The whirring of the massive, crackling, purple light spear illuminated the street in front of the "Saturn" minimarket.
Kokabiel's envoy, hovering with his six obsidian wings outstretched, gazed at the building with a mixture of boredom and disdain. Descending to the human world to deal with a mere professor playing dress-up seemed an insult to his status.
Without deigning to look back, the fallen angel of the upper-middle class walked towards the three women who were fluttering nervously a few meters away.
"They're pathetic," the envoy spat, his voice dripping with toxic arrogance. "Making me descend to this garbage dump to solve such a trivial problem... it's humiliating."
Raynare, Kalawarner, and Mittelt lowered their gaze, trembling under the pressure of his aura.
The envoy gave a lascivious and cruel smile. "When I finish disemboweling that 'anomaly' and deliver the nun to the altar, you three will compensate me for the time you've wasted. You'll warm my bed and serve me for the next century. It's the least I can pay for your uselessness."
The three women tensed, disgust and fear vying in their throats, but none dared to reply. In the Grigori hierarchy, contradicting a superior meant death.
Suddenly, a blinding, radioactive emerald light exploded on the second floor of the minimarket.
The flash completely eclipsed the brilliance of the envoy's purple lance and the exorcists' weapons. Before Freed Sellzen or the fallen angels could react, the asphalt floor began to shake with the force of a localized earthquake.
¡CRASH!
The asphalt exploded. Gigantic pillars of pale, translucent glass, as thick as the trunks of ancient sequoias, erupted from the earth at breakneck speed. The crystals curved and intertwined over the "Saturn" minimarket, forming an absolutely impenetrable geodesic dome that completely encapsulated the building, sealing Asia Argento in a diamond fortress.
On the apex of the dome, bathed in moonlight, stood Diamante.
The Petrosapien lowered his gaze to the army surrounding his home. His analytical mind assessed the situation in a heartbeat. The dome would withstand the attacks, but Diamante was a stationary, tactical fighter. To sweep aside a dozen fanatical exorcists and three scattered fallen angels, he needed crowd control, area damage, and relentless mobility.
Yugo remembered his past life. He recalled an animated series where a teenager, years after finding the watch, discovered he could shapeshift without reverting to human form simply by rotating the symbol on his chest.
"The recalibrated Omnitrix did it," Yugo thought, his mind racing. "I have the prototype. Forcing a direct genetic rewrite... will come at a cost. But Sona gave me the stamina of a demon. I can handle it."
Diamante brought his right hand to the center of his chest, where the hourglass symbol glowed green.
The exorcists raised their pistols, and Freed ignited his light chainsaw. The six-winged emissary hurled his massive purple spear straight at the crystal giant.
Yugo didn't dodge. He grabbed the edge of the dial against his own chest and, with a jerky movement, twisted it violently, forcing the mechanism and crushing it against his ribcage.
The prototype's response wasn't a simple, clean green flash. It was an explosion of biological static and pure feedback.
ZZZAAAAAP!
A distorted shriek, a blend of Yugo's human voice and the alien's metallic echo, ripped through the night. Forcing the direct change on the prototype wasn't a smooth transition; it was subjecting its DNA to a molecular blender. Yugo felt every silicon cell of Diamond melt, boil, and forcibly restructure itself, tearing chunks of his own demonic nervous system in the process. Coughing up a cloud of black blood that evaporated from the energy of the transformation, Yugo's body twisted and mutated monstrously in mid-air.
The envoy's purple light spear struck right where Yugo was standing, creating a massive explosion of dust and debris at the top of the dome.
"Hahaha! He blew it to pieces!" laughed Freed, revving his chainsaw.
But from the thick smoke of the explosion, something massive fell toward the street. It landed on the asphalt with a crash that cracked the pavement.
He was no longer the lanky glass giant. He was a robust, broad creature, covered in thick yellow and white armor plates. Cannonbolt.
The Arburian Pelarota was panting heavily. The pain of the "rapid change" had left him dizzy, and a trickle of demonic blood oozed from the corner of his alien lips, but the murderous fury in his eyes remained undiminished.
"What is that ball of fat?" one of the exorcists mocked. "Kill it!"
The twelve exorcists opened fire. Dozens of light bullets rained down on Cannonbolt. Yugo simply crossed his arms over his face and ducked. His biology closed in on itself, turning him into a perfect armored sphere. The blessed bullets ricocheted off the protective plates without leaving even a scratch.
And then, the sphere began to spin.
The sound of the building inertia was like a jet engine. The asphalt beneath Cannonbolt disintegrated from the extreme friction.
"Oh, shit..." Freed muttered, instinctively backing away.
Cannonbolt shot off.
There was no elegant tactic. It was pure and utter demolition physics. An armored mass moving at absurd speeds.
¡BAM!
Cannonbolt crashed into the exorcists' front line. It wasn't a fight; it was a macabre bowling game. Four men were sent flying, their bones shattering with sickening sounds as they hit the brick walls of neighboring houses.
The sphere bounced off a wall, not losing speed, but gaining it, and traced a zigzag path through the street.
¡CRASH!
¡BAM!
The screams of the masked heretics faded one by one. Their lightsabers shattered like chopsticks upon contact with the kinetic armor of the rolling beast.
Freed Sellzen raised his chainsaw, screaming like a madman. Cannonbolt didn't even bother to dodge. He rammed him head-on. The chainsaw shattered, and Freed's body was launched like a missile, crashing into a lamppost, which bent from the impact. The exorcist fell to the ground, spitting blood and completely unconscious.
From the air, the three fallen angels watched the massacre, paralyzed by panic.
"Don't let him gain momentum! Shoot him from above!" Raynare shouted, throwing spears of golden light.
But Yugo had already targeted them. Cannonbolt rolled toward the wall of a house, using the structure to defy gravity. He shot up the facade at full speed and propelled himself into the night sky, straight toward the three women.
"Watch out!" Kalawarner squealed.
The armored sphere struck Mittelt and Kalawarner with the force of a miniature meteorite. The kinetic impact shattered their defensive auras instantly. The two women plummeted, crashing to the asphalt and losing consciousness before they even felt the pain.
Raynare tried to retreat, flapping her wings frantically, but the shockwave from Cannonbolt's rebound caught up with her, striking her in the chest with the force of a jackhammer. The leader of the falls spun around, collapsing unconscious onto the awning of a nearby shop.
The assault army had been annihilated in less than forty seconds.
The yellow and black sphere fell back onto the asphalt of the main street, skidding to a stop and slowly unwinding.
Cannonbolt stood up. His heavy shoulders rose and fell with the effort. The pain of the "forced change" still throbbed in his veins, but he had accomplished his objective. Not a single scratch had reached the diamond dome that protected Asia.
The Arburian Pelarota looked up.
In the middle of the devastated street, among the broken bodies of the exorcists and the dust raised by the destruction, only one figure remained standing.
Kokabiel's envoy had descended to the ground. His six obsidian wings swayed slowly. His purple spear had vanished, and the arrogant, lascivious smile he'd worn a moment ago had completely disappeared, replaced by a scowl and a look charged with real murderous intent.
The upper-middle-class fallen angel stepped forward, crushing one of the exorcists' broken weapons under his boot.
"I must admit..." said the envoy, his voice no longer reflecting boredom, but the cold resolve of a warrior who had just found worthy prey. "That was an interesting trick, human. You cleaned up the trash for me."
Cannonbolt partially uncoiled, its claws gripping the shattered asphalt to slow its momentum. The Arburian Pelarota puffed, exhaling steam from the exertion. Its strength, impact speed, and durability were overwhelmingly superior to the fallen angel's. Any direct hit from that armored mass would have shattered the envoy's spine like a dry twig.
But the envoy was not some stupid, fanatical exorcist; he was a veteran of Kokabiel's faction.
"You're fast for a fatso, human," mocked the upper-middle-class Fallen, hovering thirty meters above the ground, well beyond Cannonbolt's leaping range. "But brute force is useless if you can't hit your target. Know your place!"
The envoy flapped his six obsidian wings and unleashed a rain of dozens of purple light spears.
Cannonbolt instantly curled into its spherical form. The lances slammed into the thick yellow and white plates, exploding in lethal sparks, but failing to penetrate the kinetic armor. Yugo, inside his biological shell, gritted his teeth. The fallen one had been right. Cannonbolt was an unstoppable tank on land, but its ricochet trajectories, though chaotic, were linear and predictable for an opponent that could maneuver freely in three dimensions. It barely grazed the angel's boots with its highest charges.
"I need air control. I need range," Yugo's cold mind calculated. "One more shift... my demonic body can withstand one more shift."
The armored sphere bounced violently off the facade of a building and landed heavily in the middle of the street, unwinding.
The envoy prepared an even more massive purple spear, laughing arrogantly. "It's useless! Surrender and die!"
Yugo didn't hear him. He raised his heavy left claw and brought it to the Omnitrix symbol embedded in his chest plate. He abruptly turned the dial until he found the desired shape and crushed it.
Forcing a second direct shift without going through the recharge state in the prototype was a mistake that its nervous system would never forget.
¡ZZZKKK-AAAARRGGH!
A bloodcurdling roar, half beast, half human, echoed through the street. Yugo felt as if boiling lava had been injected directly into his spinal cord. Cannonbolt's thick yellow plates didn't retract cleanly; they exploded, cracking as the alien flesh melted and charred in milliseconds. The black blood of his demonic biology evaporated instantly, turning into crimson vapor.
Before the astonished eyes of the envoy, the armored giant incinerated itself, and from its own ashes, a colossus of magma and dark volcanic rock rose up.
Fire had returned.
The adult Pyronite unleashed a roar of pain and fury that shook the foundations of the street. The blue and white flames crowning its head burned with erratic intensity, fueled by the agony of forced change.
"Did it change again?!" exclaimed the fallen man, losing his arrogant smile for the first time. "It doesn't matter! I still have the air advantage!"
The envoy hurled the massive spear directly at the fire titan.
Yugo didn't dodge. He brought both of his volcanic rock hands to the ground and plunged them into the shattered asphalt.
"Erupt!" roared Yugo.
He channeled all the thermal energy of his body deep into the earth. The asphalt bubbled instantly. A fraction of a second later, the entire street exploded.
A massive geyser of lava, incandescent debris, and volcanic pressure shot skyward, intercepting and disintegrating the purple light spear instantly. The shockwave from the eruption forced Kokabiel's envoy to shield his face and ascend even higher, coughing from the toxic smoke and hot ash.
"You damned madman, you're going to destroy the whole city!" shouted the fallen angel, trying to stabilize his flight amidst the rain of molten rocks.
Down below, in the magma crater, Fire was not over.
The eruption had hurled dozens of giant blocks of asphalt and earth into the sky. Yugo leaped onto the largest piece of debris: a pavement slab nearly three meters long. As soon as his rock boots touched the surface, he unleashed two massive torrents of white fire from his hands and feet toward the back of the rock.
Like an improvised rocket, the asphalt slab shot skyward, propelled by Yugo's thermal thrusters. The Pyronite was surfing across the burning rock, defying gravity and closing the distance to its enemy in the blink of an eye.
The envoy opened his eyes wide, seeing the magma monster ascending towards him on a stone meteor.
"Don't you dare look down on me, you human trash!" roared the fallen angel, materializing two swords of purple light in his hands and preparing to slice the rock and the monster to pieces.
Yugo, aboard his asphalt surfboard, crossed his arms in an "X" shape over his chest. He channeled all the energy from his volcanic shoulder pads into the center of his body.
"Taiyoken," Yugo thought, remembering the classic trick from his childhood.
It opened its arms abruptly. It didn't unleash fire. It released an omnidirectional wave of pure light and thermal radiation. It was the equivalent of detonating a flashbang grenade the size of a star from ten meters away.
An absolute white flash, blinding and scorching, erupted in the night sky.
"AAAHHH! MY EYES!" howled Kokabiel's envoy, dropping his lightsabers and clutching his face in his hands. His corneas had been instantly burned by the exposure to the condensed sunlight. His flight became erratic, losing all control and orientation.
That was the only opening Yugo needed.
The Pyronite abandoned the propelled rock. It leaped through the boiling air, its black rock hands burning with a blue fire that exceeded thousands of degrees in temperature.
On the rooftops below, the flash had been so intense that it woke the three fallen women. Raynare was the first to open her eyes, coughing and clutching her head from the earlier impact of Cannonbolt. Kalawarner and Mittelt clumsily sat up beside her.
As they looked up at the sky to find their superior, the three witnessed a scene that would be seared into their nightmares for the rest of their immortality.
Yugo, mid-air, reached the blind fallen angel. His two magma hands closed like a hydraulic press directly onto the face and skull of the six-winged emissary.
The scream that escaped the throat of the fallen angel was neither a human sound nor a demonic one. It was the purely agonized shriek of a being whose flesh, bones, and aura were being atomized in real time.
Yugo tightened his grip, channeling all the fire within him into his palms.
"Silence," the magma monster declared.
The blue fire devoured the envoy's head in a fraction of a second. The intense heat descended his neck, scorching the armor, incinerating the six majestic obsidian wings, and evaporating the blood before it could even spill.
Raynare, Mittelt, and Kalawarner watched, paralyzed by a terror beyond comprehension, as the proud and lethal upper-middle-class warrior, Kokabiel's personal envoy, turned into a burning ash statue in the hands of the anomaly.
Yugo let go of the skull. Or, rather, he let go of the dust.
The headless body of the fallen angel dissolved in the air, scattering like volcanic ash carried by the winds of Kuoh. Not even a corpse remained to be buried.
The fire titan began to plummet toward the shattered street. As it descended, it turned its heavy, flame-enveloped head and fixed its burning eyes directly on the rooftop where the three women trembled.
Two magic circles, one crimson and the other bright blue, erupted at the edge of the destroyed zone.
The Gremory and Sitri nobility emerged from the magical portals, weapons drawn and magic ready for battle. Rias and Sona had sensed the absurd fluctuation of thermal energy and the collapse of the fallen angels' signatures, so they had rushed to intercept the chaos.
But what they found left them speechless.
The street looked as if it had been the epicenter of a meteorite strike. Unconscious exorcists with broken bones adorned the walls and lampposts. And at the center of it all, the colossus of magma and volcanic rock, Fuego, stood tall, surrounded by an aura of murderous heat.
Yugo didn't immolate himself or prepare to attack them. He simply turned his flaming face toward the heirs of the Underworld, his empty white eyes scanning the newcomers with utter apathy, before completely ignoring them.
He raised a rocky hand, and the gigantic diamond dome encasing the "Saturn" minimarket began to creak. The crystals disintegrated in a fine rain of emerald light, dissolving into thin air until the store was once again visible, completely intact. Inside the second floor, Asia could be seen peeking out shyly, safe and sound.
Fuego exhaled a cloud of steam and began to walk with heavy, slow steps toward the awning of the neighboring tent, where Raynare, Kalawarner, and Mittelt were hugging each other, trembling like leaves in the middle of a hurricane.
The three fallen angels were terrified. They had witnessed the massacre of their army and the atomization of an untouchable superior in a matter of minutes. When the mass of lava stopped before them, the heat scorched their feathers.
"From now on, you three are my slaves," roared Fuego, his voice crackling like burning wood, leaving no room for negotiation.
Kalawarner swallowed hard, unable to speak. Raynare stared at the monster, her eyes wide.
"And if any of you have any objections..." Yugo continued, raising a hand engulfed in blue flames and pointing at the dark dust that stained the street, "...you can go and discuss it with Kokabiel's envoy."
Terror paralyzed them. Being slaves to this monster was humiliating, but the alternative was to cease to exist.
Suddenly, a hoarse, pained groan was heard from among the rubble.
Dohnaseek, who had been flung through an electronics store window by Cannonbolt's attack, struggled to his feet. His trench coat was torn and his hat was gone, but his swagger remained undiminished, fueled by the confusion of having been unconscious during his superior's death.
Upon seeing the fire titan demanding submission from his companions, Dohnaseek spat blood and materialized a spear of light.
"Slaves?!" Dohnaseek roared, blinded by rage. "You filthy human of my...!"
The fallen angel couldn't finish the sentence. He couldn't even take a step.
Fuego didn't turn around completely. He simply moved his right arm back in a lazy gesture, almost as if he were swatting away an annoying fly, and opened his palm.
A concentrated beam of white plasma, so dense it cut off the oxygen in the street, shot from his hand. It struck Dohnaseek squarely in the chest.
There was no scream. There was no explosion. The heat was so absolute and the execution so instantaneous that the fallen angel's body simply evaporated, leaving behind a silhouette of ash that collapsed in on itself before the spear of light touched the ground.
In less than a second, Dohnaseek had ceased to exist.
The silence that followed was absolute. Rias Gremory, standing at a distance, covered her mouth with her hands. Issei, hiding behind Kiba, felt his stomach churn. Sona Sitri swallowed the lump in her throat; her Pawn had just executed a mid-level enemy with the same ease as breathing. It was a display of power and clinical cruelty designed to send a message to everyone present.
Raynare, Mittelt, and Kalawarner fell to their knees, pressing their foreheads to the molten ground, completely submitting to the god of destruction before them.
Satisfied, Fire brought his enormous rock hand to the Omnitrix symbol on his chest and pressed.
¡FLASH!
The green light bathed the alley. The magma and rocks compressed until, in the monster's place, Yugo Hano reappeared.
His dark suit was slightly wrinkled, and his glasses were a little crooked. He adjusted them with his index finger and let out a soft sigh, brushing some imaginary ash from his jacket lapel. Despite the drastic change, his gray, lifeless gaze remained just as intimidating.
Yugo walked towards the three prostrate women. They did not dare to look up.
With a movement that defied all the dark, epic tension of the moment, Yugo extended his arms. He grabbed Mittelt—the youngest, dressed in gothic lolita fashion—by the waist, lifted her into the air, and literally sat her on his shoulders, perching her on his head like a little girl at an amusement park. Mittelt squealed in panic, but clung to the professor's head, frozen with fear.
Then Yugo bent down and took Kalawarner in his right arm, gripping her by the waist and lifting her like a sack of potatoes. He did the same with Raynare using his left arm. The two voluptuous fallen women hung from the human's sides, too terrified of their new master's demonic strength to struggle.
Carrying three fallen angels as if they were supermarket groceries, Yugo turned around and started walking towards the entrance of the Saturn minimarket.
Before opening the glass door, he paused. He turned his face slightly to look at the two demonic nobles who still stood in shock at the edge of the street.
Her gray eyes fixed directly on Sona Sitri, her "King".
"Sona," Yugo called. His monotone voice echoed clearly in the silent night, devoid of any feudal respect. "Next time... if you and the Gremory group are going to let the carnage get this far..."
Yugo adjusted his grip on Raynare, who let out a frightened little noise.
—...don't even bother coming. You'll only get in the way of the cleaning.
With that, Yugo kicked open the minimarket door and entered, taking his three new, terrified slaves with him. The door closed with a soft clink, leaving Rias Gremory speechless and Sona Sitri with her cheeks burning with humiliation, anger, and an undeniable fascination with her irreverent and indomitable fiancé.
...
The cheerful, electronic tinkling of the glass door of the "Saturn" minimarket sounded almost insultingly normal, contrasting with the hell of ashes and melted asphalt that had just been left in the street.
Yugo Hano entered the room. Without the slightest ceremony or delicacy, he let go of his arms.
¡Thump! ¡Thump!
Kalawarner and Raynare crashed heavily onto the clean linoleum floor. The two voluptuous Fallen Angels, accustomed to soaring through the skies and being treated as dark deities by humans, groaned in pain as they hit the ground, too terrified and bruised to even attempt to summon their wings.
The sound of hurried footsteps echoed from the wooden staircase. Asia Argento rushed down, her face pale with worry.
—Yugo-san! I was so scared...! —Asia's words died in her throat instantly.
She stopped dead in her tracks on the last step. Her emerald eyes widened as she recognized the women lying on the ground. Especially Raynare, the very leader who had ordered her kidnapping, who had psychologically tortured her, and who planned to extract her Sacred Gear and leave her to die. Instinctive terror made the small nun take a step back, clutching her chest.
Yugo noticed. He adjusted his chipped glasses with his index finger and stepped between Asia and the falls, blocking their line of sight with his imposing figure.
"Don't worry, Asia," Yugo said, his monotonous, exhausted voice echoing in the room. "They don't bite anymore. I just removed their fangs."
Raynare looked up from the ground, trembling with anger and fear. Seeing the pathetic human nun living comfortably while she had been dragged along like trash was an unbearable humiliation. But when she came face to face with Yugo's cold, gray pits, she swallowed her insults.
The professor turned towards the two fallen women.
"Listen carefully, because I'm not going to repeat myself," Yugo declared, his tone that of a manager giving instructions to the worst rookies of the month. "From this moment on, you are no longer Fallen Angels. You are not emissaries of Grigori, nor are you high-class warriors. You are employees of this convenience store."
Kalawarner blinked in disbelief. "E-Employees...?"
"Your shift starts at six in the morning," Yugo continued, coldly listing your new duties. "You'll stock the shelves, mop the linoleum, receive deliveries from suppliers, and operate the cash register with a smile. No magic. No flying. If I see a single black feather in the food area, I'll burn it all."
"T-This is insane!" Raynare stammered, her pride trying in vain to overcome her panic. "We are superior beings! You can't make us clean floors like we're...!"
Yugo's eyes grew even colder. "I can. And they will. They'll sleep on the floor of the back room storage. Among the soda crates and cleaning supplies. They're forbidden from going upstairs. Asia is their supervisor, and if I find out they're giving her dirty looks or raising their voices, I'll throw them out in the sun. Is that clear?"
The two Fallen Angels lowered their heads, defeated, nodding slowly. The humiliation was complete. The leader of Kokabiel's rebel faction was now a minimum-wage employee with no right to a salary.
Yugo's adrenaline rush and demonic stamina began to fade abruptly. The forced switch between Cannonbolt and Fuego had finally taken its toll. His body felt as if he'd been run over by a freight train, chewed up, and spat out. His usually sharp mind was clouded by the sheer post-traumatic stress of the battle.
He let out a long, heavy sigh.
"Asia, give them a couple of rags so they can start cleaning up the mess outside the entrance," Yugo muttered, rubbing his eyes under his glasses. "I... I need to sleep. I feel like my brain is going to melt."
"Y-Yes, Yugo-san! Please rest!" Asia nodded quickly.
Dragging his feet like a zombie, the history professor walked toward the stairs. He climbed the steps heavily, oblivious to the world around him. He reached his room, opened the door, loosened his tie with a listless tug, and simply collapsed face down onto the mattress.
Exhaustion swallowed him instantly. He fell into a deep sleep before his face even touched the pillow.
The room fell into complete silence.
However, Yugo had forgotten one small, gothic detail.
Clinging to his neck, with her legs wrapped around his shoulders and her hands tightly gripping his hair, Mittelt remained completely paralyzed.
The little blonde Fallen Angel had been perched on Yugo's head ever since he picked her up off the street. She'd been so terrified to move or even breathe too loudly that she'd simply frozen in shock throughout the entire journey and the speech in the shop. And Yugo, his senses dulled by extreme fatigue and the pain of the transformations, had literally forgotten he was carrying her like a human backpack.
Mittelt looked around the darkened room. She was perched on the back of the monster that had just atomized a six-winged commander.
"M-Master...?" Mittelt whispered in a tiny voice, tears welling up in his eyes, trembling like a chihuahua in the rain.
The only response was the sound of the deep, rhythmic breathing of the sleeping professor.
Mittelt sobbed silently. She didn't dare let go. She didn't dare move an inch for fear of waking him and being reduced to ashes. So, resigned to her macabre fate, the little "weevil" rested her head on the retired assassin's back and prepared to spend the longest, most uncomfortable, and most terrifying night of her entire immortal existence.
...
The soft, cheerful tinkling of the bell at the "Saturn" minimarket seemed to echo through the street with the volume of a cannon shot. When the glass door closed, blocking the view of the history professor and his three new "employees," a dense, heavy, and almost suffocating silence fell over the two demonic nobles.
Nobody moved for a full minute. The only sound was the crunch of the asphalt cooling down after being subjected to solar temperatures.
Issei Hyoudou was the first to break the trance. His legs gave way and he fell to his knees on the cracked street, breathing erratically. He clutched his head with both hands, sweating profusely.
"T-That guy..." Issei stammered, his voice trembling uncontrollably. "Buchou... That guy was carrying Raynare like a garbage bag! He was carrying the other one on his head! He-He vaporized that man in the hat just by raising his hand! He's going to kill us! If I don't turn in my history assignments, he's going to vaporize me!"
Kiba knelt beside him, trying to calm him, but the "Prince" of Kuoh was also pale. His hand rested on the hilt of his sword, but he knew perfectly well that his speed would have been useless against that wall of fire. Koneko, meanwhile, was crouched near a melted lamppost, watching the bubbling slag with her hidden cat ears twitching with genuine apprehension.
Rias Gremory, her lineage's pride severely bruised, turned slowly toward Sona. The Princess of Ruin's eyes were wide, torn between astonishment and tactical terror.
"Sona..." Rias's voice was barely a whisper, but it cut through the tension in the air. "Is that... is that your new Pawn?"
Sona Sitri stood frozen, as stiff as an ice statue. Her cheeks still burned from the casual, public reprimand Yugo had given her before she'd even entered the shop. "Don't even bother coming. You're just getting in the way of cleaning." He'd treated her like a meddlesome child in front of his rival, in front of his servants, and worst of all... he was right.
Sona adjusted her glasses, using the movement to hide the slight tremor in her fingers.
"Yes, Rias. That's my Pawn," Sona replied, raising her chin, forcing every ounce of her aristocratic dignity to keep from crumbling.
Akeno Himejima walked slowly toward the dark mark on the ground, the only remaining trace of Dohnaseek's existence. She crouched down, reaching a hand toward the ashes without actually touching them.
"Ara, ara..." Akeno murmured, but her usual flirtatious tone had been replaced by clinical astonishment. "The magical structure was completely annihilated. The heat was so intense and sudden that the Fallen One's nervous system didn't even have time to register the pain before his brain turned to gas. This isn't fire magic, Buchou. This is... pure physics taken to apocalyptic levels."
"And he switched it off like it was a light switch," Tsubaki added, moving protectively closer to Sona. "Again, without any visible magical drain. He went from being an inertia monster capable of destroying this street, to a magma colossus, and then back to his human form to..."
Tsubaki blinked, still trying to process the absurd final image.
—...to order them to clean the floors of their store.
Saji Genshirou, Sona's Pawn, swallowed loudly. He looked at the smoking crater, then at the door of the convenience store, and finally at his own trembling hands.
"President..." Saji squealed, on the verge of an existential crisis. "Are you telling me I have the same rank as that guy?! Look at him! He's a Pawn! I'm a Pawn! If I'm forced to fight him in a Rating Game by mistake, he won't even leave a trace of me! I give up! I quit!"
"Shut up, Saji," Sona hissed, glaring at him. Then she turned her attention back to Rias. "I warned you, Rias. Hano-sensei is an anomaly who doesn't obey the rules of our factions. I offered him asylum and the power to stabilize his body, but his loyalty is... complicated."
Rias crossed her arms under her chest, looking at the facade of the "Saturn".
"He just enslaved three Grigori officers," Rias said, trying to find the demonic logic in the situation. "Any other demon would have executed them or interrogated them for information about Kokabiel's plans. But he… he put them to work in a convenience store. He demoted them to minimum-wage employees."
"It's a tactic of utter humiliation," Sona analyzed, her eyes gleaming with a mixture of respect and unease. The Sitri strategist's mind searched for a pattern in Yugo's madness. "By killing them, they would only become martyrs for Kokabiel's faction. By enslaving them and stripping them of their supernatural dignity, he has broken them psychologically. He has taken away their status, their purpose, and their pride. He has reduced them to nothing. It's… ruthless."
Akeno let out a nervous laugh. "Turning ancient warriors into supermarket cashiers... Hano-sensei has a very dark sense of humor."
But Sona knew it wasn't humor. She remembered Yugo's look in the infirmary, his body ravaged from coughing up blood, and the way he stared at Asia Argento. Yugo Hano hadn't put them to work out of sadism or for comedic effect; he'd done it because, in his mind, those three women didn't deserve to be treated as epic threats. They were pests who had frightened his protégé. He was punishing them with the most boring and crushing normality in the human world.
"What do we do about this?" Kiba asked, pointing to the unconscious exorcists embedded in the walls and lampposts. "If the human police arrive, there'll be no way to cover it up."
Rias sighed, rubbing her temples. The headache this situation was causing was monumental. She had come to Kuoh to rule her own territory, and now she felt like a tenant in the playground of an angry god.
"We'll clean the street," Rias ordered, resigned. "Sona, your nobility can help repair the structural damage with earth and water magic. My clan will take care of erasing the neighbors' memories and providing the exorcists."
Sona nodded. "Okay. Kiba, make sure you confiscate any light weapons that are still intact. Tsubaki, get Saji and Momo to restore the asphalt. It needs to be exactly as it was before sunrise."
While both nobles got to work like a glorified cleaning crew —exactly as Yugo had told them to—, Sona stood motionless for a moment, staring out the second-floor window of the "Saturn".
Her Pawn. Her fiancé.
A broken human who hated the world, who had publicly shamed her, and yet had just resolved a Fallen Angel invasion without allowing a single civilian to be harmed. Sona Sitri felt her heart, always governed by logic, beat in a completely irrational way.
"You're a monster, Yugo Hano," Sona thought, adjusting her glasses as a faint, secret smile touched her lips. "But you're my monster. And I'm going to make sure the entire Underworld learns to fear you."
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I've been looking at different fanfics, and I've noticed that most (if not all) use 2,000 to 3,000 words per chapter. So, taking that into account, and considering that they have more readers, I'll start reducing the word count of the chapters. Basically, since this chapter has 5,000 words, I'll cut it down to two chapters. With that said, see you in the next chapter. Take care.
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( ̳• · • ̳) ~ ♡ Thanks for reading ♡
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