“Are you still mad at me, bluebell?”

With his mobile clamped between his shoulder and his cheek, Cobalt frowned as he wheeled himself over to his fridge and retrieved a carton of milk from within.

“Because of you, I nearly suffered two consecutive heart attacks. I think I’m well within my rights to be a little bit annoyed at you, Alison,” he responded, pouring milk into the tea he was making.

“I already said I’m sorry! I didn’t know the nanobots were gonna do that!”

“And let’s not forget the fact that I’m currently in a wheelchair!”

“Okay that wasn’t my fault! You can’t give me the cold shoulder because you tripped off a building!”

“I- I didn’t trip!”

“Then what happened?!”

“I was…!”

Cobalt stopped and thought for a moment. Whatever way he played it out in his head, the result was always the same; Elya tackled him that night, and it was her fault that they both fell. As much as he didn’t want to blame the Fallen, he couldn’t deny that fact.

Even so, rather than feeling any kind of indignation, Cobalt could only worry. Since she dropped that note whenever he performed the Mutov Singi, nobody had seen or heard from her. According to the Headmistress, she had applied for a few days off for personal reasons, but that only worsened his anxiety.

Still… Did he even have the right to worry about her? There was no other way of saying it; Elya was deranged. Violent, unpredictable, meticulous and…

“My friend… Damn it Trayer, pull yourself together,” he sighed, putting the milk back in the fridge.

“What?” Alison piped.

Something suddenly struck the outside of Cobalt’s dorm window.

“Alison, I have to go.”

“Wait, wait! Bluebell I wasn’t-!”

Snapping the phone shut, he rolled over to the window and strained to pull it upon. There, balancing awkwardly on the support beam, was Karazelle, dressed in what appeared to be her pyjamas. She flashed him an awkward smile as she clung nervously to the beam.

“H- Hey, sir!” she called, sounding a little unsure of herself.

“Karazelle? What are you doing out here so late?” he asked, glancing up at the dark sky.

She shrugged.

“A- Ah, y’know… just needed, like… help with my homework.”

“Are you sure you’re okay? You sound kind of nasal. Are you sick?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine, honest!”

Raising an eyebrow, Cobalt sighed and moved away from the window, allowing the Succubus to clamber inside. Despite still disapproving of her constant visits, it would be remiss of him to leave her out in the cold, especially when she seemed to actually be taking an interest in schoolwork for once.

Flopping down onto the couch, Karazelle laughed weakly and quickly readjusted herself rather uncharacteristically.

“You seem a little off, Karazelle,” he commented, rolling back over to his waiting mug of tea.

She shrugged and laughed it off.

“Do I? I feel fine, sir!”

Hm. Perhaps it wasn’t his place to claim to know his students’ mannerisms so well…

Taking a sip of his tea, Cobalt wheeled himself back over to the coffee table, where the Succubus had already laid out her homework. It was a photocopied worksheet filled with biology questions from their last Science class, namely the very class that everyone had left before being dismissed.

“You’re… actually doing homework?” he asked, eyes wide.

“What, is that, like, bad or something?”

“N- No, no, not at all… It’s just that the entire class left before I had a chance to assign this.”

With a small smile, Karazelle produced a pen from the pocket of her top and clicked it.

“Well, I figured it was unfair to just not do it, y’know? I’m trying to be all academic and stuff,” she stated, tapping on a few of the questions that had already been answered.

Cobalt nodded, impressed by her work ethic. As odd as it was for her to take the initiative in regards to her education, he didn’t quite dislike this change in her attitude.

“In that case, I’d be happy to help! What exactly are you struggling with?” he asked, setting his tea down beside her worksheet.

Karazelle tapped the page again.

“Question five, here. Something about differences in Lust demons metabolisms? I- I couldn’t really make out what you were saying for that bit in class.”

Cobalt raised an eyebrow. So she didn’t even know about the peculiarities of her own biological makeup? He thought it odd that someone like Karazelle wasn’t aware of such things even before he taught a lesson on them, but once again, he reminded himself not to make such assumptions.

“Well, I’ll go over it again, shall I?”

Wheeling over to the shelf where he kept most of his lesson supplies, the Incubus began to root around for the biology book that he had taken most of his explanations from. As he flipped through it for the section on differences in demonic anatomies, however, he looked up to see Karazelle peering around his room with wide, almost awed eyes, like it was her first time seeing it. His neck tingled as he once again got the feeling that something was up, but he simply dismissed it as him being tired and returned to the Succubus’ side.

“Here we are. Now, Succubi – and Incubi, I suppose – have a unique ability to garner nutrition from nonstandard sources, that mainly being bodily fluids,” he explained, doing his best to sound professional.

Surprisingly, her cheeks went a little red.

“Y- You mean like…?” she trailed, looking up from her answer sheet.

He cleared his throat shakily.

“W- Well, I cannot exactly deny that. Reproductive fluids aside, however, this means that in an emergency, a Lust demon could sustain themselves on saliva, tears, blood or even fresh milk. It’s not advised to do so for long, but their unique metabolism allows it to be done.”

Scrawling down her answer, Karazelle placed her pen down and looked up at him with quizzical eyes.

“Have you ever had to do that?” she asked curiously.

He swallowed hard.

“Um… Once. My friend and I got lost in the woods, once. I had skipped lunch that day, and nearly passed out from hunger, so… um…”

Clearing his throat, Cobalt quickly wheeled himself over to the kitchenette.

“D- Do you want coffee, Karazelle? I think I have some here.”

She suddenly leaped out of her seat and rushed over to him.

“No, you can’t stop there! Tell me what happened!” she whined, leaning on the counter.

The Incubus took a deep breath.

“She spat into my mouth, okay?! I didn’t want her too, but she wasn’t about to take no for an answer…”

“Really?! Who was it?!”

“D- D- Do you want coffee or not?!”

She sighed and rolled her eyes, but surprisingly, didn’t push the subject. He was thankful for it, as this was one of the few stories from his younger years that he didn’t exactly enjoy recounting. Well, one of the ones he could actually remember, anyway.

It certainly didn’t help that the saliva he was fed belonged to a certain Fallen…

“What do you take your coffee with?” Cobalt asked, opening his cupboards.

“Usually I get a macchiato with two pumps of caramel, one pump of vanilla, cream, two sugars and some grated blisterpom skin.”

Eyes wide with surprise, the Incubus turned his gaze to the contents of his cabinets.

“I have sugar,” he stated, producing a small shaker.

“Is that it?” Karazelle asked, her eyebrow quirked.

“That and salt,” Cobalt replied, pulling out and shaking a small box.

With a tittering laugh, the Succubus shrugged her shoulders and sighed.

“I’ll have two sugars, then.”

With a nod, the Incubus poured coffee granules and the boiled water into a second mug, before adding the milk and sugar. Stirring it well, he set the teaspoon aside and handed it to Karazelle, who accepted it with quivering hands. She seemed strangely nervous. As he made to ask why, however, the pair flinched as Cobalt’s bedroom window was suddenly slammed open from the outside.

“Please excuse me~!” quipped a sing-song voice.

A slender leg reached across the sill, clad in a gossamer thin stocking that did little to cover the pristine purple skin that lay beneath. A second appeared, followed by the rest of a Succubus’ lower half, dressed in what Cobalt could only describe as “casual lingerie” and complete with a spaded tail adorned with a black ribbon. But that wasn’t what was shocking.

What stunned the Incubus was that he was watching none other than Karazelle slip through the window and into his bedroom. He glanced over to the Succubus in front of him, who looked just as shocked as he did. But there was no mistaking it.

Two Karazelles?

The newcomer stretched languidly and made to flash a grin and let loose with some manner of bawdy joke, but upon noticing her doppelganger, the second Succubus’ jaw went slack. She pointed a finger.

“Sugar, what the fuck is going on here?!”

“I- I’d say I could explain, but I don’t think I can…” the Incubus guttered, looking from one to the other.

Fists balled, the second Karazelle stomped over to the first, who had gone quite red and had started sweating profusely.

“Wait just a damn minute…”

She snapped her fingers and held her hand out to Cobalt.

“Sugar, give me any salt you have!”

The first Karazelle glanced over at the Incubus, baffled.

“S- Sugar…?” he stammered.

“No, salt! Pronto!”

Too confused to refuse, he frantically grabbed the box of salt from the cupboard and handed it to her. Grabbing a handful, the second Karazelle took a moment to grind it between her palms before she balled it up in her fists and took aim at her doppelganger.

“W- Wait, no!” she cried, raising her hands defensively.

But it was too late. With a swing of her arm, the Succubus hurled a cloud of salt at her. As soon as the white grains made contact, the first Karazelle seemed to explode into a frenzy of electric sparks and yellow haze. Cobalt cried out and pushed himself back as tiny bolts of lightning danced through his kitchen, but as he lowered his hands, he was surprised to find that the girl he had made coffee for was in fact a very embarrassed-looking Whitney Brode. Ears drooping, she nervously sipped her drink, only to splutter upon realising that it had filled with salt.

Karazelle – the real Karazelle – folded her arms.

“Butterskin. You really outdid yourself this time,” she hissed, narrowing her eyes.

Cobalt blinked a couple of times, still somewhat confused. He knew that Nymphs were masters of illusions, but why the Hell would Whitney go through the trouble of disguising herself as one of her classmates for the sake of a difficult biology question.

“I'm sorry, I panicked, okay?!” the Nymph cried, throwing her arms up.

“So your first instinct was to steal my identity?!”

“You always get to barge into Mr. C’s room whenever you want! I- I just wanted to as well…!”

Karazelle scoffed and folded her arms.

“And why did you feel the need to do that?” she asked, cocking her head.

Whitney looked away, ears twitching nervously.

“H- Homework…”

“Tch, yeah right. Gimme the real reason.”

“Oh, fuck you, Whoretits!”

“I’d like to see you try!”

Cobalt raised his hands, urging them both to calm down. With a deep breath, he turned to Whitney.

“Whitney, I have no problem with you coming and asking me for help with schoolwork. It’s what I’m here for, alright? No need to rely on illusions for assistance with your biology homework,” he explained calmly, tipping out the Nymph’s tainted coffee before grabbing a fresh mug.

Setting the kettle to boil, he looked over at the Succubus.

“And Karazelle…”

He glanced down at her attire, before swiftly turning his gaze elsewhere.

“… wh- why are you wearing that?”

“Yeah, Whoretits! Just what the Hell do you think you’re doing, dressing up like that for Mr. C?”

With a devious smile, Karazelle planted a hand on her hip and subtly shifted her weight, posing like some kind of model.

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m trying to show off my womanly charms to our lovely teacher over here.”

She gave a small shrug.

“Also I bought it last night without really thinking, and I wanted a second opinion on it. I don’t own much lingerie, but I’ve been hoping to change that.”

Twirling around, the Succubus slid over to Cobalt and draped herself across his lap, despite how badly he was trying not to look at her. He cried out as she sat down upon him, prompting her to giggle and poke his cheek.

“Oho? What’s this? Did I finally awaken something in you, sugar~?” she cooed devilishly.

“Why do you keep calling him that?! He has a name!” Whitney cried out, looking just as outraged as she was embarrassed.

Karazelle groaned.

“Ugh, read the mood, third wheel.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Fine then. Bodysnatcher? Identity thief?”

“C- Cut it out! I said I’m sorry!”

The Succubus harrumphed smugly.

“Butterskin it is then!”

As the two demons began to bicker and squabble as they always did. Cobalt sighed and set about making two fresh mugs of coffee, one for each of them. They weren’t likely to leave until Karazelle inevitably won the argument, and he currently lacked the capacity to eject them from his room manually.

It was looking to be a long night…