Chapter 796

Kat slowed her movements carefully over a few seconds as she wound down from her workout. She’d stopped after her muscles had actually started to regenerate a little bit. Kat was actually quite surprised she managed to do any damage to them at all with just her body and some speed, but she decided it made at least some sense. Once getting to that stage, Kat had decided it was ‘good enough’ because she wasn’t entirely sure if she could gain muscles through training.

On Lily’s end of things she was slightly dazed from the sight. Seeing your girlfriend flipping through a myriad of posing while half naked was exciting at the best of times. Doing it at ridiculous speeds while barely sweating was something else entirely. Lily decided that if this didn’t count as a date, romance was dead. It totally counted in her book. On an unrelated note she also now had an appreciation for martial arts. No idea where that came from.

Kat breathed out a long smooth breath and found a slight dusting of snow came along with it. *Hmm. I wonder why that happened. Enough demonic energy in the lungs perhaps? Maybe just in the body in general? More investigation required.* Kat wasn’t terribly bothered by the hit her demonic energy reserves had taken, though it was quite a lot. She’d started burning it to increase her speed somewhere near start and now she was down to twenty percent. Still, that was just for a moment. The combined regeneration from herself and Lily was more than enough to get her back to full in no time.

“Off to the orphanage?” asked Kat.

“Mhm” mumbled Lily, still not completely recovered from the wonderous sight. Kat resummoned her kimono and picked Lily up before taking to the air. Lily had no complaints. Partially because she thought Kat had chosen the correct course of action... but a much larger part was that she’d have agreed to basically anything Kat asked in that moment. A poor decision perhaps, but Lily had never felt unsafe with Kat around and her mind had no fear in simply loosing itself to fantasies with Kat nearby.

The more lewd part of Lily’s mind had been having a field day. With the main obstacle, the potential for Kat to find out about her feelings, had been completed destroyed. With their feelings out in the option it was only Lily’s sense of propriety. Something that had been taking a good battering recently. Especially with Kat’s pushes for Lily to be less concerned about it in her presence... well... Lily’s defences could only handle so many strong attacks.

As such, having Kat pull Lily into her chest and take to the sky was just another cue for Lily to get lost in more fantasies. She’d already imagined being ‘attacked’ by Kat a few times during the performance. Being smothered in boobs, even somewhat modest ones like Kat’s, was a perfectly valid way to go. Well, according to Lily’s current thoughts now.

.....

Eventually, though it took Lily an embarrassingly long time to recover, she did manage to come back to the present. Lily wiggled slightly in Kat’s embrace so that she could look out at the city. If that meant she rubbed more of her scent on Kat in the process... well had to appease those ‘pesky’ cat instincts somehow.

Lily couldn’t stop her eyes widening when she spotted the fact they were nearing their destination. She could see the compound for the 8th of the 10th already. The area looked somewhat old. It was wrong to say it looked to be in disrepair, but compared to a lot of the other areas of the city they’d seen so far it really had an ‘old fashion’ type vibe. Most of the stone looked to be discoloured, with edges sanded down from wind and ran over time. Lily’s eyes weren’t good enough to see the occasional crack or the more frequently repairs over cracks. Still, they were present and certainly changed the vibe of the place. [Apparently I was more out of it than I thought...]

*Welcome back to the real world Lily. I’m guessing you just realised we’re close? I’m not totally sure which building is the orphanage just yet. I have a few guesses but because they don’t actually have a backyard I can’t be totally certain.*

Kat was speaking of three buildings that jutted up against the 8th of the 10th’s compound wall. The first, Kat was pretty sure was actually an inn. It had a few balconies that overlooked the street and a sign she couldn’t properly se hanging at the front. There was two children playing on one of the balconies, but the balconies and rooms seemed to large, and the fact both kids had the same shade of brown hair implied they were siblings.

The next two were harder to tell apart. They were both large buildings with tiny backyards taken up almost entirely by a clothesline. One was one building over from the inn while the other was the last building in the street. They were somewhat plain buildings, but what caught Kat’s eyes were the occupants. In both there were a few children, in the closer of the two it was a group of younger kids helping out an adult with the washing. The kids would scrub the clothes down while the adult would hang them up.

*Bit of a hard task but then again... not like the kids can reach the clothesline either.*

In the other backyard the clothes had already been hung up and there was now a mix of older and younger kids playing with a jump rope. Well, it wasn’t just one rope but three instead. They were using two large ones for multiple people while one other teen stood off to the side jumping with a third smaller one rope. They seemed to be keeping as far away from the clothes as they could... which wasn’t quite far enough. The slight breeze would occasionally blow the nearby sheets into the rope’s path.

*Now. One of these two is the orphanage... but perhaps that’s not what I need right now.* Kat took another look around and spotted something even better than the potential orphanages. Two blocks away there was what looked to be an empty lot. Though it wasn’t so empty at the moment. A group of children had taken it over and split it up the best they could. One half looked to be a soccer match, while the other half was a group of four squares with one child each. They were passing a ball around, making sure it bounced once first. A small line of kids waiting next to it would cycle in when someone inevitably missed.

*I bet these kids are part of the orphanage. It’s a great place to start our investigation.* Kat angled herself towards the street near the lot. No sense in dropping straight down on the kiddos. The ages seemed fairly varied. The youngest look to be perhaps five, while the oldest was twelve. Probably. Ages could be hard when it came to unfamiliar children after all. Sylvie was a great example of that.

[What makes you say that? Wouldn’t it be better to try and guess which of the buildings is the orphanage and then talk to the kids in the back?]

*No not at all. Firstly, we don’t want the person in charge to break up any conversations. If they decided we were ‘bothering the children’ or whatever silly thing they got in their heads we’d be in trouble. We want to ask them questions later, so seeing us interrogating children before that would give the wrong impression. That’s not even getting into the fact we can cross reference them with the kids better if they don’t know.

Secondly, we’re approaching them on ‘their turf’... sort of. They’ll feel a lot more comfortable where they are. Especially if we join the line for the four square ball game, whatever they call it here. We’ll look like we’re participating, and they’ll be more open. They won’t be looking over their shoulder afraid of whatever they say getting back to the orphanage director. They’ll feel safe telling us what they really think of Zuhra.

I guess the question for you is. Do you want to play around with them as a human or a cat? Both have advantages. If you’re human we can get to more kids before overstaying our welcome. I won’t just be asking ALL the questions. Alternatively. If you’re a cat I have another adorable talking point. You are however more likely to be poked and prodded with a not insignificant chance of having your ears and tail pulled. Then again... might happen in either form. You can just be a lot more direct with your displeasure if you are human.*n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

[What do you think they’ll react better to?]

*Not totally sure. I’d say they’d react ‘better’ to you in cat form, because if I’m carrying something so cute I’m obviously not a scary grown up. But you’d also be very distracting so I might not be able to direct the conversation with something so eye catching in my hands. It’s a trade off.*