Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

As far as Tatsuya was concerned, there were very few people in the world that he absolutely hated dealing with and Yotsuba Ayame was one of them. While he had never met his great-grandmother in his previous life, with her being a casualty of the Dahan war, Tatsuya knew a lot about the former matriarch of the Yotsuba Clan. In fact, one of his hobbies in his previous life aside from Magic Engineering and guarding Miyuki, was to read up on the exploits of the first Queen of the Night.

As a leader, Ayame's methods weren't as cruel as Maya's were. After all, his deranged aunt could wipe out entire bloodlines on a whim because someone said no to one of her proposals. Ayame on the other hand, used the carrot as well as the stick very well. She enticed people with deals that appeared to be beneficial to them on the surface before completely entrapping them in her web, with no chance of escape. Therefore, the fact that she had decided to appear in front of him meant that she was ready to try and take him down.

"Good evening, Yotsuba-dono." Tatsuya greeted the former Yotsuba Matriarch as he sat down in one of the chairs. While it might have seemed rude to be so carefree in front of a pair of people who were more than five times his age, he knew that he needed to be on equal footing with Ayame from the beginning.

"So, you aren't denying it?" Ayame looked curious.

"Since you have decided to make an appearance here, I am more than sure that you have some good evidence to back up your claim. I will spare us the drama. So, Yotsuba-dono, what do you aim to accomplish from this meeting?" Tatsuya was casual in his speech.

"That saves me a lot of trouble. First thing's first" As she said this, Ayame rose from her seat, instantly putting Tatsuya on edge but his worry was for naught as Ayame and her brother, gave him a bow. "Thank you for helping my granddaughter. We don't want to imagine what would have happened to her if you hadn't intervened." Tatsuya could judge that Ayame was speaking from the heart when she said this. Her brother, his former Great-Great-uncle, too, was bowing. For his part, Tatsuya gave a nod in acknowledgment of their gratitude. Soon after, they were once again seated.

"I suppose we should get to the point now." Tatsuya stated. "I want to remain anonymous, Ayame-dono. Not even that sponsor of yours should know. What do you seek in return?" He started.

"I can't do that, Tatsuya-san. After all, the relationship with our sponsor is extremely important for our clan and he has been looking forward to discovering your identity."

"Does that mean that you have already informed him?"

"As of right now, I haven't. After all, it is important to hold as many cards as possible during a negotiation, is it not?"

"I agree. However, I cannot afford to compromise, Ayame-dono. This peaceful life that I have right now, is something I do not want to part with for the moment. If my identity becomes known, this peace will come to an end."

"It seems like we are at an impasse, Tatsuya-san. However, I too, cannot afford to compromise in this matter."

"That is regretful. It seems that I would have to resort to some drastic measures then."

"Ho?! Would you like to try, kid?" This was the first time that Yotsuba Yuuma had spoken during this entire time.

Tatsuya knew a lot about Yotsuba Yuuma from his previous life. Ayame's guard dog used to be the strongest fighter in the Yotsuba until Motsouke had taken the title away from him. That said, as the person who did Ayame's dirty work for her, Yuuma undoubtedly had a lot of blood on his hands. This fact was on full display as the man generated a lot of bloodlust at the obvious threat that Tatsuya had given. It was enough to scare a lot of people but for Tatsuya, who had more blood on his hands than the entirety of the Yotsuba had in their combined history, it was not even worth mentioning. That said, he knew that the man wouldn't lift a finger unless Ayame ordered him to. Therefore, Tatsuya chose to ignore Yuuma entirely, which didn't look like it bothered him.

"I suppose directly making both of you disappear would be detrimental to my cause since someone will track you down to me, eventually. The better option would be to erase your memories about my identity, don't you agree, Ayame-dono?"

"It is a good idea. However, I would prefer if things didn't come to that. You don't think that we would come to visit the single most dangerous person on this planet without any backup plans, do you?"

"I am more than aware, Ayame-dono. I am already dealing with those backups of yours as we speak." The Information Dimension was extremely useful for this purpose. Recall might have been a spell that only Yotsuba Yasuyou could use but with his superior ability to read data from the information dimension, Tatsuya could pull off a similar spell that could read people's memory. To Ayame's credit, the woman did store the information that he was Maheshwara in multiple different locations which would only be availed to Genzou in case of her demise at his own hands. It was too bad that those locations no longer existed. There was also the matter of Kuroba Juuzou, who was the one who gathered the information but it was not that hard to deal with him, if need be.

"How would you do that, I wonder?" Ayame was very calm as she sipped the tea that his mother had given her.

"The Information Dimension is a wonderful place to learn secrets, don't you agree?" Tatsuya smirked as he saw Ayame visibly lose her cool as he said this.

"You have my eyes?!" Ayame nearly shouted.

"I do. How do you think that I managed to escape your eyes for so long until today?"

"This just makes you that much of an attractive prospect for my clan. You understand that, right?"

"I know. In all honesty, I do not mind joining your family at all. In fact, I consider joining the Yotsuba to be beneficial for my future plans." Tatsuya might not have had the best impression of the Yotsuba of his time but the current family was quite different from the one that he was used to. Also, there was no denying the benefits of being a Yotsuba in terms of financial and political influence. "However, I cannot and will not compromise on the matter of my identity being kept a secret."

"That is a tempting offer, Tatsuya-san."

"I know. As long as we can come to a deal, I will join the Yotsuba." Tatsuya gave his final offer. "Also, you do realize that exposing my identity this early would pit your family against the entire world, right?" Tatsuya knew how politics worked. Even if Ayame only told Aoba about him, Aoba would have to inform the Senate of his existence which had a good chance of snowballing into half the magical world knowing. After all, the members of the Senate had their own agenda and his joining the Yotsuba would be seen as detrimental by a lot of them. Tatsuya knew that Ayame was aware of this given the fact that she hadn't contacted Aoba as soon as she had received the information.

"You drive a hard bargain, Tatsuya-san. I believe that we have a deal." Ayame held her hand out to him which he shook.

"We will not make the official announcement for the time being since it would attract a lot of unwanted attention but with how close you have gotten to my granddaughters, I believe that you are going to garner a lot of unwanted attention anyway." Ayame said, humorously to which Tatsuya gave a tired nod.

With the deal completed, Ayame and her brother left the Shiba household, leaving a tired Tatsuya behind.

Yotsuba Ayame was ecstatic at the moment. She had just managed to accomplish something that all but guaranteed that her clan would remain at the top of the magical world of Japan for years to come. To be honest, she had all but lost hope of finding the mysterious magician who had rewritten the world order a few years ago. Everything she had tried, ended in failure and she was on the verge of giving up when Juuzou had produced some welcome news. The hunt for the mysterious box that Maheshwara had been seen carrying had taken them all the way to China. While the monastery in question did not give them any clues, The Abbott's identity was a welcome clue. The old monk had a deep friendship with the ancestor of the Shiba Clan and upon further scrutiny, Ayame had discovered that Shiba Tatsuya had been seen visiting his grandparent's home three days before Maheshwara had appeared with the box. While it was not a big lead, this aroused her curiosity to the point that she had subconsciously kept her Elemental Sight on Tatsuya at every possible opportunity.

While it did not bear any fruit during the first month, everything appeared completely normal, the first crack appeared when Miya visited the boy. Ayame respected her granddaughter's privacy enough that she stopped spying on them, however, this was not before she noticed that the information bodies around the boy's room had been altered a little bit. If she wasn't paying close attention, she would have missed it. This showed that the kid was definitely hiding something from prying eyes. Miya's confirmation that she had been to an amazing lab in the basement of the boy's house, with equipment far beyond the current levels, Ayame was all but sure that Tatsuya was Maheshwara. After all, the information that she was seeing about his room showed that it was an ordinary basement, which tricked her eyes the same way that Maheshwara did. She was sure that the exact same spell was used to accomplish this.

The final confirmation, however, came after Tatsuya's grandfather had confirmed that the box that Maheshwara was seen carrying around, was indeed a family heirloom passed on in the Shiba Clan for years. The old man did not even need any extra coaxing, he just gave them the information after they had asked. This meant that she was completely sure that Tatsuya was Maheshwara. However, this information came with its own problems. The first thing she did was to make sure that the information was stored away securely in a few separate locations in case her confrontation with Tatsuya went poorly. Then, she made sure that only Juuzou and her were aware of the information, opting not to inform anyone else, not even Aoba. Then, she had prepared herself for the confrontation for almost an entire week to make sure that nothing was amiss.

To be honest, Ayame was a bit disappointed when Tatsuya had straight up admitted to being Maheshwara since it cut into her fun trying to prove that he was indeed, the mysterious magician that scorched Dahan. That said, she was actually impressed with how he had carried himself during their short negotiations. As powerful as a magician he was, she had not expected a high school student to be completely unfazed by her presence to the point that he had threatened her openly. Ayame was used to people trying to please her at every turn due to her position in the world unless they were someone from the Senate. Even if they were from the Senate, they still had to be respectful to her. Someone who completely disregarded this was something entirely new to her.

His request for anonymity was something that Ayame had half-expected. After all, the kid had gone to great lengths to keep his identity a secret. Ayame had originally wanted to try and leverage this point in her favor but Tatsuya remained adamant that there would be no compromise. However, when he agreed to join her clan, as a member, she lost almost all momentum in the negotiation. After all, what he was agreeing to had been her biggest aim. As such, she had to agree to his own demand in the end but overall, it was definitely a good deal for her.

"That kid is a badass." Yotsuba Yuuma was the type of person who did not speak much during serious situations. As far as Ayame knew, her dumb brother usually chose to comply with her orders and keep quiet while they were on the field. The fact that he was openly praising someone in front of her, while they were not in the house, was entirely new to her.

"Did you notice, Nee-san? That boy was not giving out empty threats. He was definitely capable of dealing with us if he wanted to." Yuuma said excitedly. While he might not be a good judge of emotions, he was a good judge of whether someone was strong or not.

"We were prepared for that possibility, were we not?" Ayame was not joking when she said that she was prepared to deal with Tatsuya. After all, she knew what he was capable of. The videos of the massacre that the boy had personally taken place in had shown that he was capable of erasing people from existence in the blink of an eye. Therefore, Ayame tried her best to not escalate the situation to a fight where she could not walk out alive. "That said, if you were to attack him the moment that he had provoked us, what chance did you have of incapacitating him before he could activate his spells?" Ayame asked her brother, curious. After all, when it came to pure physical prowess, Yuuma was by far the best in the Clan. He was capable of moving faster than most magicians could ever prepare a spell.

"To be fair, Nee-san, I don't think I ever stood a chance. That kid's eyes were always on me even when both of you were speaking. Even if I had attacked, something in the back of my mind tells me that we would not have survived. Something about the kid's eyes scares me. He had the look of someone who kills people with no remorse."

"Well, his body count in Dahan is expected to be a little greater than twenty-five million. He definitely has killed a lot of people." Ayame joked.

"I do not mean it like that, Nee-san. I meant that he had killed someone without the help of magic. These two are two different things." Murdering someone with the help of magic and without magic were two completely different things as far as Yuuma was concerned. The psychological impact was different. Even he, who had murdered more than a thousand people, with or without magic, still remembered the first person he had murdered without any magic.

"His behavior certainly does not match his history. I suppose we will have to learn the truth gradually. With how close Miya and Maya have gotten to him, I don't think that day would be too far away. Also, we did get him to agree to join us even if it means that we have to betray Aoba-sama's trust." As much as it pained her, a strategic-class magician was too big an asset for Ayame to stay loyal to the Senate. She had gotten what she wanted, all she needed to do now was to deal with the consequences.

At the same time that Tatsuya and Ayame had been having a conversation, in a large house on the outskirts of Tokyo, a girl was having a conversation with her father.

"So, you are saying that Shiba-san was extremely close to the Yotsuba Twins, am I right, Kaguya?" Shichinomiya Shousuke asked his daughter. As the head of the Shichinomiya House, he had several responsibilities assigned to him by the Saegusa. The monitoring of Shiba Tatsuya was a low-priority one among these tasks, so, he had assigned it to his daughter, especially since she attended the same school as the boy.

"Exactly, Otou-san. I believe that Koichi-sama will be mad at this revelation." Kaguya said excitedly.

"Why would Koichi-kun matter in this situation?" Shousuke was a bit confused at his daughter's words.

"Because the Prez is close with Maya-san? Wouldn't that make Koichi-sama jealous?"

"Kaguya, why exactly do you think you were asked to Shiba Tatsuya?" Shousuke knew his daughter well enough to guess what was happening, but he chose to gather more information first.

"Because Koichi-sama was jealous that Maya-san was close to another boy, so he chose to spy on the boy to make sure that he was not a rival for Maya-san's affection?" Kaguya looked confused.

"And where exactly did you get this idea from?"

"When we visited The Main House, Koichi-sama was really curious about The Prez. I thought…"

"That the Main House asked us to keep a tab on him because he was a potential love rival to Koichi-kun, am I right?" Shousuke filled in for his daughter.

"Yes."

"Well, my dear daughter, you have gotten it all wrong. While Koichi-kun's infatuation with Maya is something of an open secret among the clan, no one, not even Takashi-sama gives it any real thought. After all, the Yotsuba had broken off the engagement between them quite amicably and we would like to keep our relations with them friendly." Shousuke knew that his daughter was a soap opera fanatic but he had not expected that it would affect her judgement in real life as well. Maybe it was time for him to discipline her.

"Then why was I asked to monitor the Prez?" Kaguya was curious.

"Because he is a good prospect for joining the Ten Master Clans. With the fact that he can use Counter-Magic, confirmed, even more of the clans would be trying to bring him into their fold now."

"Then, Maya-san's relation with the Prez was never an issue?"

"Setting aside the fact that it would mean that he is getting closer to the Yotsuba, it isn't our business what kind of relationship those three share."

"Then what about Koichi-sama? Surely, he would not let this go, right?"

"Well, we are currently looking for suitable fiancé candidates for Koichi-kun at the moment. You are also in the running as of the moment but we will have to see what Takashi-sama decides. But, Koichi-kun will have to learn that he will not always have a choice as a magician." Shousuke casually dropped a bomb on his daughter.

"Eh?! Me?! With Koichi-sama?!" Kaguya nearly yelled.

"Why, do you dislike Koichi-kun?" Shousuke teased his daughter.

"I won't say I dislike him, but I don't think that I like him, either." Kaguya whined.

"Don't worry too much. As of right now, you are not a top candidate. That said, you should definitely reduce watching Soap Operas. Those things aren't good for you."

"But Okaa-san watches it all the time and she doesn't have any problem." Kaguya whined.

"Honey, your mother isn't the pinnacle of being normal, anyway."

"Did you say something, dear?" Both of them heard an ominous sound in the distance.

"Nothing, Honey." Shousuke masterfully yelled.

"Anyway, you should get some sleep. You do have to fight tomorrow, right?" With that said, the father and daughter pair exited the room.

If one were to try and describe what Saegusa Kouichi felt for Yotsuba Maya, love would be the last thing they would come up with. After all, Kouichi had only met Maya a handful of times since their engagement had been announced. There simply had not been enough time for him to develop any actual feelings for the girl. That said, he was certainly attracted to her physically. One look was all he needed to know that the girl would be insanely attractive once she got older and for the most part, he had been right on the money. Too bad, he was unable to reap the benefits of it.

In his mind, Kouichi could not understand why everyone had been so eager to cancel the engagement between him and Maya. Sure, what he did was cowardly but no one was harmed in the process except for him as he had almost lost his eyes. Hell, Maya had been completely unscathed in the end.

As a Saegusa, the heir to the family to boot, Kouichi had his pride. And this pride did not allow him to let someone else have something that he considered his own. Therefore, the boy named Shiba Tatsuya was a thorn in his side. When Shiba had outperformed him in the Entrance Examination to the Magic High Schools, Kouichi had been the one to ask his family to let him join Second High. After all, he could not allow himself to be under a nobody from an unknown clan, even if it was in something as harmless as a high school ranking.

Even still, the guy remained a thorn in his side, getting closer to his Maya with obvious ulterior motives. Kouichi had warned him once when they had met but the guy did not seem to take his words seriously. Therefore, Kouichi could not be blamed for taking any drastic measures, could he?

This chapter is a bit shorter than I wanted to write. I originally planned to add some more of the story in it but decided to make it a separate chapter after this one got a bit long. I usually lose all brainpower after writing 4k+ words so I suppose I will have to stop here.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the chapter and the next chapter will continue the tournament. I do hope I have addressed some of the doubts generated by the previous chapters in this.

I will hopefully see you soon. Read and Review as always, thanks.

P.S. My next planned update will be for One Punch Issei so please read it if you are a fan of Highschool Dxd.