I'll say this right away: this is a sketch I made a while ago. It does not chronologically follow the ending of my current work. I REPEAT. IT DOES NOT FOLLOW THE CHRONOLOGY OF MY WORK. So it will have different contexts and will only serve as entertainment. None of this happened in my work; it is only a sketch.
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The sound in the Student Council office was not that of pens scratching paper, nor of keyboards being pressed. It was an electric hum, constant and sharp, accompanied by bursts of hurricane-like wind that sent the curtains flying.
A black and blue blur moved through the room at a speed that defied friction. It picked up a document, read it, stamped it with red ink, filed it in the corresponding folder, and moved on to the next one in less than three milliseconds.
WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH!
Suddenly, the blur stopped dead in front of the office's secondary desk, revealing the slender, armored figure and dark visor of XLR8. The Kineceleran lifted the visor, revealing his green eyes, and released an exhausted sigh that sounded like a tire deflating. He raised his clawed hand and struck the green dial on his chest.
The emerald flash illuminated the room, returning Yugo to his human form.
The moment the light faded, the teacher collapsed face-first onto the desk, his soul abandoning his body in a thread of imaginary smoke. To his left stood three towers of documents, perfectly stamped and organized by alphabetical order and tactical priority. It was the equivalent of the Student Council minority's bureaucracy, plus eighty percent of the administrative reports from the entire Sitri territory in the Underworld.
A job that would have taken Sona Sitri and Tsubaki one or two entire days without sleep. Yugo had pulverized it in exactly one hundred and twenty minutes.
The man who had humiliated the heir of the Phoenix, the monster who had created a blue sun capable of erasing mountains from existence, turned his head against the cold wood of the desk, his eyes empty and faint dark circles beginning to form.
"Nothing changed..." Yugo murmured, his voice muffled against the wood. "I'm not even married... I'm just a fiancé."
Only a few days had passed since the Rating Game and the signing of that cursed parchment. In Yugo's tactical mind, becoming engaged to the heiress of one of the Underworld's pillars sounded like absolute protection, aristocratic luxuries, and, above all, the perfect excuse to retire from unnecessary fights and enjoy a peaceful life.
But reality had slapped him in the face with a seven-hundred-page tome of laws. Sona did not want a trophy husband; she wanted an administrative efficiency machine.
From the outside, in the halls of Kuoh Academy, everything remained the same. Sona, with her brilliant and twisted strategist's mind, had decided to keep the engagement secret.
Only the Maous and the core of the Sitri clan knew about the contract. Rias Gremory and her peerage did not have the slightest idea that the war for the teacher had ended before it even began. In fact, Rias kept sending him affectionate glances and sending Issei to invite him to the Occult Research Club every day.
But here, behind closed doors, the invincible Sensei was an unpaid salaried slave.
"Did you say something, darling?"
The soft, elegant, icy voice came from the main desk.
Sona Sitri was sitting in her new chair, courtesy of the Student Council budget, since the previous one was still frozen in the basement. She held a porcelain teacup and looked at the three immense towers of completed paperwork with satisfaction bordering on euphoria. Her blue eyes shone behind her glasses. Having a hyper-fast alien with tactical intellect doing her taxes was, without a doubt, the climax of her academic life.
"I said this is labor exploitation, Kaichou," Yugo replied, not bothering to lift his head. "I defeated an immortal Devil to save Kuoh's pride, and my reward is sorting complaints about the gardening club's budget."
Sona took a delicate sip of her tea. "Administrative work is the backbone of any territory, Professor. Besides, as my future husband, it is your duty to lighten my burdens. Think of it as tactical training for when we govern our territory in the Underworld together."
Yugo closed his eyes, feeling a headache pulse at his temples. Physical combat was easy. Hitting things until they stopped moving was simple. But demonic diplomacy and accounting were true weapons of torture.
He missed danger. He missed the silence of his old, filthy apartment. But above all, he missed the one thing that had brought him real peace during the training camp.
"I hope Asia lets me sleep on her lap..." Yugo whined very quietly, almost to himself, remembering the heavenly comfort of the leather armchair during the Rating Game.
The sound of the porcelain cup striking the saucer cut through the air like a gunshot.
The office thermostat seemed to collapse instantly. Yugo opened one eye. A thin layer of frost had begun climbing the legs of his desk.
Sona was not shouting. She was not summoning magic circles. But her spare pen was creaking under the pressure of her fingers, and her gaze had fixed itself on the back of Yugo's neck with the intensity of a sniper.
"Excuse me?" Sona tilted her head, her tone turning sweetly lethal. "I do not think I heard correctly, my fiancé. Whose lap are you planning to sleep on?"
Yugo's survival instinct screamed in code red. The Omnitrix was already charged, but he knew that if he tried to flee, the Ice Queen would freeze him before he could touch the dial.
The teacher slowly sat up, clearing his throat. "No... no one's, Kaichou. It was a delusion caused by the mental fatigue of reading eighty budget requests. I was thinking out loud about... uh... adopting a Golden Retriever dog I would name Asia. Yes. That's it. A very soft dog."
Sona stared him down for several seconds, evaluating the most pathetic lie Yugo's brilliant mind had ever fabricated in his life. Finally, she sighed and leaned back in her chair.
"I am warning you, Professor. Rias Gremory and her entourage may believe you are still a mysterious free mercenary. They may fantasize however they wish." Sona stood, walked toward him, and leaned over the desk, bringing her face close to his. Her cold fingers gently traced Yugo's jaw, sending a shiver through him that had nothing to do with magic. "But you and I know the truth. If you dare place your head on the legs of Gremory's Bishop, or her Queen, or Rias herself... I will freeze your limbs and use you as a paperweight for the files of the next decade. Understood?"
Yugo swallowed, looking into those blue eyes that accepted no refusal.
"Loud and clear, President," he murmured, accepting his fate. The world was safe from the flames of the Phoenix, but he was hopelessly trapped in Sona Sitri's eternal winter. And worst of all, to his twisted tactical mind... the cold no longer bothered him that much.
...
The monotonous hum of the old standing fan turning from left to right was the only constant sound in the small back break room of Minimarket Saturn. It was a hot afternoon in Kuoh, the kind that melted asphalt and annihilated any desire for productivity.
And Yugo, applying flawless logic, had decided to surrender to the weather.
He was lying on the old, worn-out couch in the employee lounge, but his head was not resting on the synthetic cushions. It was resting on the softest, warmest, most angelic lap in the entire prefecture. Asia Argento, dressed in casual summer clothes, hummed a sweet melody while holding a small prayer book, completely happy to serve as the personal pillow of the man who had saved her.
Yugo had his eyes closed, receiving the intermittent breeze from the fan directly on his face. His mind, which usually processed a thousand combat tactics and alien equations per second, was immersed in an internal debate over his own audacity.
Sona said she would freeze my limbs if I put my head on the nun's lap, Yugo reflected, feeling the cool breeze and the lavender scent coming from the girl. But let us analyze the semantics. I am her official fiancé, yes. I signed a contract. However, there has been no ceremony. No rings. Therefore, I am not her husband. Legally, civilly, demonically, and extraterrestrially speaking... I am still a single man. And singlehood demands enjoying small luxuries before eternal condemnation.
With his conscience completely clean thanks to that shameless and suicidal legal loophole, Yugo released a sigh of pure satisfaction.
His right hand, which hung lazily over the edge of the sofa, was not inactive. It was tangled in Mittelt's short blond hair.
The small gothic Fallen Angel was sitting on the floor, arms crossed, back resting against the sofa. Yugo slowly moved his fingers, scratching the girl's scalp with the same hypnotic rhythm one would use to pet a stray cat that had just been domesticated.
"I am not one of your stupid pets, you damn mutant human," Mittelt murmured, puffing her cheeks with indignation.
However, despite her complaints, the Fallen Angel did not move a single millimeter. In fact, when Yugo's hand stopped for a second to change position, Mittelt instinctively tilted her head back, seeking the contact again, almost purring imperceptibly.
"Sensei, you should not tease Mittelt-chan," Asia said with a sweet smile, gently stroking Yugo's forehead with her free hand. "Although she looks very cute when she is relaxed."
While the owner of the store reached absolute nirvana in the back room, the front of Minimarket Saturn was a scene worthy of a Renaissance painting about labor suffering.
The fearsome agents of Grigori, ruthless assassins of the Fallen Angel faction, were sweating buckets.
"That will be fifteen hundred yen, ma'am! And no, we do not have a discount on cat food just because it is Tuesday!" Raynare shouted from the cash register, forcing a smile so tense it looked like her jaw was about to fracture. She wore the minimarket's green apron over her usual clothes, furiously scanning barcodes.
In aisle three, the imposing Kalawarner, who had once used her lethal beauty to seduce and assassinate, now carried a wet mop. "Do not step here, I just cleaned!" she shouted at two high school students, who stared at her in terror before running away. "I swear, if I find another soda stain on the linoleum floor, I am going to impale someone with a light spear!"
And at the back of the store, Dohnaseek, the veteran in a trench coat, was balanced on an aluminum ladder, stacking boxes of instant noodles on the top shelf. "Defeating an immortal Phoenix... creating blue suns..." muttered the man in the hat, tears of pure humiliation gathering in his eyes. "And he has us working for minimum wage... which he does not even pay because he says we owe him ten years of rent for breathing his oxygen."
Back in the break room, Yugo adjusted his head more comfortably on Asia's lap, completely ignoring the suffering of his unpaid workforce.
Let Rias keep the Underworld, and Sona the Student Council, thought the monster of Kuoh, as the fan's breeze slowly lulled him. I'll stay here. This is true paradise.
Yugo's nirvana lasted exactly fourteen minutes and thirty seconds.
The jingle of the front door bell of Minimarket Saturn echoed through the store, immediately followed by a sepulchral silence from the Fallen Angels serving at the front.
"Welcome to Minimarket Saturn, where prices are so low that..." Raynare's manufactured voice stopped dead. The sound of the cash register was replaced by confused stammering. "Uh... did you get the wrong address? The five-star hotel is five blocks from here."
From the break room, Yugo opened one eye. Something was wrong. There were no screams, no explosions, but the level of mana that had just crossed the door of his humble business was not that of regular customers looking for potato chips.
Elegant steps, marked by the clicking of heels and the creaking of polished leather shoes, approached down the instant noodle aisle until they stopped right in front of the back room door.
The door opened.
Tsubaki Shinra stood in the threshold. But she was not wearing her usual Kuoh school uniform. The Student Council Vice President wore a dazzling, fitted navy-blue evening gown, her hair gathered into an elegant bun, with silk gloves reaching up to her elbows.
Behind her, peeking his head out, was Genshirou Saji, wrapped in a tailored black tuxedo, desperately pulling at the collar of his white shirt as if the bow tie were strangling him.
Tsubaki adjusted her glasses. Her eyes swept over the break room scene: the old fan, Mittelt purring on the floor, and the almighty Sensei, the current secret fiancé of House Sitri, with his head comfortably installed on the lap of Rias Gremory's Bishop.
The silence that followed was so dense it could have been cut with Kiba's sword.
"Professor..." Tsubaki began, her voice so flat and emotionless that it was scarier than Sona's shouting. "I strongly recommend that you remove your head from that anatomical zone within the next three seconds. The threat level of your limb-freezing has just risen to global catastrophe category."
Yugo sat up so fast he nearly broke his neck, coughing and robotically smoothing out his clothes. Asia simply blinked, confused by the sudden tension, while Mittelt growled over the loss of her personal scratcher.
"Tsubaki. What a... surprise," Yugo said, adopting his best dead-fish posture, though the cold sweat betrayed his internal panic. "It is a legal loophole, I assure you. I am still single in practice. But changing the tactical subject... why do you and the blond blond look like you walked out of a Hollywood awards gala?"
Saji let out a whine, rubbing his irritated neck. "Because we are going to a gala, Sensei! And the President sent us to fetch you because she said you would probably be lazing around instead of getting ready!"
Yugo blinked. "Gala? What gala? I have received no deployment order. I have been sorting the Sitri family budgets all damn week."
Tsubaki sighed, clearly pitying the fate of the man in front of her. "The high nobility of the Underworld, including Lord Sirzechs, never believed Lady Rias could win the Rating Game. They were so certain of her defeat that the hall, the five-star banquet, and the invitations for the official engagement ceremony with Raiser Phoenix had already been paid for and organized months in advance."
Yugo's tactical intellect connected the dots in one millisecond. "Don't tell me. As canon commands... canceling a party of that caliber is a waste of demonic yen."
"Exactly," Tsubaki nodded. "So, in a brilliant public relations twist, the event has been renamed. It is no longer an engagement party. It is the 'Official Victory Party' of House Gremory. All the young nobility, faction leaders, and representatives are invited. Including us, House Sitri. And, of course, you."
Yugo opened his mouth, but the words refused to come out. He felt a stab of deep betrayal. "Sona... Sona knew. She knew for days. And instead of warning me, she locked me in that office to stamp papers at superspeed so I wouldn't find out."
"The President calculated that, if she informed you about a party full of stiff nobles, Underworld politics, and formal food, you would use the watch to flee to South America and would not return until next week," Tsubaki explained with brutal sincerity.
"Her ability to read my evasive tactics is terrifying," Yugo admitted, massaging his temples.
"You have fifteen minutes to put on something that does not smell like instant noodles and burned asphalt, Sensei," Tsubaki ordered, pointing at her wristwatch. "Lady Sona is waiting for you at the Sitri mansion in the human world so you can go together. She appointed us as your armed escort to make sure you do not escape."
Yugo looked at Saji, who was trying to look intimidating in his tuxedo, though he looked more like a frightened penguin. Running from them would be easy. He could transform into XLR8, pat them on the head, and be on the beach in ten seconds.
But he remembered the contract. He remembered the President's blue eyes. And, most importantly, he remembered the threat of being used as a frozen paperweight for the rest of eternity.
"Asia." Yugo turned toward the sweet nun, who looked at him with admiration.
"Yes, Sensei?"
"Go home, put on the prettiest dress you have, and get ready to eat rich people food. You've earned it."
Asia's face lit up with a radiant smile.
Yugo rose from the sofa, heading toward his personal closet in the back of the store, where he kept one single lonely black suit he had bought for formal infiltrations.
"Tell Kaichou I'm on my way, Tsubaki," the teacher murmured, loosening his shoulders. "I suppose it is time to face the high society of the Underworld. And there had better be free snacks, or I swear I will transform into Heatblast and burn the red carpet."
...
The man who had endured atmospheric pressure in free fall, withstood the impact force of a Tetramand, and contained the energy of a blue sun inside his own body was fighting the most humiliating battle of his entire life.
In front of the enormous full-length mirror in one of the guest rooms of the Sitri mansion, Yugo desperately pulled at the knot of his black silk tie, his face slightly red from lack of oxygen.
"This... It squeezes my neck, it squeezes my body," the teacher growled, trying to turn his torso without hearing the worrying creak of the fabric. "If a Fallen Angel attacks right now, my evasion capabilities are reduced to a pathetic eighty percent. I cannot even lift my arms above my head to strike the watch dial!"
In a corner of the luxurious room, lying on the floor as if it had gone through an industrial shredder, was a pile of torn and stained black fabric. It was the MC's old and reliable infiltration suit. Barely five minutes after they had arrived at the mansion, Sona Sitri had looked at that cheap garment bought on sale, classified it as a "visual insult to the retinas of high society," and, with a snap of her fingers, shredded it using a burst of high-pressure water blades.
In its place, she had forced him into a three-piece gala suit, midnight blue with silver details, tailor-made by the elite tailors of the Underworld.
The problem was that it had been designed according to the aesthetic standards of demonic nobility, which meant it fit Yugo's muscles with millimeter precision that left zero room to breathe or execute martial arts.
"This is humiliating," Yugo complained, looking at himself in the mirror with an expression of pure tactical misery. "I think I would rather keep working at my store. Rude customers are a headache, but at least my green apron lets me perform a tactical somersault if the situation requires it."
The sound of heels echoed behind him.
Sona Sitri appeared in the mirror's reflection. Yugo forgot his asphyxiation for a microsecond.
The Student Council President wore a long, dazzling dark sapphire evening gown that fell over her figure like a liquid waterfall. It had an elegant but conservative V-shaped neckline, matching long gloves, and her black hair, usually loose, was gathered into an intricate hairstyle that left her neck exposed. Her inseparable thin-framed glasses reflected the light of the room's chandelier. She looked exactly like what she was: the cold, calculating, beautiful heiress of one of the most powerful pillars in the universe.
Sona stopped behind him, ignoring his complaints with the ease of someone ignoring the buzz of a mosquito. She placed her delicate hands on Yugo's broad shoulders, smoothing the suit jacket with a firm and possessive touch.
"Combat clothes are for the battlefield, Professor. Tonight, your battlefield is the dance floor and the social circles of the aristocracy," Sona said, looking him in the eyes through the mirror. "And as my fiancé, you represent House Sitri. I will not allow you to appear before Demon King Lucifer looking like the cheap bodyguard of a second-rate casino."
"Kaichou, this suit is cutting off circulation to my brain. If I faint in the middle of the gala, the shame will be yours," Yugo countered, trying to loosen the collar of his white shirt.
Sona slapped Yugo's hands away, taking on the task of adjusting his tie herself with suffocating but perfect precision.
"The suit is made of Underworld Acromantula silk and woven with resistance magic. You could receive a direct impact from a magic cannon, and the fabric would not wrinkle," Sona informed him, taking a step back to admire her work. "Furthermore, it is designed to emphasize upper musculature. You have the genetics of a soldier; hide it under those ragged clothes every day if you wish, but tonight, I want every stiff noble who doubts my choice to see exactly the kind of monster that belongs to me."
Yugo sighed deeply, his chest expanding against the fitted vest. He looked at Sona from the corner of his eye. Despite her bossy and dictatorial attitude, he could not deny that pride shone in the girl's eyes. She was not dressing him to hide him; she was displaying him as her greatest war trophy.
"Fine. I will go to this demonic tea party, eat their elitist canapés, and stand in a corner with my best dead-fish face," Yugo conceded, surrendering to the strategist's tenacity. "But if Raiser Phoenix happens to show up and tries to cause a scene... I will burn this million-yen suit by transforming into Heatblast. And you will pay for the dry cleaning."
Sona smiled, a smile so sharp and beautiful it stole the breath away. She offered him her gloved arm.
"If Raiser has the audacity to appear after the public humiliation you caused him, I myself will give you permission to melt his other hand," Sona promised with poisonous sweetness. "Now, accompany me, dear. We have a victory to celebrate and an empire to intimidate."