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Rias Gremory appeared in the second-floor hallway of the "Saturn" convenience store in absolute silence, courtesy of a silenced magic circle.
Her heart was pounding so hard against her ribs that she feared the sound would wake the entire block. She wore a dark coat over simple clothing, feeling the chill of her own resolve. She was going to offer her body to an assassin, to the monster who terrified her friend Sona, all to stain her pride and force Riser Phenex to break the engagement.
She approached the professor's bedroom door, which was half-open. The Princess of Ruin took a deep breath, mentally preparing herself to find the anomaly in the darkness, perhaps meditating, or cleaning his glasses with that murderous coldness that characterized him.
She gently pushed the door and peeked inside.
And then, Rias witnessed firsthand the absolute truth of an old saying from the human world: Every pet ends up resembling its owner.
The fearsome "Demon of Discipline," the titan who had evaporated the city sky hours earlier, was lying face down diagonally across the bed. One arm hung limply toward the floor, the other was crushed beneath his own head, and his legs were spread at such an unnatural angle that it suggested a double hip dislocation. He was deeply asleep, drooling a little onto the pillow.
Beside him, on the same mattress, was Tamal. The three-headed dog of the Underworld slept in exactly the same posture: one paw hanging down, the other crushed beneath his three heads, and his hind legs stretched out as if he had been run over.
But the image became even more absurd when looking toward the corner of the room.
There, on the floor over a small rug, Mittelt—the thousand-year-old warrior of Grigori, now reduced to a "sleeping plushie"—was also resting. The little blonde Fallen Angel was sprawled on the floor, with one arm hanging down, the other under her head, and her legs dislocated in the exact same identical posture as the human and the pug.
Rias stood there blinking in the dimness. All the majesty of her tragic sacrifice, all the erotic and gloomy tension she had built up in her mind under the shower, crashed into a wall of absurd comedy.
"H-Hano-sensei...?" Rias whispered, suddenly feeling very stupid.
Yugo's gray eye slowly opened in the darkness. He stared at the demon princess for a couple of seconds. With a hoarse groan of exasperation, the professor untangled his human knot, sat on the edge of the bed, and put on his glasses, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Gremory," Yugo murmured, his voice raspy from sleep. "Please tell me the school is on fire, because if you broke into my room at one in the morning to ask me to check your math homework, I'm throwing you out the window."
Rias swallowed. Determination returned to her eyes. She took a step into the room, closing the door behind her. She took off the dark coat and let it fall to the floor, leaving herself in only a thin blouse that highlighted her perfect curves.
"I didn't come because of school, Hano-sensei," Rias said, trying to keep her voice from trembling. She took another step, approaching the bed. "I've come to collect my favor. The favor you owe me for taking Asia as my Bishop."
Yugo raised an eyebrow, his mind fully waking up. "At this hour? Fine. Who do you want me to kill?"
"No one," Rias replied. She clenched her fists at her sides. "I want you to take me. Here. Now. I will give up my purity so that Riser Phenex feels disgusted with me and breaks our marriage contract."
Silence fell over the room. Yugo remained completely still. His gray wells analyzed the Gremory heiress from head to toe, processing the raw desperation and self-imposed humiliation radiating from her. Rias expected the monster to smile with lust, or simply treat her like a transactional piece of meat.
Without saying a single word, Yugo rose from the bed.
With a swift movement, he grabbed Tamal by the folds of his neck with his right hand. Then, he walked toward the corner, grabbed Mittelt by the back ribbon of her gothic dress with his left hand—the Fallen Angel barely had time to open one confused eye—and headed to the window.
He yanked it open and, without hesitating for even a fraction of a millisecond, threw the Fallen Angel and the hellhound down into the first-floor alley.
"AAAAAAHHH!" Mittelt shrieked as she fell.
"Squeeeaaal!" Tamal squealed.
Two dull impacts were heard as they crashed into the trash cans below. Yugo calmly closed the window, making sure the room was completely alone.
Before Rias could process the casual brutality of what he had just done, the world spun around her.
Yugo crossed the space between them in a blur. He grabbed Rias by the shoulders, lifted her off the floor, and threw her onto the bed.
Rias swallowed a gasp as she bounced against the mattress. She tried to sit up, but the professor's imposing figure was already looming over her.
Yugo pinned her down, straddling her legs. The assassin's face was wrapped in shadows, his eyes shining with a predatory intensity that made Rias's heart threaten to burst in her chest.
Yugo's large, calloused hands rested on her stomach and began sliding slowly upward.
Rias shut her eyes tightly. Tears of humiliation stung her eyelids. It was going to happen. The "Demon of Discipline" was going to squeeze her breasts, tear her blouse, and consume her dignity as payment for the favor. She pressed her lips together, waiting for the invasion, waiting for the rough touch.
The hands kept rising.
But they did not stop at her chest. They passed over her collarbones.
And with a dull thud, both hands slammed into the mattress, sinking just a few millimeters from either side of Rias's temples, trapping her head in a complete and absolute horizontal "kabedon."
Rias's eyes snapped open in surprise, finding Yugo's face only centimeters from hers.
There was no lust in his gaze. No desire, no perversion.
There was only cold, dark, implacable fury, and an almost painful disappointment.
"I told you not to waste my favor on stupidity, Gremory," Yugo whispered, his deep voice vibrating against her face.
"I-It's not stupidity!" Rias replied, feeling her throat close up, frustration breaking her voice. "If you don't do it, I'll marry him tomorrow! My peerage can't defeat him, you proved that yourself! It's my only way out!"
Yugo tightened his grip on the sheets.
"It's a coward's way out," the professor declared, spitting the words like venom. "You're willing to mutilate your own pride, to use your body like a damaged piece of meat just so a spoiled brat will discard you. That's pathetic, Rias."
Rias sobbed, tears finally falling down her temples and wetting his bed.
"I don't have another option!"
"There's always another option," Yugo cut her off, his voice hardening, but at the same time transmitting a strange and brutal certainty. "My word is unbreakable. I promised to fulfill one favor in exchange for Asia, and I will."
The assassin's gray eyes fixed on the princess's blue ones, piercing through her desperation and connecting directly with the warrior sleeping inside her.
"So I will ask you only once, Princess of Ruin, and you had better think carefully about your answer," Yugo said, bringing his face closer until his warm breath brushed Rias's forehead. "Do you want me to take you right here in the darkness, and live the rest of your immortality knowing that you humiliated yourself in order to run away?"
Yugo lifted his head slightly, and the watch on his wrist gave off a faint and deadly emerald glow in the dimness.
"Or do you want me to help you break that stupid engagement, grind Riser Phenex's pride to dust in front of the entire Underworld, and teach him what happens when a flammable bird tries to play with fire?"
The room fell into absolute silence.
Rias Gremory, trapped beneath the shadow of Kuoh's greatest anomaly, looked into the eyes of that broken man who refused to let her destroy herself. The cold of defeat vanished from her chest, replaced by a warm and terrifying spark of pure hope. Her blue eyes, still crystallized with tears, widened as she absorbed the words of the man who had her cornered against the mattress.
Break the engagement? Grind Riser Phenex's pride to dust? It was exactly what she desired in the deepest part of her soul, but hearing it come from the mouth of the most pragmatic and lethal being in Kuoh turned it into a real and terrifying possibility.
"Y-You... would do that?" Rias stammered, her voice trembling. "Riser is a pure-blood devil. His family..."
"I don't care about his family, his blood, or his immortal chickens," Yugo interrupted her flatly, his face centimeters from hers. "You asked me for a favor. Ruining an arrogant aristocrat is within the budget. But I'm not going to touch you so you can run away like a victim."
Rias looked at him. The mask of "Hano-sensei" was still there, but behind the glass of his glasses, the young heiress could see the iron will of a man who refused to allow anyone else to be crushed by the system. The cold knot of despair in the Princess of Ruin's chest completely unraveled, replaced by a torrent of relief so overwhelming that her emotional barriers collapsed.
"Thank you..." Rias sobbed.
Moved by a vulnerability she could not control, Rias raised both arms and wrapped them around Yugo's neck. With a desperate tug, she pulled him down, burying her face in the hollow of his neck, clinging to him as if he were the only lifeline in the middle of the ocean.
The sudden movement caught Yugo by surprise. He lost his balance on his knees and fell forward, his weight pressing Rias lightly against the mattress. His hands, which had been braced on either side of her head, slipped, ending dangerously close to the girl's waist. Rias, with her blouse disheveled and her crimson hair spread over the sheets, let out small sobs against his chest, squeezing her legs around his purely out of the instinct to seek comfort.
It was, from any conceivable angle, the most incriminating and compromising position a man could find himself in.
"Gremory, let go of me. You're wrinkling my shirt and suffocating me," Yugo grunted, trying to pry the red-haired demon away from his neck.
But the DxD universe, as Yugo had learned again and again, had a twisted and sadistic sense of humor.
Before he could move Rias away from his body, the room lit up with two simultaneous flashes.
The Saturn's magical barrier system was not designed to block high-level teleportation if the siege defenses were not activated. Two magic circles appeared on either side of the bed.
On the left, a silver circle with the emblem of House Lucifer shone elegantly. From it emerged Grayfia Lucifuge, the strongest maid in the Underworld, in her impeccable maid uniform and with an expression of absolute ice, having tracked Rias's magical signature after her sudden disappearance from the club.
On the right, a deep blue circle with the emblem of House Sitri spun rapidly. Sona Sitri, who had sensed Rias's signature invading the territory of her Pawn's convenience store in the early hours of the morning, appeared with her arms crossed and her glasses gleaming dangerously.
And, as if the apocalypse needed a final touch, the wooden door handle turned with a click.
The door opened slowly. Asia Argento, rubbing one eye and hugging the storybook Yugo had bought her, peeked her head inside.
"Yugo-san, I heard a noise in the alley, is everything alri...?"
The little golden nun fell silent. Her book dropped to the floor with a dry thump.
The scene presented before the newcomers was irrefutable.
Yugo Hano, in sleepwear, was on top of a disheveled, tearful Rias Gremory, whose face was buried in his neck while she hugged him with her legs tangled around him.
The silence in the room was so dense it could have cut diamond.
Grayfia Lucifuge raised a single elegant silver eyebrow. She said nothing. Her professional maid's face remained unshaken, processing the fact that the Demon King's sister apparently had secret affairs with convenience store humans on the eve of her wedding.
But Yugo did not care about Grayfia. His veteran assassin brain evaluated the real threats in the room.
He completely ignored the Demon King's maid; she did not represent a territorial danger.
His gray eyes shifted to the right. Sona Sitri was trembling. A tiny layer of frost began forming over the lenses of her glasses. Her "fiancé" was rolling around in bed with her childhood rival. The water heiress's aura was so lethal it threatened to freeze the oxygen.
Then he looked toward the door. Asia Argento was puffing out her cheeks. Her large emerald eyes filled with tears of pure betrayal, and the warm, healing aura of Twilight Healing seemed to be taking on an unsettlingly possessive tone.
"Threat level: Apocalyptic," Jose's pragmatic mind diagnosed. "If I try to explain, I'll die. If I don't explain, I'll die. Conclusion: Abort mission."
Without hesitating for even a fraction of a second, Yugo freed himself from Rias's embrace with the agility of a cat, stood up on the mattress, and raised his left arm.
"It's not what it looks like, and I'm not paid enough to explain it," Yugo declared.
He slammed down on the core of the Omnitrix.
FLASH!
The radioactive emerald light blinded the four women in the room.
Rias, who was barely sitting up on the bed, covered her eyes. For her, this transformation was completely new.
For Grayfia Lucifuge, who had never seen the power of the "anomaly," the spectacle left her momentarily breathless. The professor's human anatomy liquefied and expanded in less than a second.
When the glow vanished, there was no man on the bed. There was a reddish creature, similar to a humanoid manta ray with yellow wings stretching from its arms to its sides. It had yellow horns and a tail ending in a dark stinger.
Jetray did not stay to give explanations.
"See you Monday..." the creature's distorted voice buzzed.
With a flap that broke the sound barrier in an enclosed space, Jetray shot toward the open window he had used minutes earlier to dispose of Tamal and Mittelt.
BOOM!
The sonic boom shattered the remaining glass of the window, sending the papers on the desk flying and violently messing up Rias's crimson hair, Grayfia's perfect hairstyle, and Sona's bangs.
In the blink of an eye, the alien's red-and-green trail vanished into Kuoh's starry sky, fleeing at hypersonic speed from the wrath of three jealous women and one confused maid.
Sona Sitri adjusted her broken glasses, gritting her teeth with cold fury.
Asia puffed out her cheeks even more, stomping the floor with a pout.
Grayfia simply sighed, closing her eyes.
And Rias Gremory, sitting on the bed of the man who had just fled and left her surrounded by tactical enemies, covered her embarrassed face with the sheets, knowing that the Demon King and the entire Underworld would hear about this misunderstanding before dawn.