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"Ugh," the Marionette says. "What's a cat doing in here?"
Lynette does not freeze. It's all too likely that the Marionette will notice; despite her occasional guise of being preoccupied with her projects, Lynette knows better to underestimate her. The last thing she wants to do is give her any extra advantage while Father is in the middle of important business here.
Instead, she turns towards the landcruiser that Freminet is working on. "Here," she tells him, stepping forward. "Let me-"
"Didn't I tell you to stay away from those?" The Marionette spins about, glaring at her, and makes an impatient brushing-away gesture. "If you're done cleaning upstairs, go make tea or something. And get that cat out," she adds with another sharp glare, this time at the offending animal. "I don't want to find out that it breaks my machines too."
Letting her tail switch behind her in feigned offense, Lynette hops up onto the fallen beam the cat is crouching on and drops to all fours. "Meow," she says to the cat, which mews back, her own split tails waving, and hops up onto Lynette's shoulder.
She reaches up and runs her hand down the cat's back, tucking those twinned tails into her collar before the Marionette can catch a closer glimpse of them. Then she jumps back down off the beam, with just a breath of Anemo to keep her landing light enough that the cat won't be jarred, and heads for the elevator.
Her one fear is that Kirara will change back the moment they're out of the Marionette's sight. Every room and floor in the Bureau has cameras, and while the battle had left a large number of them non-functional, there's still a tremendous risk. Fortunately, either Kirara has realized the danger on her own--which seems doubtful if she's here, on Lynette's shoulder, batting at her hairbow--or she's having fun with the disguise.
If it's the second, best to encourage it. Lynette reaches up to run a hand down her back again.
Kirara arches into it, a purr rising from her chest. She bumps her head enthusiastically against Lynette's hand, then, when Lynette strokes her back again, the side of her chin. Her tail is beginning to twitch inside Lynette's collar; Lynette presses it down with her hand.
A couple of exhausted Fatui are out in the halls, but they're either hurrying too quickly to waste their time bothering her, or too injured and worn to give her any attention. Except for one, a woman with mismatched pupils and a hazy look being ushered down the hall by a friend, who reaches her hand out and says, "Kitty...."
Lynette's ears flatten.
"No, Luba," her companion hisses to her, and then to Lynette, with gratifying wariness, "She didn't mean you, I'm sorry. She's just concussed. Come on, Luba, let's get to the infirmary."
Kirara gives a questioning mew as the pair vanish in the opposite direction.
"We're going to make tea, as the Marionette ordered," Lynette tells her. "Not to have your tails pulled by every Fatui in the infirmary."
That gets her an emphatic mrrph of agreement, and Kirara tucks herself close up against her neck and stays glued there all the rest of the way to the commissary, though even now she doesn't stop purring. Lynette wants to purr too. It's not as easy for her, though, and in the middle of the Bureau, with someone who absolutely isn't supposed to be here perched on her shoulder for all to see and the Marionette's cameras possibly following them from any corner, there's no chance of it.
"Here we are," she tells Kirara, entering the commissary and closing the door behind them. This isn't officially the Harbingers' private one, but it's where the Marionette keeps her tea and Father keeps her coffee, and Capitano used to keep his vodka. As far as the rest of the Fatui are concerned, that makes it the Harbingers' by default. They won't be disturbed here.
By the same token, the cameras are surely active, and there must be more of them than there would be in any other commissary. But the Marionette offered them her own tea earlier, and she'll be suspicious, offended, and made all the more suspicious by her offense if Lynette goes elsewhere.
"You won't be able to drink the tea, but there is milk," Lynette observes aloud, getting out the tea leaves and a pot. "I'll pour you some so you can drink with me."
Kirara mews again, then scrambles to stay on her shoulder as Lynette reaches up into the cupboard for the teacups. She's careful with her claws, though, none sinking far enough through Lynette's sleeve to even prick the skin. As Lynette heats the water and pours it over the tea, Kirara bumps her head against Lynette's chin, over and over again.
Lynette can't help the small smile--betraying nothing, for everyone knows she likes cats--at the determinedly affectionate assault. Once she's poured the tea, she turns her head enough to kiss Kirara gently right between the ears. Kirara headbutts her chin again, then sits up and rubs her whiskers against Lynette's cheek.
A splash of milk into her own cup, then a full measure into the other. She chooses the seat she places that cup at carefully, the one where Father habitually sat, and, Lynette knows, often 'accidentally' burned out the cameras pointed at it. Then she angles her arm downward for Kirara to go bounding down and sit in front of it. Hopefully that should conceal her happily-curled tail.
If not, Lynette will just claim she thought this was a Nod-Krai cat, and the tails had something to do with khuuvahki. It won't hold up to close scrutiny, but once Kirara is safely out of the Bureau and Father's business is done, it doesn't have to. The Marionette's interest is in Father alone; the rest of them are only potential leverage.
Still purring loud enough that Lynette can hear it across the little tea-table, Kirara laps at the milk. Lynette sips her tea, much more slowly, and blinks slowly at Kirara, who looks up from the teacup with her nose and whiskers smeared white to blink affectionately back.
"Finish your milk, and I'll take you outside," Lynette tells her. "You can't stay in here. I don't have any fish to give you," she adds, regretting that, for she knows it's Kirara's favorite.
But the longer she stays here, the more danger she's in. So Lynette slowly sips her tea and watches Kirara cover herself with milk, then, when it's gone, industriously clean her face. They blink back and forth at each other at intervals, Kirara always staring wide-eyed at Lynette before she does it as if to make very certain that Lynette will notice. As if Lynette isn't always perfectly aware.
Once she's pawed every trace of milk from her whiskers, Kirara pads across the table to tuck herself under Lynette's arm and circle back and forth, rubbing her face against Lynette's front at every opportunity. When she sits down and raises her paws to knead at Lynette's chest, though, Lynette does push them down again. This isn't the time for that kind of attention, however flattering.
Kirara mews in protest and persists, rearing up again, very nearly shoving her paws into Lynette's vest. As her paws fold as if to pull it down, Lynette feels a slight weight drop into the gap, sliding down to sit in the hollow under her breast. This time, when she pushes Kirara down, Kirara sits, tails twitching behind her and looking very satisfied with herself.
Lynette runs a hand down Kirara's spine from head to tail, then tucks those tails back under Kirara's paws. She takes two more long sips of her tea to finish it off, stands and puts the used cups in the sink, and leaves the teapot half-full on the table to scoop Kirara up. Kirara cuddles up against her chest, purr redoubling, and kneads against Lynette's arm all the way to one of the Bureau's side doors.
"The Wild Hunt has been seen nearby, so be careful," she tells Kirara. A camera above the door points straight down at her back, so she scratches gently behind Kirara's ears and steps sideways to set her down in a patch of tall khuuvahki-trailing grass. "Stay in the cover of the grass. And don't come back. This isn't a safe place for an innocent cat like you."
Another affectionate headbutt against her hand, and then Kirara bounds off into the grass, tails flicking briefly behind her. Only briefly, though, before she vanishes into the undergrowth that happens to linger more around this door than any of the others. She'd taken Lynette's warning seriously, which is good. As pleasant as her company was, Lynette would rather have her safely well away from the Bureau.
She returns inside, to the commissary, where she puts together a tray with the mostly-full teapot and several cups and brings them back upstairs. The Marionette irritably tells her to put the tray down and get out, but Lynette pauses in the doorway to see that she's taken a cup and is drinking it as she looks over her own schematics. She hands another cup to Freminet in the same moment she starts giving him orders about the latest repair, and Lynette turns about and slips away.
There's no place in the Bureau she can be certain lacks cameras, but when she finds a spot she's reasonably certain only has one, she reaches up to 'inspect' the camera and watches with satisfaction as it sparks and dies. Then she reaches down into her vest.
It's a small silver locket, heart-shaped. Within is a folded scrap of paper with a Hearth cipher on it, of course, Chapleau's report on an affair of interest--but the locket itself is more than just a vessel. It's been cleverly engraved such that the heart's outer lines are made by a nekomata's twinned tails, and a feline face looks out from between them, two tiny chips of peridot as the eyes.
A clever move on Chapleau's part; she'll find out later whether he'd suggested the locket himself or just capitalized on the opportunity when Kirara came to deliver it. Lynette will ask Lyney to scold him later for involving messengers from outside the House in their affairs, no matter how convenient they may be. For now, though, she clasps the locket around her neck, beneath her collar, and starts off back down the hall to see what else she can do to help around the Bureau.
They have to wrap up here soon, after all. Father has other business that will follow hard upon her current affair. And the sooner they're done, the sooner Lynette can meet back up with Kirara off Fatui premises. She wants to pet her in some ways that will make them both purr.