Karasuma Tadaomi, always the valedictorian of his class and a military-man through-and-through, was believed by some to be completely impervious to pain. Regardless of the training method or the impossible circumstances, he could take them all head-on without even working up a sweat.

That's why, when the seemingly indestructible tank of a man awoke groggily to a cranium-splitting headache, he was fairly alarmed. His fuzzy memory and blurry eyesight only exacerbated the feeling. Had he been drugged? How could he have allowed something so elementary to best him, of all people? Where even was he?

Gritting his teeth and forcing his eyes into focus against the excruciating pain, he observed the interior of a decimated plane's fuselage. Half of it was missing, leaving a gaping hole that allowed harsh daylight to stream in, blinding Karasuma and causing him to clutch at his throbbing head.

He made to get up and hobble to the exit, but realized he was restricted by his seatbelt, which currently kept him in place and was the only thing keeping him from falling to his death. Only now did Karasuma realize that the plane was upside down. What had once been the floor, was now the ceiling, Karasuma's seat included. With his arms and legs dangling below him, the man looked below him and had to admit that if he unbuckled himself now, nothing but an unrelenting floor would meet him.

Once his vision had cleared enough to indicate to him that outside the remains of the fuselage lurked a dense jungle, he carefully took hold of a nearby pole welded securely to the plane's body. Cautiously, he unbuckled the seatbelt and sucked in a breath as his body fell free, until his arms finally pulled taut to halt his descent. His legs dangled beneath him, but nothing seemed to be broken. Good.

After some calculations, he dropped to the floor, rolling skillfully to minimize the impact of the drop. Then he picked himself up and grunted as he walked to the gaping rent in the metal fuselage. The tropical sunlight and the intense, humid heat that accompanied it hit him like a brick wall, but he didn't falter, only squinted. Raising his hand to his forehead to act as a visor, he scanned the situation, and bit by bit it was all coming back to him.

"Ahhh~! Trips are so exciting, wouldn't you say so, Karasuma-sensei?"

Karasuma Tadaomi, ever the stony one, only grunted in response.

"It's been so long since I've been in a plane—boy, you can see everything from up here! I'd almost forgotten! And the clouds look so fluffy, too. Don't you just want to reach out and touch them, Karasuma-sensei?"

"You can't touch clouds," the straight-laced man deadpanned, not humored in the slightest.

The yellow, smiley-faced monster sitting across from him pouted indignantly. "Well I know that," he said, returning his gaze to the window. "But what if you could? I bet it would taste like cotton candy! Mmmm, cotton candy…"

Karasuma resisted the urge to massage his temples. Why, oh why, had he been assigned such a mission? Without any explanation, whatsoever, his boss had suddenly ordered him to take a damn "vacation" with his frivolous assassination target.

"You always work so tirelessly. Why not take a break every now and then?" his boss had suggested, but his presentation didn't fool the military-man. This was an order. "And why not with your coworker, no less. It may even present the perfect opportunity to finally kill him!"

Pfft, "coworker." Karasuma could almost scoff at the notion. That frivolous, unprofessional octopus? Hardly.

"Will I be meeting with someone at the destination?" he had inquired. A sniper, perhaps, like the time in Kyoto.

"Not exactly," his superior had replied, a glint in his eye. "You'll know when you get there."

Now, Karasuma was on a private plane going who knows where, with nothing but the vast Pacific and his idiotic "coworker" in sight.

"Oh my GOD!" said nuisance suddenly pealed, jerking the expressionless man from his reverie. "How did you get your hands on this? This isn't supposed to be released until 3 months from now!"

Karasuma deftly observed the suspiciously pink DVD cover in his target's tentacles. "This plane was supplied by the government. Is it really any surprise that they would have it stocked with unreleased films?"

"The perks of the privileged," Korosensei remarked, shaking his head and gleefully inserting the DVD into the player. In doing so, Karasuma finally caught the title of the movie, "Petals of Love." Oh God.

Half an hour later and with more than enough of his target's fanboying to last a lifetime, it could honestly be called a miracle that the disciplined man had been able to last that long.

"Hey, Octopus."

Korosensei's beady eyes never left the screen. "Nyu?"

"Exactly how long is this movie?" To be honest, Karasuma was afraid to know the answer.

Korosensei waved a tentacle dismissively in Karasuma's direction. "Emotionally-constipated guys like you don't need to worry. It's only 3 hours."

ONLY 3 HOURS?! There was 2 and a half more hours of this? Karasuma was about to excuse himself for a 2-and-a-half-hour bathroom break when God finally decided to have mercy on the poor man.

Korosensei paused the film and sped to the kitchen and back in less than a second, snacks in hand. The only thing was, he kept changing his mind about the snacks, and continued to practically teleport from room to room until he decided to just stay in the kitchen until he figured out what he wanted to eat.

Karasuma finally exhaled, a long, relieved sigh. A moment's peace was all he needed.

And a moment was all he got. His supposedly God-given respite lasted not even 5 seconds, as the plane shuddered violently and its nose began to dip.

The plane was falling, falling fast, and as Karasuma whipped his head to the window he saw that they were far too low already. It was all he could do to buckle his seat belt and brace himself before the bone-shattering impact.

Karasuma massaged his temples, his frown deepening as it often did in trying circumstances. He'd seen it all—countries torn by civil war, nuclear weapons, missile threats, assassins—but this.

This.

Boy, what a mess he'd gotten himself into this time.

The first course of action would be to survey his surroundings and find out where this even was. He'd also have to locate his target, who must be unconscious or dead if he hadn't already used his superhuman abilities to bring help. He made his way to a box laying haphazardly on the ceiling-turned-floor of the plane, retrieving a nasty looking machete.

Despite his condition, Karasuma could navigate the dense rainforest quite easily with parkour, not even in need of the machete he brought along. He soon found himself on a sun-drenched beach, bleached white by the burning orb that bore down from above. He had half a mind to follow the waterline to assert whether this was truly a deserted island or not, but he decided that his target was of the utmost importance at this point.

Diving back into the dense jungle, he discovered remnants of the dismembered plane strewn about, and he followed their trail until he found the other half of the fuselage, this one containing the pilot's cabin and kitchen. Aside from structural differences, it was in much the same condition of his own half.

"Octopus!" He called, the lonely sound echoing off the tall and silent trees. His shoes crunched on plane parts and snapped tree branches. "Octopus!"

"In here!" the familiar voice called back, and Karasuma was unsure of whether to be joyful or dismayed at his target's apparent survival.

Karasuma followed the voice until it led him into the darkened fuselage. "Octopus?"

"Down here!" the voice replied, and Karasuma could feel his irritation mount as his eyes fell upon the small, orblike appearance of his target, safe and cozy inside a protective ball. While Karasuma was battered and bruised, Korosensei was without a scratch, thanks to his ultimate defense form.

"Karasuma-sensei! I thought I'd never see you again!" Two rivers of tears fell from his beady eyes.

Karasuma felt a vein bulge. He wished. "What the hell are you doing?!" he demanded.

"Nyu?"

"You can't fly off and get help like that!"

Korosensei pouted. "How mean, Karasuma-sensei! If not for this form, I could be dead."

Karasuma only stamped his foot angrily in response. As he gazed down the compartment, he could see that from the looks of things, the cabin, along with the pilot, were far beyond salvaging. That is, along with the radio and all other communications devices. Of course, there was no cell phone service out here, either.

"It's a shame about the pilot," Korosensei said, eyes somber. "I'm afraid that thanks to the anti-sensei material that lined the cockpit and the plane's exterior, I was unable to save both pilot and plane."

Karasuma nodded. He hadn't known the pilot well, but he had seen him a few times before. The poor man probably had a family of his own to get back to.

"I can fly off to get help after my ultimate defense wears off in 24 hours," Korosensei offered, attempting to break through the hopeless atmosphere. "24 hours isn't bad. It will be like a camping trip."

"First, we'll have to make sure this really is a deserted island," Karasuma said. "If we're lucky there may be people here."

"Perhaps," Korosensei conceded, but in truth the two men could feel that they really were alone, stranded on some unmarked island in the middle of the Pacific.

Karasuma looked back towards the cockpit. "Let's bury him before anything else," Karasuma suggested. "He may attract prowling animals in the night."

Korosensei nodded. "Indeed. Let's."

Standing around the mound that now covered the dead pilot, the two teachers offered their final prayers. Karasuma had done the best that he could to carefully untangle the deceased man from the mangled cockpit, but the man's injuries were as equally severe as the plane's. Despite this, Karasuma believed he had done a decent job of making the corpse presentable before lowering him into the trench he had dug. It wasn't the deepest, but it would have to do.

After cleaning himself up in a nearby stream, Karasuma began to root around for commodities in the plane, stuffing them into a bag. When he had collected a satisfying amount, he slung the bag over his shoulder and picked up Korosensei without much care. On the way back to the beach, they discovered another stream, confirmed by Karasuma to be running clean with freshwater, and after filling a canteen, the two were back on their way.

It took only a few hours to walk along the shore and end up back at their starting place. Since it seemed to be confirmed that this was well and truly a deserted island, they made camp on the beach as dusk began to fall. It had been a real struggle to locate dry wood, but Karasuma procured enough for a small fire, the flame the only light source for hundreds of miles, aside from the light cast by the moon and the pricks of brightness that were stars.

"I wonder if anyone knows we're gone yet?" Korosensei asked no one in particular, his beady eyes half closed as he was lulled to sleep by the steady flame. How Karasuma envied his safety. In that little ball his target was impervious to even a nuclear blast, and could fall asleep reassured, yet Karasuma had to worry about wild animals that could be lurking about. The infuriating thing was that he knew Korosensei knew all that, yet the octopus was allowing himself to drift off.

"I'm sure they're starting to wonder why we never arrived at the airport," Karasuma answered, expertly concealing his envy. "They're probably assimilating search parties as we speak, but even with experts, it will be a while until they find us. The Pacific is vast, after all."

Korosensei yawned. "And that's why it will be faster to find them first. Tomorrow."

Karasuma nodded. It would be a long night, but once the octopus' ultimate defense wore off, salvation would be well on its way.