly making her feel it.
"This is disrespectful!"
"You're talking about respect now? You've done nothing but annoy me the whole time from our second meeting on and you even keep calling me kitty after I asked you not to! Apologize and then I'll let you out"
"I won't do that, I did nothing wrong! Fine, go, I can get out of this myself anyway" Lunacub replied as she tried to get back up.
But she couldn't. The lupo was exceptionally swift and nimble, if she seriously didn't want to get caught then one could probably count the amount of people actually able to get her on their fingers, especially with how good she was at concealing her presence, but in term of raw physical strength she wasn't actually that much above average. And with her arms bound like that, she quickly found out that she couldn't shake Goldenglow off. She couldn't move.
As for Goldenglow herself, her eyes were kind of stuck to Lunacub's tail, which was... still wagging. A little more vigorously than before, she believed.
"Get off me, kitty!"
"I told you that's not my name!"
"Kitty! Kitty kitty kitty kitty!"
"You- !"
Goldenglow raised an hand and brought it back down, her palm hitting Lunacub's butt through her dress. The sound of flesh hitting flesh briefly echoed within the room, and for a moment the feline felt horribly guilty and ashamed of what she had just done. But then Lunacub's voice reached her ears, a sound halfway between a groan and a moan, and the way the lupo had kept pestering Shamare during their play session as if specifically to get punished resurfaced almost violently in her mind.
"Apologize!" Goldenglow shouted, more loudly than she had any need to, maybe hoping that her voice would drow out her own embarrassment.
"You spanked me?!"
"I said apologize!"
"I'm not gonna!"
The feline unlocked the two straps running around Lunacub's thighs to free her dress and pull it up, leaving only her underwear to cover her butt.
"Ohy, you aren't -!"
Lunacub's words turned into another half-groan half-moan as Goldenglow's palm hit her again, this time on the other buttock, a brief but sharp pain spreading in her lower half, almost paradoxically accompanied by a warm, tingly feeling, while the impact resonated in an entirely different but nonetheless pleasant way in the feline's palm too.
"Apologize!"
"No!"
The feline's hand came down again, her arm a little bit more resolute, a rather uneasy half-smile on her face, her fur standing up to a degree. The sound itself of her palm colliding against the lupo's round, toned rear didn't do much in itself for her, if anything she found it a little unpleasant, but the noise Lunacub made in response sent off little sparks inside her mind, the way she squirmed under her made her breaths heavy, and the way her tail had yet to stop wagging was making her whole skin tremble with warm, pleasant shivers.
So she spanked her again, and then once more.
"Is it so hard to say you're sorry?!"
"Fine! Oh kitty, I'm so sorry that you're such a little annoying kitten! Happy now?!"
"Why you- ?!"
Goldenglow resumed spanking her, and Lunacub kept taunting her back. In that sense, their conversation didn't really go anywhere, and that's if we really want to call that back and forth exchange a conversation to begin with. Nonetheless, something warm and fuzzy shot through Goldenglow whenever she hit the lupo's rear, going from her palm up her arm and then down, running to her nethers and up her tail, a feeling not too dissimilar to the one that Lunacub herself was experiencing, her body jerking with every spank as her buttocks grew redder and redder.
The feline eventually stopped, and if one were to judge by their breathing alone it would seem like the one getting spanked had been her, covered in sweat and panting as she was. Lunacub said something, but her words didn't quite reach Goldenglow's mind, her eyes completely lost on the lupo's derriere, on the rednees of its skin visible underneath her panties, on her tail and its constant back and forth which had admittedly gotten in the way of more than just a couple of spanks.
Almost without quite realizing it, Goldenglow brought an hand down, slipping it into her skirt and underneath her own panties, finding herself wet. Her tail stood up at the realization, but the sight in front of her compelled her to act, to push two fingers past her own folds and against her warm, twitching insides, an embarrassed moan escaping her, her own touch feeling somehow much more intense and fulfilling than ever before.
"... I can't believe it, you're-"
"Don't say it!"
More out of panic than anything else, Goldenglow spanked Lunacub again, the lupo's words twisting into another moan-groan hybrid the sound of which further fueled the sparks within the feline's mind, her fingers moving almost on rhythm with the wagging of the lupo's tail and her squirming beneath her, each stroke sending an intense wave of warm pleasure running through her body. Biting her lip in an attempt to keep both her voice and her entire self under control, Goldenglow spanked the lupo once again, with a bit more strength, her digits scratching at her insides at the same time, following the tempo of Lunacub's struggling and vocalization.
Oddly enough, the feline didn't find it surprising at all that Lunacub made no complaint as her panties got pulled down to her knees, baring her deliciously red bottom, left sore and sensitive by the repeated spanks. The sight of her bare skin hypnotized Goldenglow, her hand briefly following Lunacub's smooth fur along her tail before grabbing her butt, the feeling of the warm flesh underneath her palm making her head spin, the lupo's slightly pained but mostly pleased groans as her rear got kneaded and felt up ringing inside Goldenglow's ears as her fingers kept working, pleasure building up as she got closer and closer, her breaths growing heavier and more ragged by the minute, beads of sweat rolling down her skin and sinking into her clothes. She kept stroking her insides, her other hand coming down at almost regular intervals on Lunacub's rear, the lupo's every sound and jolt further fueling Goldenglow's pleasure, on her face an expression she herself wouldn't have ever thought of being capable of, her lips curled into a mildly disturbed but mostly excited smile, her hips shaking when her thumb softly teased her stiff clit, a new, intense shiver shaking her to the core. Her palm then hit the lupo once again, and Lunacub let out a slightly longer, ever so slightly sultry moan.
That pushed Goldenglow over the edge.
Her hips quivered, her muscles stiffening as a warm wave spread from her nethers, making its way through her entire body, pushing the air out of her lungs, making her fur stand up. She discharged a little bit of electricity as well, just enough to startle Lunacub, her free hand clutching the sheets tightly and refusing to let go, at least until the pleasure began to abate, her high quickly turning into a lingering sense of warmth and fulfillment, her lungs resuming functions as she took quick, heavy breaths. Then she pulled her hand out from under her clothes and stared at it, her drenched fingers making the realization of what she had just done really sink in.
"Weirdo"
Goldenglow's eyes trailed to the lupo's tail, which was still wagging, and to the sheets beneath her, where she could definitively spot a wet stain. Lunacub... definitively had a point, but for reasons that weren't exactly obscure to her the feline just didn't want to hear that from her.
Still... what was she supposed to do now? Aside from worrying over the possibility of having left a stain on the straitjacket, which wasn't exactly a priority at the moment.
"Get off me if you're done. Kitty"
Alright, she sort of knew what to do.
... did she?
Oh, good gosh, what in the world was she doing? Sure, Lunacub hadn't outright told her to stop after she had... gotten started, and it really, really looked like she was enjoying it too, but -dear heavens, she had just masturbated in front of someone else. No, not even just that, she had done that while sitting on someone else. And spanking them. And loving every moment of it too, if with slightly conflicting feelings in the back of her mind admittedly.
So, what now? She -she should've... think, think, she didn't really want to let Lunacub go, not after the way she had just mockingly called her kitty again, but... w-well, maybe she could... get her off too? Would that make her a little more well disposed? She... really doubted it would, to be honest, but at the same time it sort of felt like the most courteous thing to do. The only reason she could see it that way was that she had taken part to that play session between Shamare, Lunacub and Eyjafjalla, granted, but still.
"Hey, do you hear me?" the lupo asked, trying to shake her off again to no avail, the lack of response from Goldenglow clearly annoying her.
The feline, on her part, stared at her fingers for a few moments. She wasn't sure she could finger her properly from that position, not to mention that she didn't feel confident in her skills to begin with. But there was something she could use, lying on the sheets just next to her.
Lunacub's ears twitched as a buzzing noise hit them for a moment before disappearing, the same noise that massager from earlier had produced.
"What are you doing?" she asked, not entirely clueless but still somewhat confused as she felt Goldenglow strap the thing to her thigh, a clearer idea forming in her mind as the rotund head got pushed against her privates.
"Ehm... sharing the fun? ... I beg you, forget that I just said that... "
"What do you eveaaahhh?!"
Lunacub jolted as the feline turned the wand back on, intense vibrations suddenly assaulting her nethers, strong enough to make her feel like even her inner walls were being stimulated. Her hips bucked almost violently in response, so abruptly that she nearly threw Goldenglow off. The feline adjusted herself more out of instinctive reaction than anything else as she almost fell forward, one hand ending up on the sheets while the other had landed right on the lupo's sore butt, left so sensitive that even that simple contact had been enough to make her whimper in response.
"Wasn't that a massager?!"
"It... is? It's... well, you get it... " Goldenglow almost answered, realizing halfway that actually finishing that sentence would've been too embarrassing "Do you want me to take it off?"
"Ah! As if I'd ever ask you for mercy. Shamare is way, way more intense than you, little kitty!"
On one hand, Goldenglow knew for a fact that what Lunacub had just said was true, and she wasn't even competing over something like that to begin with. On the other, the way the lupo had purposefully phrased it annoyed her.
"How did you call me again?"
"I called you a kitty because you're a kitty, kitty!"
A small part of Goldenglow knew that the fact itself of being so annoyed by Lunacub's determination at addressing her like that sort of proved her right, to a degree at least. A much larger part, however, recalled the things Shamare had done to the lupo and the way she had reacted, while what was left of her thoughts were completely focused on the lupo's twitching legs and shaking tail, on the occasional moan that escaped her lips as the wand kept teasing and stimulating her, on the wimpers that left her mouth whenever Goldenglow cupped a firm feel of her reddened butt. So she readjusted her position atop the lupo, kneading her rear for a little while and feeling a little guilty at how much she enjoyed the slightly pained noises Lunacub let out in response, the lupo still shaking and squirming from the stimulation on her nethers. Then Goldenglow leaned forward a little, her hands moving to the lupo's thighs.
To her inner thighs, to be more accurate.
"... hold on, you aren't going to... "
"Ehm... sorry?" Goldenglow said, the thrill and pleasure she was getting from the situation winning over her shame, guilt and general sense of wrongness.
And so she started scratching Lunacub's inner thighs, not violently but quite vigorously still, enough to have close her legs around the lupo to better hold herself in place above her as she started squirming even more intensely.
"Y-you lit -ahaha- you disrepec -aaaahhhh- you -aahhaha- kitty kitty kitty kitty!"
"Would you stop that already?!"
"Kiiitttttyyyyyy!"
"Have it your way then!"
Goldenglow brought an hand up and smacked it firmly on Lunacub's butt more than once, the vibrations and the spanks getting the lupo so very close to her orgasm while the fingers scratching her thighs forced laughters out of her lips and held her climax back, which was in itself pleasant but she had no intention of telling that to the feline. Not like Goldenglow wasn't aware of that already anyway, at least subconsciously.
As for Goldenglow herself, she found each and every one of the lupo's reactions exceptionally alluring, to the point that she was feeling a tingly need sparking back to life in her lower half despite having just had an orgasm herself. Closing her legs around Lunacub a little tighter, she brought an hand back up again, sliding it underneath her shirt and bra, the passing realization of just how stiff her nipples had gotten making her feel ashamed for just a moment before she started fondling her own chest, slowly, tenderly, the touch stoking a fire within her, her other hand alternating between tickling and spanking Lunacub with neither rhyme nor reason, her mind getting overwhelmed by that weird kind of pleasure she derived from tormenting the lupo and knowing that she enjoyed it too.
Then, however, something else reached both their ears. An electrical sound, a beeping noise of sort, brief but sharp and relatively loud, followed by multiple other noises, more mechanical in nature it would seem.
What happened then took place within a few moments at most. Goldenglow just barely managed to see Lunacub throwing her legs up and back towards her, hooking her feet beneath the feline's shoulders with an impressive display of flexibility. The lupo then dragged her forward and to the side, making her fall down with almost half her body ending up off the bed entirely, at which point Lunacub rolled around, throwing the feline into even greater disarray while getting up herself. The straps of the straitjacket having unlocked themselves from each other automatically, she got her arms free and rolled up both sleeves with astounding speed. Goldenglow, on her part, was still trying to figure out what had just happened, where she had ended up exactly and which way she was looking, because the entire thing had been too quick for her senses to follow. Her confusion didn't last long, admittedly, but just as she got back on the bed -if only because, not having fallen off completely, that felt more natural than getting off entirely- Lunacub grabbed her wrist and yanked her back to the middle of the bed.
A clicking sound.
The feline barely had the time to look at her hand before feeling the same thing on her other wrist, and a couple of moments later she realized that she now had both wrists handcuffed to the bed frame. A cold shiver ran down her spine, turning warm as she realized in what situation she had just ended and moving up along her tail, prickling up her fur along the way.
"That was really disrespectful, you know kitty?" Lunacub asked, the tone of her voice suggesting a certain state of mind, the motions of her tail behind her hinting at an entirely different one "This is no way to treat your elders" she continued, putting her booth between Goldenglow's legs and pushing down a little bit right on her privates, sending a shiver up the feline's tail and spine.
"A-ahem... I, well... I'm sorry... ?"
She noticed that, while the wand was still strapped to Lunacub's thigh, it had been turned off. Honestly, Goldenglow was actually pretty awed by how quickly the lupo had acted, and with a cable between her legs too. She couldn't help but picture herself tripping on it the very moment she tried to do something like that at such a speed.
"Easy to say" Lunacub shot back as she got down on all fours and on top of her, their noses nearly touching, Goldenglow's tail twitching as she realized that she had lost her chance to at least try and close her legs "You were really enjoying this, weren't you?" the lupo pressed on, sliding her hands under the feline's clothes to feel both her hopelessly drenched panties and her stiff nipples, the touch causing a soft, tingly warmth to spread over her skin "Weirdo"
"You're one to talk!"
"Show some respect, kitty!"
Lunacub pinched her nipple and slapped -softly enough- her privates, the slight pain making the mild pleasure feel that much more intense, Goldenglow's mind falling into even further disarray as she realized that being helpless like that didn't feel any worse than having her way with Lunacub had felt. It was different, absolutely not the same thing at all, but... just as pleasant, somehow.
What in the world... I-I'm a pervert, aren't I... ? ... it's a bit late to realize it though... oh, gosh...
Lunacub, on her part, liked being on the receiving end much, much more than she did being on top, but there was a little more than just pleasure on the line there.
"You picked the game and toys, kitty" Lunacub said with a glint in her eyes as she leaned back, grabbing one of the feline's legs and lifting it up before sliding both her dress and the feline's skirt back up too and pushing their nethers together, the head of the wand ending up pressed between their private parts "Now try to learn how to play"
The feline's gaze trailed from Lunacub's eyes down to her lower regions, and in particular on the finger that was about to turn the wand back on. She pulled against the handcuffs more out of instinct than conscious choice, a mixture of excitement and worry making a weird smile appear on her face.
"Wait a moment Lun- !"
Though the lupo had braced herself for it, she had inadvertently put the wand on an higher setting than the one Goldenglow had used earlier, the unexpected intensity managing to drag a surprised moan out of her as the vibrations reverberated from her entrace to her insides with enough strength to shake her almost as if from within, pleasure quickly resuming to build up after she had been left hanging.
Goldenglow, on the other hand, completely failed to control herself, a loud yelp escaping her lips and quickly turning into a moan as her privates, still sensitive from her recent orgasm, got mercilessly assaulted by the vibrating head, her fruitless attempts at putting her hands over her own mouth to keep at least somewhat quiet only making her excitement grow more intense, her fur getting more and more prickled up as her breaths grew heavier and heavier, her own sweat making her skin glisten a little under the artificial light filling the room.
Then Lunacub started twisting her hips this way or that one, rubbing the buzzing toy against the feline while grinding herself on it at the same time, shaking up the stimulation a little, eliciting an especially loud moan from the feline whenever the wand happened to push more directly against her clit.
"Wait, wait wait wait this is -aaahhh- it's too- !"
To silence her, Lunacub leaned forward a bit, just enough to push her fingers into the feline's mouth. Wether it was the taste of the lupo's sweat or the act itself of having her forcibly holding her mouth open, something about that made Goldenglow's heart begin to beat even faster.
"Quitters don't get the spoils!"
What does that even mean now?!
The feline found her thoughts forcefully dragged to much more physical matters as the wand was now pushing against her in a slightly different way still, her gaze bewitched by Lunacub's face, an adorable mixture of attempted stoicism and half-suppressed ecstasy on it.
Goldenglow's ears twitched.
Perhaps it was because her hands couldn't move, or because the rest of her body couldn't quite move either with how Lunacub was holding her, but either way the feline felt an odd sense of freedom as her own voice moved further away from her control. Finding herself both stabberflagged and awed by just how sultry her moans were becoming, the feline started to buck her hips a little as well, feeling another orgasm quickly approaching, one no less intense than the previous one but somehow entirely different at the same time. Lunacub seemed to take that as a challenge of some sort, judging by the way she started to push her nethers against Goldenglow's with more vigor and rubbing against her more quickly, the vibrations reaching even further than before, stimulating them almost to their cores.
Then the feline saw it. She saw Lunacub's eyes closing for a few moments, she saw her wagging tail coming to a standstill, she felt her breathing stop for a couple of seconds and her muscles contracting, she even smelled her scent becoming a little bit sweeter.
Lunacub was having an orgasm, and the realization pushed Goldenglow over the edge as well, a warm wave speading from her nethers through her body, quickly taking over her, the handcuffs' chains clinking as she pulled against them to no avail, the feeling of helplessness making her climax feel even more intense, sparks going off inside her mind.
And outside of it too, to be completely honest.
Lunacub yelped, the sudden, weak but definitively noticable shock having admittedly made her own orgasm go through a further spike in intensity before beginning to fade. And so she pulled Goldenglow's shirt and bra up, the air feeling almost cold on her sweaty skin, a sudden groan escaping the feline as Lunacub pinched both her nipples, pulling them hard but not excessively so, a painful pleasure shooting through her breasts.
"Try that again" Lunacub said, dared -asked? Goldenglow wasn't quite making sense of anything anymore- as she kept fondling and groping and pinching her chest "Come on, kitty!"
"Lun- ouch- Lunacub, it's -aaahhh- b-back off for a mom- aahh... "
The lupo didn't comply, much to nobody's surprise, the buzzing noise continuing to reverberate as the toy kept vibrating against their privates, made all the more sensitive by the previous orgasms. And while Lunacub had gotten rather used to similar kinds of overstimulations thanks to Shamare, the same couldn't be said for Goldenglow, the pleasure teetering on the edge of becoming excessive if not downright a little painful, her arms trashing against the restraints despite being unable to escape them, or perhaps precisely because of it.
Another discharge escaped her, shocking Lunacub a little, much to the lupo's -strictly unspoken, although not entirely silent- pleasure.
Goldenglow yelped too, right after the lupo, as her nipples got pinched again.
"Stop - that!" she told her, if only because she didn't actually believe Goldenglow could comply with her request.
"I can't!"
Oh, lucky! Lunacub thought as she got zapped again.
It wasn't quite the kind of pleasant pain she was used to, and being completely free to move also detracted from the experience more than a little bit, but it was nonetheless quite nice, not to mention that electro play was still a rather novel thing for her.
So she pinched the feline's nipples again, getting both another pleased yelp and another little shock out of her.
"Come on kitty, hold it back!"
"I saaa-ouch!- I can't if you keep- !"
Another pinch interrupted her attempt at answering at first, and then her words faded into a moan as the lupo bucked her hips against hers again, pushing the toy up a little, moving it closer to her clit, the overbearing sensation growing even stronger, her hands clenching into fists then spreading wide then closing again for no reason she could consciously comprehend.
"Incontinent kitty!"
"That's not what incontinent means!"
"It does for you!"
"That's not how words work either!"
Their conversation devolved into a sort of exchange of vocalizations as the wand kept stimulating them, Lunacub constantly running her hands over the feline's bare breasts to tease and pinch them, even landing a few little slaps every now and then to wrinkle her electricity out of her body and get the most out of the current situation.
Then, however, the distinctive sound of the door opening and closing reached their ears. Lunacub simply looked up, while Goldenglow had to throw her head back, but either way they both stared in silence at the little vulpo who had just walked back into her own room.
Shamare returned their gaze in silence, Morte hanging from her right hand, not a single hint of emotion on her face, only half an asymmetrical twitch of her ears to even suggest that she was actually alive and breathing. For a secord, maybe two, nothing happened, the three simply stared at each other without saying a word, a different kind of sweat beginning to run down both Lunacub and Goldenglow's foreheads. Then Shamare silently walked up to the power socket and unplugged the wand, the buzzing noise stopping at last. After that she moved to the cardboard box she had accepted to hide for a couple of days and took a look inside it, grabbing the keys and unlocking Goldenglow's handcuffs, all under the two women's wordless gaze.
"Get off my bed" she eventually spoke.
"It was her fault!"
"That's not true! You're the one who wouldn't return my stuff!"
"But you're the one who started to play!"
"That... that might be true, but- !"
"Shut up"
A very, very cold shiver ran down their spines as they immediatly fell silent, getting off the bed while quickly fixing their clothes. They only then realized in what state they had left the sheets, which really didn't bode well for them. Shamare hated getting her bed dirty. The vulpo walked to her desk, pulled out a single plastic glove from a drawer and put it on before grabbing whatever had been left out of the cardboard box and putting it in, even taking the time to make sure everything was arranged with at least some decency and not just barbarically tossed inside.
"Did you study?" she then asked the lupo.
"Of course I did, who do you take me for? ... no, I didn't"
"Is there anything else of yours around?"
"Ahem, well, that's... no, this is everything" Goldenglow answered while nervously fumbling with the hem of her skirt.
"I need your schedules for the next days"
"What for?"
Shamare lifted up Morte and hugged it with both arms. She even squeezed it a little. The doll waved its arms around a bit before pointing its toy knife at them, though the vulpo herself lowered its stuffed arm and scolded it.
"To know when you have enough time to receive your punishment" she then answered Lunacub.
Another shiver shot through them, although there was a certain trace of anxious excitement mixed in as well.
"Shamare, I'm really sorry, I hadn't meant to- "
The vulpo leaned down on the sheets and took a sniff at them before pulling back away.
"Get out"
"... s-sure... "
And so, with messy hair and disheveled clothes, not to mention some other signs typical of certain activities such as flushed cheeks, somewhat ragged breath, wet inner thighs and sweaty skin, the lupo and the feline made their way out of Shamare's room, one holding a book and the other a box, with one of them in particular being glad that nobody seemed to be around to see them in such a state.
"This was all your fault!" Lunacub accused the very moment the door was closed behind them.
"This would've never happened had you not wagged your tail like that!"
"So all it takes for you to lose control is that? Ah, you truly are a little kitty then!"
"No, it's because... because... " Goldenglow tried to answer, but actually bringing up that play session and the kind of feelings it had awoken within her turned out to be far too embarrassing a thing to do now that the heat of the moment had dissipated. Besides, she had yet to really make heads or tails of said feelings in the first place.
"Agh, whatever" Lunacub said as she turned around to leave "Thanks to you I got another appointment with Shamare without having to ask, so it's fine. And I know you like it too, don't deny it!"
"Well, that's... I guess that might be true, but... " Goldenglow said back, talking more to herself than to anyone else as the lupo walked off.
The feline, on her part, looked down at the box, wondering if she could get the straitjacked fixed right away. Not that she had any intention of actually trying it for solo play that same day, no, but she didn't like the idea of leaving it broken. She wouldn't even get to use it on her own without having it repaired, after all. Then again, she wasn't sure if it really was broken to begin with, it did unlock on its own after all. So she decided to take it back to her room for the time being, plugging it into a power socket to fully charge it. She found some time before going to sleep to try out the commands -without putting it on, for a series of admittedly pretty good reasons- and, much to her relief, it seemed that whatever glitch or bug of whatever which had showed up earlier had sorted itself out somehow.
... then again, having someone who actually knew how such things worked take a look at it still sounded like a good idea. She really, really didn't want that thing to malfunction while using it by herself. So she hid it away with the rest of her purchase and tucked herself in. Actually falling asleep took her some time since her mind kept wondering what in the world Shamare was planning for her and Lunacub, admittedly. On one hand, Goldenglow knew that she and the lupo really shouldn't have done that on the vulpo's bed, or even just generally in her room for that matter. On the other, she feared Shamare might overreact. Then again... then again, if she were to judge from what she had heard from Eyjafjalla and seen for herself about how Shamare usually punished Lunacub for her misbehaviours then maybe... maybe that could actually turn out to be a... pleasant experience.
She pushed those thoughts out of her mind and tried to calm down instead, to relax. Yes, she had a few people booked in for service at her saloon for the next day, she had to open up early.
Eventually, the feline managed to fall into a rather peaceful slumber.
The following morning, however, she found a little trinket of sort placed right outside her room, inside a small envelope stuck to her door with a bit of tape. It was a small... was that a comb? It had the shape of a comb, but it looked like it had been carved out of little bones tied together, quite firmly at that, with a few feathers placed on the handle for decorations. She tapped the teeth and found them more than a little too pointy, although not enough to make it an actual problem, and the structure felt rather solid as well, she wasn't getting the impression that it would break upon being used.
"I... I should get her something in return, shouldn't I?" she wondered, because she could think of only one person who might've left that there for her.
Putting the weird comb away into her bag, Goldenglow headed to the cafeteria to get her day started with a good breakfast.
Thank you for reading.