The tapping of Sona Sitri's fountain pen against the mahogany of her desk was the only sound in the Student Council room. Moonlight filtered through the windows, casting long shadows.
Before her, scattered across the glass table where only yesterday she had suffered the worst humiliation of her life, lay Yugo Hano's files.
Sona hadn't been able to sleep. Her mind, a tactical supercomputer ruled with logic and ice, had been dragged into utter chaos by her family's unyielding tradition. She was engaged. Engaged to a human, to her professor, to a strategist who possessed an artifact capable of summoning entities of alien intellect.
Driven by a mixture of duty, mistrust, and a strange obsession born of defeat, Sona had mobilized every information network in the Underworld and the human world over the past twenty-four hours. She wanted to know absolutely everything about her future husband.
But what she found chilled her more than her own magic.
"President…" Tsubaki murmured, entering the office with a fresh stack of printed documents. "The contacts at the Ministry of Education and the civil registries have responded."
"Let me guess," Sona said, without looking up from the papers she already held. "It's all a facade."
Tsubaki nodded slowly, her usually stoic expression now showing genuine bewilderment.
"His appearance and biological age match. But everything else… is worthless. The social security number, the birth certificate from the Tokyo hospital, his university credentials… it was all entered into government databases exactly four years ago. Before that date, 'Yugo Hano' literally didn't exist on this planet. There are no childhood photos, no dental records, no family. He's a ghost."
Sona leaned back in her chair, interlacing her fingers. Her fiancé wasn't just a wielder of an uncatalogued Sacred Gear. He was a man with a past that had been erased or fabricated, a perfect infiltrator who had built an untouchable life at Kuoh Academy.
"A ghost that can materialize creatures that play chess better than a high-class demon…" Sona whispered, her eyes gleaming with dangerous fascination. "Who are you really, Hano-sensei?"
Before Sona could piece together the puzzle any further, a pulse of harsh, discordant, and intensely hostile energy swept through Kuoh City, rattling the academy windows.
Sona and Tsubaki sprang to their feet at once, fascination replaced by the cold alertness of battle.
"Fallen Angels!" Tsubaki exclaimed, summoning her naginata. "And it's not just one. There are three energy signatures together. They're in the western shopping district."
Sona closed her eyes for a second, calculating the trajectory. The western commercial district. That was exactly the route Hano-sensei took every day to return home after leaving the academy. "
They're after him," Sona declared, opening her eyes, now tinged with a demonic gleam. "Raynare must have reported the anomaly in the park. Gather the rest of the peerage, Tsubaki! We're moving now!"
...
Several kilometers away, night had completely fallen over Kuoh.
Yugo Hano walked along a deserted pedestrian street, carrying his briefcase in one hand. His breathing was calm, though a dull ache lingered in his chest, a reminder of the blood he'd coughed up the day before. Despite this, his mood was strangely... light. The Saturn was going to be rebuilt. He had secured his students' future by humiliating Sona Sitri without having to get his hands dirty. For the first time in ten years, he felt like he was regaining control of his life.
But the Canon hated ordinary humans in control.
The air around him turned icy. The streetlights flickered and went out with an electric whine. Suddenly, a dimensional barrier of a sickly purple hue rose up, covering the alley and cutting it off from the human world.
Yugo stopped dead in his tracks. He adjusted his glasses with his index finger and let out a sigh of genuine weariness.
From the shadows of the buildings, the beating of black-feathered wings broke the silence. Three figures descended, landing in front of him and blocking his path.
In the center was Raynare, looking at him with a mixture of fury and apprehension. To her right, a voluptuous woman with blue hair, wearing an absurdly revealing outfit: Kalawarner. And to her left, a blonde girl dressed in gothic lolita style: Mittelt.
"So this is the famous crystal bearer," Kalawarner sneered, crossing her arms and sizing him up and down. "I was expecting a muscular warrior, not some boring, sour-faced high school teacher."
"Don't get cocky, Kalawarner," Raynare growled, materializing a spear of light in her hand. "This bastard shattered my barrier and broke my jaw yesterday. That artifact on his wrist… it's dangerous. Azazel-sama ordered that we bring him in dead or alive."
Mittelt let out a shrill laugh, summoning his own spear. "Relax, Ray-Ray! It's three against one. Unless he can transform into three monsters at once, we're going to rip him apart."
Yugo looked at them silently. His analytical mind assessed the situation in milliseconds. Three Fallen Angels. Enclosed space. His human body, already weakened by Battojutsu training, wouldn't survive a triple attack without being seriously injured.
But the strangest thing was what he felt in his chest. Instead of the usual cosmic hatred and murderous apathy, Yugo felt... amusement. A spark of dark, sadistic humor. The irony of the situation struck him as funny. These glorified doves thought they had him cornered.
A half-smile, almost imperceptible but brimming with arrogance, appeared on the professor's face.
"You know…" Yugo said, dropping his briefcase, which fell to the floor with a thud. "I've had a pretty stressful week. And, honestly, I've always wanted to see what roasted pigeons look like."
He raised his left arm and tugged at his shirtsleeve. The thick metal device was revealed. With a fluid motion, he pressed the side buttons.
BEEP!
The green core popped up. Yugo spun the dial rapidly. He watched the holograms flash by until they settled on a silhouette he recognized perfectly from his childhood memories: a humanoid being with fire on its head. "Heatblast." He wanted to vaporize them, reduce their wings to ashes, just like he'd done at the factory with that Street Demon.
The excitement of the moment, combined with the tension of the ambush, made Yugo lose his usual clinical delicacy. He raised his flat right hand and, giving in to the impulse, crushed the clock's core with all his might, an almost brutal blow.
BAM!
The characteristic emerald-green flash exploded, illuminating the entire alley with blinding intensity.
The three Fallen Angels recoiled, shielding their eyes with their arms.
"Get ready! Here comes the crystal golem!" Raynare shouted.
But the sound that followed the transformation wasn't the crunch of silicon and diamond. It was a roar. A guttural bellow, deep, savage, and utterly terrifying, that shook the pavement and chilled the three women to the bone.
When the green light dissipated, Kalawarner's mocking smile vanished instantly.
Before them was not a man of fire. Not a crystal giant. What blocked the street was a monstrosity straight out of nature's worst nightmares.
The excessive impact on the Omnitrix dial had caused a selection glitch, activating the random selection function. But not only that; the watch had synchronized the DNA with the user's peak biological age and combat maturity.
Yugo had transformed into Wildmutt.
The creature was gigantic, the size of a van. Its body was covered in thick orange fur, but unlike the juvenile design, this fur was marked by imposing black tiger-like stripes that gave it a feline and predatory appearance. Its forelegs were columns of muscle topped with black claws the size of butcher knives. It possessed a muscular and lethal tail with dark stripes. Its head, lacking eyes, featured much more developed sensory gills on its neck, and when it opened its jaws, it revealed rows of drooling fangs that could slice a car in half. The Omnitrix symbol rested in the center of its broad forehead.
Yugo, inside that alien mind, felt a brutal shock. She had lost her sight. The world was no longer visual, but an incredibly detailed, three-dimensional thermal, olfactory, and auditory map. She could smell the sweaty fear of the Fallen Angels, she could hear the rapid beating of their hearts twenty meters away. And most overwhelming: her human instincts were crushed by a primal, violent, and ravenous predatory instinct.
"W-What the hell is that…?" Mittelt stammered, taking a step back, her knees shaking.
The enormous adult Vulpimancer lowered its head, letting out a low growl that vibrated in the chests of the three women, and lunged forward.
There was no tactic. There was no magic. It was pure, raw animal brutality.
Yugo leaped, covering fifteen meters in a fraction of a second. Kalawarner tried to throw her light javelin, but Beast was much faster. With a single swipe of its right claw, it shattered the light spear in midair and struck the woman in the abdomen.
Kalawarner spat blood, flying like a rag doll until she crashed into a concrete telephone pole, splitting it in two and instantly knocking her unconscious.
"Damn animal!" Mittelt shrieked in terror. It frantically spread its wings to take flight, unleashing three light spears in quick succession.
Beast made no attempt to dodge them. The spears struck its thick, adult alien fur and ricocheted, leaving only scorched marks that failed to penetrate its dense, mutated skin. Guided by the sound of the flapping wings, Yugo used its powerful hind legs and leaped nearly ten meters into the air.
Its massive jaws snapped shut around Mittelt's leg. The girl screamed in agony. Beast used its immense weight to drag her back to the ground with a crushing impact. Before the blonde could even attempt a spell, the Vulpimancer's enormous striped tail slammed into her skull with the force of a steel baseball bat. Mittelt lay motionless on the asphalt.
Two down in less than five seconds.
Raynare was paralyzed. Primal fear, the terror of prey facing an apex predator, had overridden all her military training. The orange creature, drooling and breathing heavily, turned its massive, eyeless head toward her.
"D-Don't come any closer! I'm warning you!" Raynare formed a massive spear of light with both hands, trembling uncontrollably.
Beast didn't roar this time. He crouched, stalking like a demonic Bengal tiger, and walked slowly toward her, savoring the scent of pure terror emanating from the dove.
Raynare launched her attack with a desperate scream. Yugo, using his incredible sensory reflexes, simply tilted his head. The light grazed one of his gills. Enraged by the touch, Beast charged with the speed of a missile.
He slammed Raynare with his shoulder, slamming her against the brick wall of the alley. The sound of the Fallen Angel's ribs shattering echoed through the air. Beast raised one of his massive paws and drove it into Raynare's chest, pinning her to the ground.
The beast brought his drooling jaws close to Raynare's pale, tear-streaked face. The alien's hot, savage breath hit her. Yugo wanted to tear his head off. Animal instinct screamed at him to feast.
But deep in that savage mind, the history teacher's iron discipline managed to prevail, just enough. He wasn't going to eat her. That would be stooping too low.
The Vulpimancer let out a menacing growl that sounded suspiciously like "Get lost," released the Fallen Angel, and stepped back. Raynare didn't need to be told twice. Weeping and spitting blood, she created a magic circle beneath herself and her two unconscious companions, vanishing from the alley in a dark flash and taking the barrier with her.
The human world synchronized once more. Silence reigned again in the shattered alley.
BEEP... BEEP... BEEP...
The Omnitrix symbol on Beast's forehead blinked red.
FLASH!
The immense striped beast disappeared, dropping Yugo Hano to the ground. The professor fell to one knee, gasping heavily. His clothes were crumpled, his knuckles bruised, and his brain reeled from the sudden transition between the instincts of a blind animal and human consciousness.
He wiped a thin thread of saliva from the corner of his mouth, shook his head to clear the feral mist, and stood up. He walked slowly to where he had left his leather briefcase and picked it up from the ground, carefully dusting it off. Then, he took out a handkerchief, wiped the shattered lenses of his glasses, and placed them on the bridge of his nose.
He was about to resume his walk toward the Saturn when his sharp human senses (honed by trauma) detected presences behind him.
Yugo froze for a second. Then, he slowly turned his face.
At the end of the street, right where the Fallen barrier had collapsed, stood the members of the Student Council. Tsubaki, Saji, Momo, and the rest of the Sitri clan had weapons and magic ready, but their expressions bordered on utter panic. And in front of them, eyes wide and breath ragged, stood Sona Sitri.
They had arrived just in time. They had seen the barrier fall. They had seen that terrifying, gigantic, irrational, eyeless feline beast crush three Fallen Angels with pure animal brutality. And, worst of all, they had seen the red flash. They had seen the monster transform back into their academy's strict, harmless, and boring history teacher.
The man who didn't exist in the civil registry. The wielder of a Sacred Gear that defied logic. The man who had humiliated Sona at chess. Her fiancé.
Yugo looked at them. His mind, still a little dazed by Beast's canine instincts, took a couple of seconds to process the situation. He glanced at the destroyed alley, looked at the shocked demonic nobility, and then looked directly into Sona's eyes, which regarded him as if she were looking at a primordial deity.
The silence stretched for ten agonizing seconds.
Yugo sighed deeply, a weary sigh that carried the weight of ten years of secrets. His expression reverted to that mask of dead, icy indifference that characterized him.
Without showing even a hint of panic or concern about having been discovered, the professor adjusted his tie, tucked his briefcase under his arm as if he were about to enter and teach a class, and walked toward them with complete composure, stepping over the debris of the shattered pavement.
As he passed Sona, without breaking stride, without looking at her, and without altering his bored, monotonous tone of voice in the slightest, Yugo muttered,
"Whether we saw them or not, those three tripped and fell down the stairs. Watch your step. Good night, Student Council."
Yugo disappeared into the darkness of the street with a determined stride, leaving Sona Sitri and her peers stunned, trying to process the fact that the most dangerous, unpredictable, and savage man in the city had just assigned them homework.
Sona Sitri, the heir to the demonic water and Student Council President, stood motionless, her gaze fixed on the darkness where Yugo Hano had just vanished. Her shoes crunched on the rubble of the pavement, silent witnesses to the brutality of the orange beast that, just seconds before, had torn three Fallen Angels to pieces like rag dolls.
"President..." Tsubaki's voice trembled slightly, something unheard of in the usually stoic Queen. "That power... That transformation. It didn't emit demonic energy, nor holy energy. It was pure, absolute biological force. What should we do? Should we inform Rias Gremory?"
Sona clenched her fists. Her mind, usually a fortress of unyielding logic, was a whirlwind. She had investigated Hano-sensei and discovered he was a ghost with no past. She had played chess with him and been humiliated by a gray entity of incomprehensible intellect. And now, she was discovering that the man to whom her stupid family tradition had betrothed her could become an alpha predator capable of massacring entire squads without breaking a sweat.
"No," Sona replied, adjusting her glasses with a hand that still trembled slightly. "Rias is impulsive. If she discovers an anomaly of this magnitude operating in her territory, she'll try to recruit him or attack him, and Hano-sensei… Hano-sensei would kill her without hesitation."
Sona swallowed, remembering the professor's lifeless stare as he passed her.
"Clean up the alley. Erase any trace, magical or physical. This man is a black hole on the chessboard, and for the time being… he's my responsibility."
...
On the outskirts of the city, in the ruins of the abandoned church, a teleportation magic circle flickered unsteadily.
Three figures fell heavily to the dusty ground. Kalawarner was unconscious, bleeding internally, his armor shattered. Mittelt sobbed, clutching her skull, bloodied from the brutal blow of the beast's tail. Raynare, pale as a corpse, could barely breathe due to her fractured ribs. Terror still dilated her pupils; she could still smell the hot, savage breath of the eyeless monster on her face.
Just then, a flash of black light illuminated the altar. Dohnaseek, dressed in his trench coat and fedora, appeared with an expression of utter fury.
"It's pathetic!" Dohnaseek roared, striding toward them, not immediately noticing the severity of their injuries. "Raynare, you failed to take down that brat Hyoudou cleanly. I had to come and finish the job myself." I impaled him on the asphalt! I was about to blow his head off, but…
Dohnaseek gritted his teeth in frustration.
"The damned Gremory Clan showed up! Rias Gremory and her peerage arrived just in time. I had to retreat before they surrounded me. You're wasting our time—!"
Dohnaseek's words died in his throat as he finally looked down. He saw Kalawarner coughing up blood, unconscious, and Mittelt trembling on the ground.
"What the hell happened to you?" Dohnaseek asked, taking a step back. "Did the Gremorys ambush you?"
Raynare lifted her face, drenched in tears and blood. Her gaze was empty, shattered by trauma.
"Gremory is nothing…" Raynare whispered hoarsely. "Azazel-sama is wrong. That thing on the clock… it's not a Sacred Gear. It's hell… Dohnaseek, there's a monster in Kuoh… a monster without eyes…"
...
Far from the supernatural drama, in the cold, dark back room of the "Saturn" convenience store, Yugo Hano closed the metal door and locked the heavy bolts.
The moment the lock clicked, his legs gave way.
He fell to his knees on the linoleum floor. He clutched his chest with both hands and doubled over. A brutal spasm shook his ribcage.
"Cough... cough... Hrrg!"
He coughed with a guttural violence. A pool of dark, lumpy blood spurted onto the floor between his hands. Yugo closed his eyes, gasping, feeling his lungs burn as if he had swallowed hot coals.
Six years of destroying his joints and forcing his blood flow to master Battojutsu had left his human body on the verge of collapse. And now, the cellular stress of the transformations was making it worse. Going from crystal biology (Diamond) to his fragile human body, and then forcing the transition into the massive, mutated DNA of an adult Vulpimancer (Beast), was like putting his organs through a shredder.
He wiped the blood from his lips with the back of his hand and leaned heavily against a stack of empty crates. His breathing was ragged.
BEEP.
The device on his left wrist emitted a soft sound, and the red light indicating recharge time changed to a bright emerald green.
Yugo raised his left arm. The light illuminated his pale, sweaty face in the dimness of the store. With trembling but precise fingers, he turned the dial on the Omnitrix, watching the holographic silhouettes appear one by one, assessing his available arsenal. The tools with which he would maintain his small patch of peace in this mad city.
He turned the dial.
"Four Arms," Yugo murmured, noting the name and sketching a quick outline in his notebook. Brute strength. High-density skin. Useful for close-quarters combat against multiple heavy targets.
He turned the dial again. The image flickered and changed to a hunched being with a long tail, a sharp, helmet-like head, and spheres on its feet.
—XLR8. Hypersonic speed. Zero friction. Perfect for evacuations or lightning assaults that outpace demons' reaction time.
He continued with the methodical inventory. Aquatic, for marine environments. Insectoid, for aerial combat and chemical attacks. Ultra T, for hacking and assimilating any technology (something that in the world of DxD could be devastating if it managed to merge with any modern weapon or Church artifact). Fire, the magma pyrokinetic. Beast, his relentless sensory radar. Diamond, his indestructible crystal tank. Grey Matter, the quantum genius that had already secured his victory over Sona Sitri.
He had reached the ninth. Only one remained to complete the original list of ten that his past-life memory recalled from that old animated series.
He turned the dial, expecting to see the floating, ghostly silhouette with a single eye and razor-sharp claws. He expected Ghostfreak, the Ectonurite. An intangible form that would be the bane of demonic familiars.
However, the hologram that appeared made him blink.
It wasn't a ghost. It was a wide, bulky creature with a body that resembled that of a pill bug or a bipedal armadillo, covered in thick armor plates on its back, shoulders, and wrists.
Yugo frowned, bringing his face closer to the hologram.
"Cannonbolt..." he whispered, surprised.
The Ectonurite's biology wasn't on the active list. Yugo's analytical mind worked quickly to find an explanation. He knew, from the fiction he consumed in his previous life, that Ghostfreak's DNA possessed its own parasitic consciousness. Perhaps the Omnitrix, scanning Yugo's already fractured, unstable, and traumatized psyche, determined that introducing DNA with its own consciousness would result in irreversible mental collapse for the user. As a biological defense mechanism, the watch had blocked Ghostfreak and unlocked Cannonbolt, the Arburian Pelarota, instead.
"A kinetic inertia tank," Yugo reasoned, nodding slowly and jotting down the data. "Heavy armor capable of withstanding atmospheric re-entry. It can transform into a rolling sphere that would crush defensive magic with sheer physical torque. Not bad. It's safer."
He turned off the watch by pushing the ring down. The room was plunged back into darkness.
Ten forms. Ten monsters under the control of a human with his days numbered and his mind broken.
Yugo lowered his arm and let his head fall back, staring at the damp-stained ceiling. Issei Hyoudou had been saved by Rias Gremory tonight. The canon continued its course, and soon, demons and the fallen would turn Kuoh Academy into their battleground.
But Yugo no longer felt fear, nor hatred. Only a cold, steely determination.
He stood slowly, ignoring the sharp pain in his ribs, and walked to a small sink to rinse the blood from his mouth. He had to teach history to his students first thing tomorrow morning, and Hano-sensei didn't tolerate tardiness.
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Okay, here's another chapter. I appreciate those who commented on the paragraphs that couldn't be translated; thank you so much. I hope this chapter is error-free. No, I'm not going to read it for the tenth time; I'm already too nearsighted. With that said, see you later.
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( ̳• · • ̳) ~ ♡ Thanks for reading ♡
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