After letting Queenie torment Kiko for a couple of seconds, Lysaida stood from her chair and looked at the two.

“I appreciate you dressing her properly rather in some two thousand Kris outfit that you’d find on a model” Lysaida commented. Clearly the woman was a menace around the place. Made her wonder why they even kept her around.

“Two thousand?! Tell me that outfit didn’t cost that!” Kiko exclaimed, looking to Queenie with a panicked expression.

“Didn’t cost anything. I made it myself, for a woman who...went on to prove she didn’t deserve anything like it. So instead of having it going to waste, I thought I’d see if you’d fit into it” Queenie replied.

“You’ll have to talk to her soon, you know” Lysaida commented, eyes still on the paperwork.

“Let her come to me. I ain’t going there” Queenie replied.

“Fair enough. Now get out, I’ve got work to do” Lysaida dismissed the two with a wave. As soon as they were out, Queenie turned to Kiko, but found the girl already staring.

“She was a lot less…stern when we first met, and a lot more emotional” Kiko muttered. Queenie decided to drop her ideas to flirt with the girl and make her cheeks flush again, and just looked to the explanation.

“She’s a Schattenganger. She can walk through the shadows of most things, either organic or synthetic. Though, walking past organic shadows can give a flash of their current mental state. Over her time here she has walked past the shadows of a lot of people here, and mostly everyone knew your father in some way or another, so his loss is felt by most. She has taken the sadness and loss of many people, as well as her own. To be honest, I’m amazed the woman is still on her feet and not at the bottom of a bottle, or in a padded room. Her mental fortitude is amazing” Queenie’s voice was heavy with admiration, which was pretty nice to hear.

“So, that’s the Colonel’s default state? With a stare that can crush walnuts?” Kiko quipped. Queenie looked at her with a frown, not exactly how a stare could crush walnuts.

“No. She don’t really have a default state. She is an emotionally versatile woman. That was just paperwork mode” Queenie replied, before stopping outside a door in some wing. Kiko wasn’t entirely sure she could get back to where she was without Queenie, so kept close to the woman as she continued her tour.

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“So….Strange question, but where is Asha, in the whole, hierarchy?” Kiko was glad that the question had popped into her head, it allowed her to talk to Queenie but also not in an obsessive co-dependant way. Gods she needed to get over that quickly.

“Ahh, good question, actually. Asha is sort of an advisor. She doesn’t work for SIR officially, but is an associate attached to ODD in general. We have them for the Quasi-humans that had a wider, more varied culture. Some of them are basically just humans with extra arms. Others, like your father’s clan, have an entirely different outlook on life and need someone else to look after them. So, in our Hierarchy, she isn’t anywhere. In your hierarchy, she is quite highly placed” Queenie explained. “And on the topic of placement, we need to get you situated in a room. You can have a spot in the Kitsune quarters, Asha has some comfortable burrows, and being close to her will be helpful for you” Queenie finished. Kiko, still struggling with the queen worship, just nodded her head.

“Mmm. Being close to her will help ask what I do with this tail” Kiko made the comment and looked up, telling it to come out. It would, popping from the top of her skirt and swishing gently. It looked real, felt real, and the muscles that controlled the swishing motion - while strange - were definitely real. But if she told it to go, it went.

“Wonderful. Follow me” Queenie ordered, heading deeper into the maze of corridors and making Kiko scramble to keep up.

While setting a demanding pace, Queenie didn’t leave Kiko behind, making sure she could always keep up and measuring her step when the girl seemed to be falling behind. Eventually, the two got to the Kitsune quarters, and entered. It was certainly an intimate situation, with eight bunk beds, three across the left wall and three across the right, two bedside cabinets for each bunk.

“You know, it occurs to me...the Colonel said there weren’t any Kitsunes, or at least they were really understaffed. But there are quite a few here” Kiko muttered to Queenie.

“These Kitsunes are special. They are basically aides to Asha, and low-positioned ambassadors to small clans. A military still needs cooks and janitors and other trained personnel outside the soldiers. Can’t make the soldiers do everything, after all. But Kitsunes hate to fight for us because of history reasons you’ll find out later. So this is a good compromise” Queenie replied. And then Kiko got mobbed by the other Kitsunes.

Swiftly bombarded with rapid chitter about her Belonging, about how they were so happy to have a new sister, about tail-fluffing and ear-rubbing. Before she knew it she got dragged away from Queenie and into some sort of card game that she lost and had to brush everyone’s tails as a penalty. And then after the game was over, she went to bed with another woman who liked to cuddle in bed. It was a very strange night, but there was a tight bond in her heart that she never felt. So it was ultimately, a good night.