The praise from Raelindra hadn't even fully landed before Maci was already crouched at his knee with a handheld scanner pointed at the driver, muttering numbers under her breath that meant nothing to him.
"Oh, this is reading way higher than baseline. Way higher." She angled the scanner, and in the process angled herself, until her shoulder pressed flush against his hip. "Hold still, I need a clean pass."
She did this exact thing on the ship. I never said anything then either.
He eased backward half a step. She followed without looking up, scanner still tracking, apparently magnetized to whatever the device was reading.
"You're kind of parked directly against me right now."
"Hm?" She didn't stop scanning.
"Personal space. This is a personal space situation."
That got her to actually glance up, scanner lowering an inch, genuine confusion on her face like the concept had never once crossed her radar.
"Oh." A pause. "Sorry." She didn't move, exactly, so much as pivot slightly, which put a different part of her shoulder against him instead. "The readings get weird if I lose contact mid-scan."
"That's not actually an excuse."
"It's a little bit an excuse."
Cool. Great. I love that we've workshopped this into an actual excuse now.
Her tail caught a stylus off the edge of Raelindra's desk and sent it rolling before she snagged it out of the air one-handed, eyes never leaving the scanner readout.
A rap of knuckles hit the doorframe.
"You wanted to see me, Director?"
Raelindra didn't pause to acknowledge the sound.
"Come in. Good timing, actually."
The door parted, and Maci finally clicked the scanner off, straightening up fast enough to bump Hikaru's arm with her elbow on the way.
They didn't file in one at a time so much as arrive as a single wave of noise and color, and it took Hikaru a solid second to even try sorting three new people out of it.
The one who stepped furthest into the room first had scales, not scattered decoration, but deliberate ones, running down one forearm to a pale claw-mark scar that looked older than the rest of her skin. She wore tactical gear, nothing decorative about it, and her eyes landed on him amber and slit-pupiled, already sorting him into some category before she'd said a word.
Okay, she's built like a walking argument, and also, objectively, a lot to look at, and also...
The thought didn't survive her stare. It just didn't.
"Who's this."
It didn't come out like a question so much as her reading the words off him and confirming she'd gotten them right.
Behind her, a second woman drifted in at whatever pace she wanted, entirely unbothered by the room's tension, a small charm shaped like a fox's tail catching the light where it rested at her throat. She had her weight on one hip before she'd even fully arrived, hands tucked away, an expression that suggested she already found the whole situation funny and hadn't decided whether to say so yet.
She was, Hikaru noted with some annoyance at himself, extremely easy to keep noticing.
Stop it. She clearly already knows.
"Hm." Her head tilted, considering him like a crossword clue. "New hire? Lost delivery? I'm gonna need context here."
And then he lost the chance to think about either of them, because the third one hit him before his brain finished registering she'd moved, pink hair, green eyes, a grin that had apparently decided he was the best thing that had happened all week, and none of that mattered because she was already three feet closer than personal space allowed.
"Who's THIS?" Both hands came up like she was about to clap. "Hi! Hi, hi, hi!"
"That's the reason you're all here." Raelindra's hands folded in front of her before Lyra could get any further, the room's attention swinging to her at once. "This is Hikaru Tatsumi. Hikaru's Starseed Key bonded tonight, and as of an hour ago, Hikaru has agreed to join all of you."
Lyra didn't wait for the room to finish processing before she'd already crossed half the distance between them.
"Hi, I'm Lyra! Wait, you have a Starseed? Like a real one, active and everything? Okay, what's your name, actually, no wait, she just said it, Hikaru, right? Hikaru. Do you like hugs? What's your favorite food? Are you from around here, because you don't look like you're from around here."
She didn't pause once for an actual answer, and somewhere in the middle of it her hand found his wrist, fingers curling around like she'd already decided that was completely normal.
"Uh." He tried to catch up to whichever question was still open. "Hikaru's fine. And I don't really..."
"Great! Love that for you." She hadn't let go of his wrist. If anything her grip had gotten a little more confident, like his answer had unlocked something like permission. "Okay, next question, more important one. Are you a hugger?"
"I really don't think that's..."
"That wasn't a no."
He hadn't even gotten his hand free yet, and she'd already moved on like the whole exchange was settled in her favor.
She just steamrolls straight through a "no" like it's a speed bump. This is going to be exhausting, isn't it.
"Ara, ara~" Senna tipped her head, watching the whole exchange with open amusement. "Look at that. Not even five minutes in and you're already fighting off Lyra. Cute. Senna, for the record."
"I'm not cute." The words came out faster than he meant them to, sharper too.
"Mm, you say that like it's an insult." Her mouth curved wider, clearly enjoying this more than she had a second ago. "It just makes you cuter, actually. I like you."
A new voice cut through the moment before Hikaru could figure out how to respond to that.
"Lyra. Senna." Zaria hadn't so much as unfolded her arms, but both women straightened without being told twice. "Show some basic respect. Hikaru just walked in, doesn't need the full initiation on day one."
The last of the three hadn't said anything yet, arms still crossed, waiting for the room to settle before she did.
"Zaria Ignareth." She said it like a rank rather than a name. "I lead the Star Maidens."
Three sets of eyes settled on him, waiting.
"Hikaru Tatsumi." He kept it short, matching whatever energy felt safest right now. "Guess I'm the new guy."
Lyra's whole face lit up like Christmas had arrived early.
"A new sister! We're getting a new sister!"
She crossed the distance before he could brace for it, arms locking around him and pulling him flush against her, warmth and the soft give of her chest pressed against his ribs registering all at once.
Okay. Okay, this is a lot of information for my brain to process at once.
Heat crawled up his neck.
"Get off. Seriously, get off."
"No way, this is the best part!" She squeezed tighter instead of loosening, apparently under the impression that more pressure solved the problem rather than caused it. "You're so warm, why are you so warm, I could do this all night."
"I really cannot stress enough how much I need you to let go of me right now."
"Nuh-uh." She nuzzled into his shoulder, entirely undeterred. "I've always wanted a sister. You're staying right here."
At this rate I'm getting kidnapped for the second time tonight, just softer.
He got a hand between them, planted it against her collarbone, and pushed with enough force to actually create separation.
"I'm not a girl!"
Lyra blinked at him, grin still fully in place, like the sentence hadn't landed anywhere useful yet.
"I'M A MAN! M, A, N, MAN!"
The words came out louder than he meant them to, echoing slightly off the office walls.
Five sets of eyes locked onto him at once, five different flavors of the exact same expression.
"Eh?"
Maci was the first to actually say something, and what came out wasn't words so much as a strangled noise somewhere between a word and a cough.
"You're..." She stopped, started over. "The scanner. I had the scanner right up against your..." She stopped again, apparently unable to finish either sentence, and pressed the back of her hand to her own cheek like she could physically push the heat back down.
Senna's reaction arrived on a completely different frequency.
"Ohhh." Her whole posture shifted, delighted rather than embarrassed. "A boy. An actual boy, standing right there. I have a full year of material now."
Lyra blinked at him for exactly one second before her brain apparently resolved the update with zero cost.
"Wait, so, brother?" She tilted her head, testing the word once, then nodded like she'd confirmed something important. "Okay. Brother, cool, doesn't change anything."
Zaria's attention cut to Raelindra.
"Did you know?"
"No." Raelindra didn't dress it up. "This is new information to me as well."
"Nobody bothered to ask." Hikaru crossed his arms. "That's on all of you, not me."
Maci raised a hand like she had the winning argument.
"But how are you a guy? You're, like, actually pretty. That doesn't track."
"That's not how any of this works."
Lyra bobbed along seriously, like Maci had said something profound.
"Yeah, no, she's right, you're way too pretty to be a boy."
"I'm standing right here."
Senna tilted her head, considering him with the same focus someone might give a math problem that refused to resolve.
"Genuinely, though. Explain the bone structure."
"There is no explanation. I was born like this."
Zaria's expression didn't move an inch.
"This conversation has derailed considerably."
"Thank you." Hikaru exhaled. "Someone said it."
Zaria's gaze drifted toward Raelindra again, whatever she'd been chewing on clearly still unresolved.
"Are you certain this is something you want to allow? Human, taking on a role like this."
What is even happening right now.
Hikaru's jaw tightened.
"You got a problem with me?" He kept his voice level, but only barely, the frustration from the entire night finally finding somewhere to go. "Because if you do, I'd rather you just say it than talk about me like I'm not standing right here."
"That's not what I'm asking about."
"Then what are you asking about?"
Zaria's arms stayed crossed, and she said the next part the way someone points out where a light switch is, like the answer should have been obvious from the start.
"A man's place is in the home, cooking, keeping a household running, raising whatever children need raising. That's the natural order of things. What you're doing instead, the fighting, all of this, that belongs to women."
Hikaru stared at her, waiting for the part where this turned out to be a joke.
"...I'm sorry, what?"
"You heard me."
"No, I heard the words. I have genuinely no idea what universe you think I'm from right now."
Something crossed Zaria's face that looked, for the first time all night, like actual confusion rather than judgment.
"What do you mean, what universe."
It took him embarrassingly long to actually connect the dots, but once he did, the whole conversation rearranged itself into something that actually made sense.
Back home, the split ran the other way. Men got shoved toward the front lines, the physical risk, whatever job came with a helmet attached. Women got steered toward the home, the kids, the unpaid labor keeping a household from collapsing, an arrangement plenty of people back on Earth had spent generations insisting was just how biology worked, right up until plenty of other people spent just as much energy tearing that argument apart. He'd grown up inside it without ever really picking a side, just absorbing the shape of it the way you absorb which side of the road cars drive on.
Zaria's whole culture ran the exact same setup, mirrored. Women led. Women commanded, fought, held every front line worth mentioning, going back longer than anyone kept track of. Men raised kids, ran households, kept the unglamorous machinery of daily life from falling apart, the same job Earth handed to women, just wearing a different uniform. Nobody on her side treated it like a demotion either, from what he could tell. It was just the water she'd grown up swimming in, same as him, except flipped end over end.
Which meant she wasn't actually calling him weak, or unqualified, or anything close to the list he'd spent the last five minutes getting ready to fight her about. She was looking at a man doing what her culture considered a woman's job, and finding it exactly as strange as he'd find a woman walking into his old wrestling coach's position back home.
Great. We're both standing here confidently sure of the exact opposite conclusion, for the exact same reason.
Zaria's arms recrossed, and whatever softness had briefly cracked through earlier sealed back over.
"There's also the matter of your species."
"Humans don't have natural armor, accelerated healing, or any baseline combat physiology worth mentioning. You're fragile in ways the rest of this team isn't." Her eyes cut briefly toward her own forearm, scales catching the light. "I'm dragonkin. Scales dense enough to turn a blade, strength that comes standard, not trained, and heat that would put you in a hospital barely registers on me. Senna's kitsune, senses built for hunting, hearing and reflexes faster than human nerves can manage. Even Lyra, who's fae, the most fragile of the three of us on paper, still has muscle density and pain tolerance that would let her walk off a hit that would put you flat on the ground."
"I already told you, I fought a Sable Beast and I'm still standing here."
"Once. Under circumstances you didn't choose and couldn't have planned for." Her expression didn't shift, though her hands pressed flat against her own arms, gripping slightly tighter than before. "I don't think you should be on this team."
That landed harder than anything else she'd said all night, and it landed exactly where she probably hadn't meant to hit.
"You don't get to decide that."
"I'm telling you what I think."
"Then prove it's not just skin." The words were out of his mouth before he'd fully decided to say them. "Fight me. Right now. If I'm too fragile for this, show me."
Something flickered across Zaria's face, too fast to read clearly, gone before he could name it.
"Fine."
Raelindra was already moving toward the door before either of them could take it any further.
"Not in here." She said it like the matter had already been decided without needing anyone's input. "There's a simulator built to withstand exactly this kind of impact. Use that instead of my office."
A simulator? Nobody's explained what that even means yet.
Nobody else said anything as the group filed out of the office, Maci trailing behind with her scanner already back in hand, Lyra practically vibrating with excitement at the prospect of watching, Senna wearing the expression of someone who already knew exactly how this was going to go and found it delightful regardless.
The simulator waited at the end of a long corridor, doors sliding open onto a room far larger than anything the outside architecture suggested it should hold.
Looking for feedback, so feel free to write a review or comment.