Flag 1: Love Makes The World Go Round (I)

"What the hell happened now?"

Shizuka Hiratsuka-sensei couldn't believe her damn luck. She had just dealt with these two on two separate occasions the week before and now these two were back here once more, sent in for guidance counseling in the hopes that she could cause some kind of miracle which might lead to a change in their respective rotten behaviour. But who were they kidding. All the people in the entire campus should know by now that these two were beyond help and it was highly unlikely that she would be bringing some immediate change to their rather difficult and rotten personality over one of these sessions. But still, she was getting paid to do a job and she might as well give it her all.

"So, Keima Katsuragi, let's see." Hiratsuka-sensei consulted her notes. "It says here that you were playing with your PFP in the middle of an important lecture and you were causing a distraction to the rest of the class. Onizuka-sensei asked you to stop playing with your video game on multiple occasions, but you never listened to him. He then decided that some drastic action was required, so he confiscated your game to which you said nothing, did nothing. But however when he started to tinker with your hand held gaming console and started to work on one of the so called routes of your dating sims to capture one of the 2-D girls in the game, you raised your voice at him in protest."

"He didn't know what he was doing." Keima Katsuragi said quietly. "He was raising all the wrong flags."

"Eikichi Onizuka doesn't know anything about dating women, be it in real life or in a game. Shocker!" Shizuka Hiratsuka-sensei scoffed. "Next thing you will tell me is that Hikigaya over here did nothing wrong and he was wrongly accused by Onizuka-sensei because I told him one night, after a round of heavy drinking, that if he ever had more than one, let's say two troublesome students in his class together, he could bring them to me in person and I would listen to him talk about his problems with genuine interest and later I would go with him for a night of drinking, so that we can bitch and moan about our horrible day together. Is that what happened, Hikigaya?"

"You said it sensei, not me." Hachiman Hikigaya said, gruffly.

"So, the stuff about you not turning your phone off in the middle of his lecture was all made up?"

Hachiman bristled. "I don't receive any calls or texts in my phone. Still, I usually put it on silent mode during lectures. I'm pretty sure I did it even today. But, I don't know what happened. It's these spam emails I keep getting over the week. It's must be some kind of virus. Maybe it turned my phone back to normal mode and that's why the notification sound rang out in the middle of class. Still, it wasn't like I got a call or anything. It was just the small beep of a notification. It was hardly audible. No one else in class heard it, except for this guy over here who was sitting next to me. But he was all wrapped up in his video game, so I doubt even he heard it."

"Oh no, I heard it." Keima said.

Hachiman ignored him. "I bet Onizuka only heard it because he was standing next to me. And really, what's the big deal. I was sitting somewhere in the middle of class. I was keeping quiet, tuning out most of the nonsense stuff he was saying. Okay, alright, I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have, but I was hardly causing a distraction. This guy over here was playing a video game in the middle of the class. No one said anything to him before. It looked like I was the only one feeling bothered, but I kept my mouth shut and tried to ignore the sounds coming out from his device. Onizuka was also ignoring it, because I bet the noise couldn't reach him all the way to the front. But then he started walking towards our bench and I told Katsuragi to shut off his game and put it away, but he was going on about how he hasn't reached a save point yet and so he kept playing. Meanwhile, Onizuka came to our bench, stopped beside him, said something about how he should stop playing and focus on his class. They had a minor disagreement."

"I said, I took his class as an elective." Keima said.

"So do I." Hachiman said. "He practically forced me to take it because otherwise he wouldn't take up the position of club advisor for our service club. I took one for the team and what did it get me, nothing but more counseling. I think I have been played."

Shizuka Hiratsuka-sensei decided the two of them should bring the conversation back on track.

"Onizuka-sensei said you tried to physically assault him?" She couldn't keep the note of disbelief out of her voice. "I'm more worked up about that bit. I mean who cares about what you do in an elective class, right? I used to skip most of my lectures. Had some real problems with insufficient credit at the end, but I worked out a deal. Let's not get into that." Shizuka blushed. Then, she pointed at the two of them and tried to make a sort of introduction. "I don't believe you two have officially met before. Keima Katsuragi, Hachiman Hikigaya. Hikigaya, Katsuragi."

Both of them stayed unnaturally quiet. Hachiman Hikigaya and Keima Katsuragi were rather stoic individuals. Keima focused all his attention on his games, lost in the 2-D world. Meanwhile, Hachiman found his attention drawn by the activities of the service club, the shenanigans of his roommates and some of his own personal involvement with a few of the women of campus.

But the two of them had a similar analytic bent of mind. They were both creatures of logic, who let reason rule their respective world.

"There was no physical assault." Hachiman said. "Onizuka took his PFP and at first he was cool with it, reacted way better than I would have done in his place. But then he started playing the dating sim instead of teaching the class and that's when Katsuragi lost it."

"He was doing it wrong and he was raising all the wrong flags." Keima repeated. "The ending I worked so hard on, he ruined it in two quick attempts. And then, he tried to make things better by trying to erase all the data, erase all the previous save points and start all over again in a new conquest."

"That's when he lost it. And that's when the presumed physical assault probably happened." Hachiman said. "Katsuragi tried to get out of his seat and tried to reach for his PFP. He bumped into me and I lost my balance and I accidentally touched Onizuka. I'm innocent." Hachiman pointed at Katsuragi. "He however was really trying to kill him."

"He erased all my game data. He might as well have broken my PFP!" Katsuragi said vehemently. "As the God of Conquest, I couldn't stand aside and let this happen without dishing out some form of divine punishment. However, I seemed to have underestimated Onizuka's physical attributes and it also seems like I overestimated my physical skills."

Hachiman shuddered while remembering what had taken place in the class. "The german suplex was hard to watch."

"It was painful too." Keima said. "And he also broke my PFP."

Shizuka Hiratsuka let the morbid atmosphere of the room hang around for a while long. She didn't want to talk about what had really happened, how a teacher had lied about the situation that had taken place in his class and then gone on to perform a german suplex on one of his own students.

But to be fair, she too had punched a number of her students in the gut. Hachiman Hikigaya was one of them. And he took his deserved punishment like a man, didn't really complain about it later on. It seems like this would be one of those cases too.

All the better, she didn't want to deal with the mess that would have taken place if these two complained about their teacher in an official manner and had gone straight to the administration. Pfft, like that would ever happen. Well, better count her lucky stars and deal them the final punishment, which would in turn be their retribution by making them do some tiresome campus chores.

"Okay, so, Hikigaya over here got into some trouble with the police lately. He was a suspect to an attempted suicide, but thankfully that issue was cleared up. However because of what happened today, Onizuka had asked the both of you to be put on cleaning duty." Shizuka Hiratsuka-sensei looked them both in the eye. "You will be cleaning the Detective Q special classroom. The room is always a mess, what with the props and other things being used to reconstruct active police cases related to crimes and murder. Hikigaya takes that course as an elective. Follow him, Katsuragi, he will show you the ropes."

"I'm not a clean freak, sensei." Hachiman protested. "That would be my roommate, Ryuuji Takasu."

"My roommates are also clean freaks." Keima Katsuragi said. "Light Yagami and Lelouch Lamperouge never keep their stuff lying around."

Shizuka Hiratsuka watched as the two of them talked in a more relaxed manner on the way out of the guidance counseling room. They would have even more time to chat while they are cleaning up the practical classroom. Perhaps the two of them would become friends. But she wouldn't keep her hoped up. After all, these two didn't like to involve themselves in others problem if they could help it.

Maybe, they would do this one job together and call it quits.

What, Shizuka Hiratsuka didn't know however, was that the fate of these two young men were soon to be interlinked, for they would become part of something bigger which involved saving a majority of the women population of the entire university campus.

A/N: Now, this is a better introduction to this arc. But, things haven't even begun yet. Here are the options for the first heroine of this arc:

Option 1: Hachiman x Female Saika Totsuka – (Oregairu.)

Option 2: Hachiman x Ayumi Takahara – (TWGOK.)

Option 3: Hachiman x Uruka Takemoto – (We Never Learn.)

Option 4: Hachiman x Suruga Kanbaru – (Bakemonogatari.)

Option 5: Hachiman x Akira Tachibana – (After the Rain.)

Please pick any of the above options or suggest a character you want in the review.

You can also send a voter list.

Hope everyone enjoyed reading this chapter.

Leave lots and lots of reviews, follow and fave.

Won't betray your dreams.

Trivia: Keima Katsuragi had come close to death on one occasion. It was because he had been careless while communicating with one of his roommates. "Hey Light, let me borrow your notebook." he had said. Thankfully, he just wanted to borrow a page...from a normal notebook.

What did you think he wanted? The God of Conquest doesn't bother with the real world.