Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

Sophia Vale stopped in front of me. Up close she was more striking than she had been across the Hogsby dining hall or through an office window. The kind of person who occupied space differently from everyone around them. Not aggressively. Just completely.

She looked at Toddy on the floor. Then at me.

[Shapeshifting used against you.]

I assembled the pieces in real time.

Azure had called me by my full name. Abram Nadez, in a classroom where she had offered nothing but guarded warnings. Sophia Vale had no reason to know me. Not like that.

"Azure," I said quietly.

The illusion shattered. Sophia’s elegant features melted away like wax under flame. Blue skin flooded back in, followed by the bright pink hair and matching pink eyes.

Azure now stood exactly where Sophia had been a second earlier, caught mid-act with the expression of someone who had almost gotten away with something dangerous.

She shapeshifted into Sophia to stop me, I thought. She used the most dangerous name on this campus to make me put him down.

"Please," Toddy said from the floor. "Let me go."

"He’s had his lesson," Azure said. Her voice was quieter now, some of the armor down. "Let him go."

"Listen to your girlfriend," Toddy tried, finding what he thought was an angle. "Please, sir."

Who told you that, I thought.

"Apologize to her," I ordered.

Toddy didn’t hesitate. The broken finger and the blood and the God-Hand punch had done the work that words hadn’t. He went to his knees with the speed of someone who had discovered that some people actually meant what they said.

"I’m so sorry, Azure." He even knew her name. "Please forgive me."

Azure looked at me. Then at him. The specific look of someone who had been treated badly for long enough that an apology felt like a foreign object she didn’t know how to hold.

"Apology accepted," I said, on her behalf. "You can go."

He got up slowly. Whatever charge he’d had left was gone, teleportation apparently expensive at level five when you’ve been punched through the air multiple times.

He walked out through the door like a person and not a teleporter, which was probably a new experience for him.

The library settled.

Azure looked at me and smiled. Small. The smile of someone who hadn’t expected this to be today’s outcome and wasn’t sure yet what to do with it.

I looked at her properly for the first time since helping her off the floor. Blue skin with small red stripes running through it, barely visible, like veins of something underneath the surface. I hadn’t noticed them in the classroom.

"I’m uncomfortable when people stare that long," she said.

"Some people are staring because they’re appreciating something beautiful." I replied.

She smiled again. This time her canine teeth showed — slightly sharper than human standard. The imperfection suited her. It worked very well on her.

"We should organize this room," she said, looking at the wrecked shelf and scattered books.

"Sure."

She pulled a chair over to the upper shelf and climbed up, reaching for the books that had fallen. Her short skirt rode higher as she extended her body, revealing more of those long blue thighs and the delicate red stripes that traced along her skin like living tattoos.

The afternoon light pouring through the narrow window caught the stripes and made them glow like liquid garnet running through smooth stone. The sight was hypnotic.

I filed the image away carefully and started reorganizing the shelf Toddy had smashed me through.

"Why would you fight for me?" she asked after a while, stacking books with careful hands.

"I’m not blind," I said. "My heart fights for what it cares about."

"Stop it," she muttered. But her voice had shifted, interested now, curious, quite different from the cold dismissal she’d given me in the classroom that morning.

I finished my section and moved back to hers, standing close to the chair she was balanced on.

"You’re a queen," I said, picking up a fallen stack of papers from the floor. It just came out. I didn’t plan it.

She turned on the chair, looking down at me. The light caught the red stripes on her legs and held them.

"You’re from Hogsby?" she asked.

"Yes." I handed the papers up to her. "You say it like nothing good comes from there."

Her fingers brushed mine as she took them. She didn’t pull back immediately. The contact lingered — warm, deliberate, electric.

"I changed into Sophia," she said, arranging the papers on the shelf. "Because I thought Toddy was going to—"

"You could have let him finish it," I said. "Why didn’t you?"

She took her time answering, stacking the last books with careful hands.

"If it were him in your position," she said, "he would have let you die."

"He wouldn’t have."

She looked down at me. "You’re very sure of yourself. What’s your ability?"

"Dangerous," I said, leaning against the fixed shelf. I didn’t owe her specifics.

She stepped down from the chair. We were close now, the shelf behind her, me in front, the specific proximity of a space that had gotten smaller without either of us moving toward it.

"Yes," she said quietly. "You are dangerous. In a way." The sharp-toothed smile again. "I think I noticed that first."

The red stripes along her neck pulsed faintly, faster now, betraying her.

"Azure." Her name felt different now that I’d said it a few times. "When was the last time someone fought for you?"

The smile faded. Just for a second. Long enough. The answer was in her eyes before she said anything.

"I’m not used to it," she admitted.

"Then get used to it."

She looked at the floor between us. Her hand moved, barely, like she was thinking about something and then thought better of it.

"Help me with the rest of the books," she said. "And stop staring at my legs."

"I wasn’t—"

"You were."

I picked up a book. "They’re very nice legs."

She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a warning. "You’re going to be a problem for me, Abram Nadez."

"And you’re still not stepping away."

She wasn’t. She had moved closer, if anything, the distance between us something that had made a decision.

"I know," she said. Quietly.

The lunch bell rang.

We had restored enough. The shelf stood upright again. The books were back in place. The library looked almost innocent once more.

"Do you have a hostel room yet?" she asked.

"Not yet," I said. "Rob hasn’t sorted it."

"You can use mine," she said, meeting my eyes directly. "Any time."

I didn’t answer. I looked at her wrist. The communication watch sitting there, same model as mine, same weight. I pressed my wrist to hers the way Miss Brown had shown me. The watches hummed once. Connection made.

Azure looked at the watches. Then at me.

You’re not the first, I thought. Daphne said the same thing at Hogsby. Her door is always open.

I was beginning to understand that some invitations weren’t metaphors.

[Azure: Shapeshifting, Level 4. Connection established.]

[She touched you first. She stayed close. She invited you in.]

[Tonight.]

Tonight, I agreed.