"Grandpa, grandpa!" the child fidgeted on the flying bed, looking down at the world underneath. "When will we reach the Amazon jungle? Great Barrier Reef? Alps? Oh, grandpa! Is there anything greater to say than excitement?"

"We almost reached our destination, gospozha," smiled grandpa. The wind softly brushed through their hair as he rode the flying bed through the clouds. Many times the child extended her arm above to feel them against her skin. "More than excitement— gospozha, how about you describe your excitement in a sentence?"

"Sentence?" wondered little Arina.

"Yes, without using the word 'excitement' itself."

She smiled. Casting her arms, she lovingly hugged the old man from behind.

"I'm ecstatic beyond measure that I am to live in a world where there are jungles, coral reefs, mountains, and you, grandpa."

***

Koro-sensei regretted that he hadn't noticed it from the beginning. Rewind to day five of Arina's counting, after another failed attempt and Koro-sensei again used his shedding technique, Arina had had enough of her positive attitude. Dropping her remaining anti-sensei bombs she sprang forward and clasped her hands.

"You are to kill me faster than anyone!" she cried. "You obviously DO want to kill me so badly! I might have known it. I can never catch a break even if I tried to! And now I will just be killed before I try harder! I might have known my life was too tragic to handle! I might have known staying upbeat was too hard to last! And behold, right now you are to endure my tears again!"

Indeed as she warned she burst into tears. Just as she was about to drop on the dirty ground Koro-sensei used his Mach 20 speed to fetch her a chair as she found herself sitting on it and flinging her arms out upon its arm, and burying her face in it, she proceeded to cry stormily. Koro-sensei dazed out for a moment, sweating.

"Well, well, Avenira-san, there's no need to cry about it. Why don't you collaborate with your classma—"

"Yes, there IS need!" the child raised her head quickly, revealing her tear-stained face and trembling lips. "YOU would cry, too, if you were facing and talking to a monster that would blow the place and everyone you love most next year and realize you have little to no power slaughtering it! What would you feel if you were a disowned girl in your family and everyone wanted to punish you for it? Oh, this is the most TRAGIC thing that ever happened to me!"

Clearly, she was just being dramatic, as it was her signature trait, and everyone seemed to brush it off.

On day six, the whole class was shocked when she entered the room looking as though expecting a mismatch holiday. It was visible now that her bruises looked alarming. She didn't even bother concealing them anymore. Everyone in the room frenetically rushed over to her expressed their concern and asked how she came to be like this. Arina forced a smile out of a little joy left in this world, the bottom of her lips quivered — yes, she had always enjoyed being the center of attention so badly, hadn't it? — although realizing it hurt, she stopped.

After a while, Koro-sensei slid the door open to the class and said, 'Good morning!' to his students only to be freaked out by the horrible looks of one among them. Arina sat in the seat at the back of the class and doodling on a sheet of paper. Her hair uncombed. Her face was no longer pink and delighted. She buttoned up the wrong button on her shirt and her loose and skewed ribbon hung on her unturned collar. Mismatched socks. Koro-sensei went, 'Nyu ya!?'

He approached her seat; her eyes did not rise to meet her teacher's.

"Avenira-san, what is the matter?" Koro-sensei gently asked, blinking his beady eyes.

Arina lifted her head and looked at the monster through her bruised eyes down the line of her nose.

"Avenira-san?"

Arina seemed not so much to be looking at Koro-sensei as through him. On her desk was a stack of paper, on top of which a thick and clumsy spiral had been drawn by a heavy hand. On the one she was doodling, were another fifty or forty spirals, more severe than the other. Koro-sensei sweated. Without asking, he reached his tentacles out and lifted the topmost drawing to reveal the sheets beneath. The further down he reached the bottom, the clearer the lines appeared to be. At the very bottom of the stack was a cartoonish drawing of desperate plans to take a yellow octopus down.

Koro-sensei's face darkened, as well as everyone else in the class from the beginning. "You're pushing yourself to kill me, Avenira-san?"

Arina dropped her chin to her chest — possibly a nod. Sunlight glided through the windows, painting the wall at the back a brighter shade of greyish yellow. Her classmates peeked behind, beside, to check on her expression. She was dead at the final sheet.

After that everything became a blur. She doodled in her textbook and continued to run in circles despite everyone stopping already; she only stopped when P.E. ended and doodled again in the upcoming periods. Despite Koro-sensei and everyone's many attempts to cheer her up, she proceeded, filling the desk's surface with endless spirals, all in the same severe lead.

With a blink, her legs had dragged her in front of the KGB agents before her brain could catch up, all along the way there. She managed to say something again, and one more, then shutting her eyes.

Quite some time after Arina reopened her eyes to witness the monster showing up out of nowhere that her consciousness could finally believe what was before her. This beast, as always, stood tall and intimidating. Its usual yellow skin peeled black. Eyes glowing red and teeth as though about to shred its prey's flesh into pieces. It said:

"I will not forgive anyone who dares to hurt my student."

The agents instinctively took steps backward out of fear. Arina was as well, crawling to the corner of the room, hyperventilating.

Within a swift of the speed of sound, the agents had all their weapons confiscated before they could even go into action. Just as when they angrily charged forward with bare hands, the octopus stayed in one spot and snapped their necks with its super-speed tentacles (okay, but didn't break them). He used a big ribbon tape and gathered and wrapped the bunch fifty rounds and tied a pretty knot to finish. The agents growled in exploded rage.

Arina's stable mentality came back to her upon this life-and-death scene as she freaked out and sprang up to proceed toward the agents so she could rescue them from the monster.

"Avenira-san."

Arina jolted, halting her steps in fright. A shiver traveled down her spine. The monster proceeded:

"Sensei sorry for not coming to you earlier."

A lull in the atmosphere. Some of the agents spoke up on behalf of his student.

"Stop sugarcoating yourself, monster — it's obviously a trick of a spy, emotionally manipulating enemies. Keep your head clear, Avenira."

"We're just motivating her spirit for the vital mission — aren't you going to wipe us out before we do kill you, Target? Or do you want to put us in a wringer for secret information before you do?"

"Avenira, for the love of our Motherland, attack it and bring honor home to your father, the Spasitel!"

Arina inclined her head and clenched her fists. Do they have any idea that there was no way on earth she could possibly inflict a single damage on this invincible creature standing here with its guard up? Nevertheless, she was going to save them.

"How about my life in exchange for them?" Arina whirled around to Koro-sensei and desperately pleaded, clasping her hands. "PLEASE don't kill them off. I know my life doesn't matter as much since I AM young and inexperienced and Father would definitely be more glad if his experienced unit is able to return home to our Motherland, but that's all I could offer — I only have one life to offer! Can you please...? They did nothing wrong at all."

Arina expected the monster to kill her at any moment ever since the beginning when she first met it, thus already mentally prepared for her possible death.

"Please!" tears on the brink of spilling, she dropped to her knees and bowed at the lowest degree to the monster, begging for mercy. The agents scolded her. On the looks of their faces, she would definitely get into big trouble as soon as they were unleashed.

Her tears dropped onto the ground beneath, one, two, three soaked. She stared as they dried up. Only if the race for biological weapons didn't exist. Only if the Cold War didn't exist. This terrific monster wouldn't be here today, standing in front and ready to slaughter her and possibly everyone here if her plea doesn't work and then the entire planet by the next year.

A tentacle was gently placed on her head, as if out of comfort.

Arina quickly shot her head upward by the act. The monster smiled down at her. His beady eyes, too, were smiling.

"Sensei won't kill anyone, and certainly he doesn't kill his student. Avenira-san, you're a strong child for pushing through all these. It can't be denied that it's partially Sensei's fault too."

"Oh, you are not going to kill us?" Arina's red eyes gleamed with hope. The agents behind warned her straight away that she mightn't want to trust the monster's words for the consequences.

"No, I shall NEVER trust you!" the self-proclaimed naive Arina declared under the influence of the experienced KGB agents. "I don't know how else you are to fool and use us! I just have to know that you have something malicious in your mind or even MORE in my imagination! I suppose perhaps that has something to do with why you are teaching an isolated class!"

"Eek!! How awful you portray your teacher as. It hurts — it hurts so bad," mourned Koro-sensei into his handkerchief. The rest thought how good of an actor he was.

"Avenira-san," Koro-sensei said after he finished blowing his nose. Wait, where was his nose again? — as Arina thought.

He used his tentacles to lift her off from the kneeling position and under a second he did her a makeover with a brand-new pretty, clean uniform and a hairstyle he extracted from a magazine he saw in the convenience store. Arina was left speechless. She immediately checked if there was any bomb planted within the layers of clothes.

"Alright, you are all set now. Let's embark on an adventure around the world, shall we?"

Arina stared at him wide-eyed. One blink; she let out an 'Eh?'

The octopus was entertained by the child's baffled reaction of how he knew what her biggest dream was. "Nyurufufufu, life is short and the world is wide, Avenira-san. Are you coming?"

"Don't be fooled by that creature, Avenira," reminded the agents with an intimidating aura.

But there was something bewitching in the monster's offer that Arina couldn't resist. An adventure around the earth...what a perfectly unearthly offer.

"Merciful goodness, I won't!" Arina persisted with her distrust at last. Fear overwhelmed the young girl and her imagination explored the possibilities of getting dropped into the middle of the Pacific Ocean or a volcano or being killed in various other ways. After all, a quick, painless death like getting shot in the head was the best (or getting her head chopped off by a guillotine), but it wouldn't look aesthetically pleasing to Arina, and quite pathetic. She wouldn't want anyone to have her head, what if they paint over it as a joke? — thus her mind drifted away like usual....

Regardless of Arina's answer, Koro-sensei picked her up and stuffed her into his cloak. "Trust sensei, this will be a memorable trip for you."

Why did he know her biggest wish? Because this dedicated teacher had made a little trip to search for the answer during recess time at school.

*Flashback*

The Comrade Chairman — Alexei Avenir — stood stunned by the visitor in his office.

Experiment 1731 of Japan — it stood before his sight and offered him a box of donuts.

"Nyurufufufufu, I just passed by Mexico to buy these donuts. Here, take it as a greeting gift from me."

Immediately the ZE unit was summoned into the room under the chairman's command. They simultaneously pelted the BB bullets at the monster, but for him, it was all child's play, as green stripes appeared on his yellow face, dodging the bullets without breaking a sweat.

The Comrade Chairman gestured his hand up. "Prekratit' ogon'!" he commanded, and the underlings obeyed and stopped firing.

"Chto ty zdes' delayesh'?" he sternly questioned the monster.

Now this was the time when his past as an assassin came in handy. Being an assassin, it would be better to know major languages, as from then on Koro-sensei communicated with the Chairman in his language.

"I just want to know more about your daughter from you," said Koro-sensei with a bit of an accent. "She's looking burned out recently, do you have any idea?"

"She's not burned out — she's uplifted in spirit. Anxiety and pain harden her every day," Avenir accidentally gave away a detail and brushed it off. It wasn't important information anyway.

"Nyu? That means you are the one who commanded your underlings to discipline your daughter every day, is that right?"

"That's right, disciplining is the policy for humanity's existence," smirked Avenir. He seemed to feel proud for setting his daughter on the right track. Turning around, he walked toward the bow window with his hands in parade rest, looking down at the world he had full control over. His blond hair was slicked back with gel and his green orbs glinted in the dark and hollow sockets of his eyes.

Koro-sensei sunk into silence for a moment. "You're rather cruel, am I right?"

Laughed Avenir. What would be left of him if he wasn't cruel? Only cruelty could soar to leadership and salvage this world.

This man was malicious-minded and full of tactics. While being the sidekick to the former leader decades ago, he had built his own military unit in secret and eventually overthrew the former. Koro-sensei felt uneasy about this man's at-length laughter.

"Experiment 1731, don't you see that cruelty pushed humanity to its limits? That's the way you're born."

After several interrogations from the monster that were left unanswered and some more failed killing attempts by the chairman's personal unit, their general — Sergey Fedorov — stepped out to make a few exceptions.

"You there," he said while Koro-sensei was out in the courtyard and ready to leave. "How exactly does Avenira burn out?"

"Aah, I see, someone does care about my student after all, how glad."

"Caring does not exist in my dictionary. What I want to know is how well the KGB is disciplining the chairman's daughter, which, 'burns out' is not the result we're looking for if planning to take on this vital mission."

"Hm," said Koro-sensei, his smile always remained intact. "A deranged mentality I must say. That's not how you educate a kid. What you want to teach them is healthy bloodlust, otherwise, they won't have the strength to keep up with your unrealistic expectations."

The general's expression was unfazed. Maybe he had guessed this from the beginning, or he simply was stoic, who knew?

"One more thing," Fedorov held Koro-sensei back before he could leave.

"About one of your questions — her biggest dream is to travel the world Beyond the Iron Curtains and celebrate a birthday in one of the places."

*End of Flashback*

After returning the agents back to the rezidentsiya, along with Arina's high-pitched scream when he again stuffed her into his cloak like a doll, they were readying to finally embark on the adventure. Well, maybe only Koro-sensei. Arina passed out upon having failed to escape four times.

The rich world beyond the Iron Curtains beside Japan and its cherry trees — prepare your arms to wave hello at them. Koro-sensei accelerated gently at first to ensure his student's safety, soaring into the sky she had always admired through the window.

Jungles, mountains, coral reefs, deserts, cities, fourteen missing birthdays, here they come!