Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 957: Shopping Time

The nine o’clock meeting Ms. Rook had promised arrived on schedule the next morning, convened on less sleep than anyone admitted to, and it revealed the new headquarters’ next flaw: a finished building and a furnished building were not the same thing.

The ops floor had been handed over furnished, technically. The contractor’s package: beige modular desks in rows, gray task chairs ordered by the gross, laminate surfaces pretending to be wood from ten feet away.

Vespera, knowing the guild building had to be habitable as soon as possible, and knowing how tight the family’s finances were, didn’t order a luxury interior furnishing service. It was utilitarian, intended to be upgraded at their own pace.

The map table stood in the middle of it all on its battered folding legs, the one piece of furniture in the building with a soul, and the glass wall overlooking the south lot deserved better company than any of it.

Doug had a real desk because Doug had carried one in himself. Ms. Rook had a real desk because the universe would not have dared otherwise. Everyone else had spent the meeting working off contractor beige, and the family had collectively agreed not to notice.

The meeting ended, and Aria set her coffee down, and the desk under it...

*Creak!*

”Did that bitch just groan?” Luna cursed under her breath. ”It’s brand new!”

Aria looked at the cup. She looked at the laminate. She looked around the war room, one floor of a building three stories tall in dark glass and pale stone, furnished like a regional tax office.

”We need real furniture,” the Moon Valkyrie declared.

Phones were out before she finished the sentence.

One moment the room held seven women in various states of post-meeting slouch, and the next it held an architecture firm.

Nyx had three catalogs open in as many seconds and was swiping through executive lounge sets with focused serenity. Aria drifted to her shoulder and began vetoing color schemes without being asked. Alexandra produced an actual spreadsheet from somewhere on her person, titled it, and started a budget column before anyone had agreed to buy anything.

’They’re in sync,’ Kaiden sighed inwardly, wry. He liked seeing his girls being on the same page, but... was upgrading furniture really that high on the list of importance?

”Walnut,” Aria said. ”Warm tones. The light through that wall is gorgeous in the afternoon and I refuse to waste it on gray laminate.”

”Walnut and cream, bestie. Trust me~” Nyx tilted her screen. ”Low profiles here, tall shelving on the dead wall, and the reception set faces the doors so visitors sit with their backs exposed. For their psychology.”

”For their psychology,” Aria agreed pleasantly.

Aria swiped past a sectional with visible longing, murmured ”Office. Not home. Office,” and let it go, a woman being strong.

Indeed, they were buying furniture for their work space now, not their home, which remained the Abyssal Palace.

”Then explain why I can’t have my corner.” Luna was on a windowsill with one knee up, and she came into the conversation half a step behind its rhythm. Nobody looked over at the delay. ”Every serious operation has a lounge. I’m asking for one wall. Dual rig, 8K, 240 hertz OLED, the good chair with the lumbar thing, cup holders. That’s not a bedroom, that’s infrastructure.”

”You want a gamer den in the leadership office of the guild headquarters,” Aria said.

”I want a morale suite.”

”She rebranded it,” Nyx observed. ”She’s learning.”

The room, by reflex, turned to Ms. Rook for the denial.

Ms. Rook looked up from her desk for the first time all morning and considered Luna over the rim of her tablet.

”Approved,” she said.

The war room went silent in a whole new way. Even the catalogs stopped.

”Morale infrastructure is a legitimate line item,” Ms. Rook continued, and the corner of her mouth moved, briefly but verifiably. ”None of you have run a guild before. I would rather you enjoy it.” She returned to her tablet.

”What Ms. Rook means,” Doug supplied from across the floor, without looking up from his forms, ”is that she has watched too many promising youngsters turn into boring suits, and she has no intention of letting it happen to the interesting ones.”

”It’d make your Sinners brand worthless,” Ms. Rook muttered, eyes narrowed toward her colleague. The two of them would have a conversation after this meeting concluded.

Luna sat there for a second with her mouth open. Then both fists went into the air.

”TAKE THAT, BITCHES!”

”Congratulations, gremlin bestie.”

Kaiden had been leaning against the map table through all of it with his coffee, enjoying the show, and this was the point where he made his first and final contribution to the furniture question.

”Ladies, if I may.” He raised the cup. ”Why are we shopping like civilians? The awakened shop is sitting right there in the interface. Artifact furniture exists. Rune-etched desks, self-cleaning upholstery, chairs that adjust to your body heat. You buy it, it materializes in the room, done. We could kit this whole floor out before lunch.”

The room stopped.

Seven women turned to look at him at the same time, and for a moment nobody said anything, which was worse.

”Kai.” Nyx put on her talking-to-the-concussed voice. ”Have you seen artifact furniture?”

”Yeah, they look pretty cool-”

”It’s hideous,” Aria interrupted. ”All of it. Every piece. It looks like a dungeon boss died on a forge.”

”The glyphs glow,” Alice added from her folding chair, with deep disgust. ”You’d be answering emails on a light show. Big brother, no.”

”It is also profoundly uncomfortable,” Bastet said from the window, not turning around. ”Enchanted seating is built by smiths. A smith’s idea of comfort is that the chair survives a fireball.”

”The desks hum,” Calypso said, with feeling. ”I sat at one once. It hummed the whole time. Like sitting on a beehive that hates you.”

”And they cost more than anything,” Alexandra said faintly, scandalized down to her ledger. ”A single self-repairing conference table runs nine figures. Nine, Kai.”

”The compound already has wards, barriers, and a dog the size of a large mansion,” Luna finished, jabbing a thumb at the window. ”Defense is the exterior’s job. Interior is ours. We’re not sitting on ugly humming rune trash.”

Kaiden looked around the room, found not one ally, save for Doug, who just shook his head gently, fully understanding. Kaiden retreated into his coffee with his dignity.

”Withdrawn,” he said.

”Thank you for your input, guild leader,” Nyx purred, back in the catalog. ”We’ll let you pick a pen holder.”

...

The discussion rolled on without him, which was for the best, and it took Kaiden a few minutes of watching over the rim of his cup to notice who else it had rolled on without.

Bastet stood at the glass wall with the tablet Nyx had handed her held out at arm’s length, scrolling with one slow finger, and her whole face had politely declined to be present for it.

As he watched, she attempted to judge a fabric swatch by zooming in on it, and her ears flattened by a degree that would have been invisible to normal people, but by now Kaiden had become a tanned kitten connoisseur. No detail was lost on him.

She gave the tablet back to Nyx with both hands, like returning a dead bird.

”I cannot feel anything on this glass,” she said. ”You are asking me to judge linen through a window. This is not shopping. This is gossip about furniture.”