Kazuma's Rambling Thoughts

A Konosuba oneshot

By

EvilFuzzy9

Rating: T

Genre: Humor

Characters/Pairings: Kazuma, Aqua; [it's complicated]

Summary: If Aqua was supposed to be the heroine of his story, then Kazuma would rather take the delusional masochist or the underage pyromaniac. Better yet would be none of them, and peaceful solitude in which to think. This was how far his situation had fallen, and he hadn't exactly been on top of the world to start with.

"What are you doing, you useless goddess?"

Kazuma watched in bemusement and mild annoyance as the scarcely skirted posterior of the unwillingly incarnated water deity Aqua swung from side to side very near to his face. The transparent hem of Aqua's skirt annoyed him, as did the garment's ridiculous shortness. Not because he was some kind of prude.

Frankly, Kazuma was a pervert. Not to the extent that his unfortunate reputation made him out to be—he wasn't some kind of beastly monster who forced beautiful young women to do unspeakably profane acts for his amusement. Truthfully it was a little silly that these rumors had gotten so widespread. Many of the situations which had befallen the girls around him had to have also happened to other female adventurers.

Those people who had reacted so suspiciously to Aqua and Megumin being covered in slime were clearly willfully ignorant. He still wasn't sure how they could have misconstrued the situation that far. They can't have been the only people to ever get swallowed by giant toads. And their reactions to Megumin's pleas were also silly—the girl was clearly an adventurer, and anyone with an iota of sense could have intuited what was going on.

Admittedly, there were some events where he had certainly acted perverted. He supposed that underwear fetishism might seem very strange to the inhabitants of this pseudo-medieval reality. Even in Japan, his outright delight at getting hold of Chris's panties would have been viewed by most normal people with disdain or disgust. And it was true, from a certain point of view, that he had wound up surrounded by a number of attractive young women. To the onlooker it might seem unfairly fortunate that he should have a team with three beautiful, talented girls on it next to him, a mere "onion knight" adventurer.

Plus, he naturally stood out a little. Early on, his clothes had been quite out of place. Moreover this was a world of broadly European high fantasy, while he was a young man of vividly asiatic phenotype. While the populations of this world were very diverse in some ways, most of the humans resembled earth peoples of variously Celtic, Romantic, or Germanic descent. Western Europeans, in other words. Not that Kazuma, however obviously Japanese, stood out too much because of his appearance. Humans were fairly homogenous, realistically speaking, and there were people of far more strange and outlandish appearance in Axel.

At least to his sensibilities.

But, of course, he couldn't really say it was just because he looked Asian and different that he was subjected to a much higher scrutiny than others seemed to be. The existence of Mitsurugi Kyouya made it clear that this was not the case. That guy was popular and respected and held in honor, although he was every bit as Japanese as Kazuma. It wasn't a race thing, or even a matter of him just looking a bit different.

It was probably his demeanor that made him seem suspicious. Although he had left behind his former shut-in lifestyle, still Kazuma had the general bearing of a socially awkward teen who'd never really learned how to properly interact with others. He could talk to people well enough, but he did not have quite the same forwardness as the natural men of this world. The disposition of his cultural upbringing and individual personality gave the impression, particularly in this pre-industrial high fantasy world, of someone who was vaguely meek and spineless and not to be trusted.

That was what he supposed, at least. While he was hardly a paragon of Japanese keigo, still he had a certain aversion to such displays as were common to this more Western-seeming society. He was naturally a little more reserved than other men, quicker to defer and avoid conflict. Part of this was due to growing up in modern Japan, where solving problems with violence was almost unthinkable. Kazuma did not possess any particular physical courage, and even in the context of his own society he would have been deemed timid and unsociable.

To the people of this world, who grew up facing the necessities of life and death as he had not, who lived under a vague and looming shadow of fear (even if this far from the frontlines it seemed peaceful) Kazuma had to come across as almost cold and craven. He seemed meek and reserved next to the boldly expressive natives. He was averse to physical affection, and he had many strange and incomprehensible little beliefs and biases that did not mesh with the worldview of those around him.

Probably he seemed a little furtive, a little vaguely insincere and untrustworthy. The values of this world weren't quite Western, but they also weren't Japanese. Not that Kazuma exemplified any virtues of the Japanese man, either classical or modern: but his natural inclinations and social conventions were still Japanese. Even in his own society he would be looked at askance, and most of the ways in which this world differed from Japan put Kazuma even further from the norm.

Fantasy games? Those might have prepared him for the broad mechanics of this world, but no game could have instructed him on all the little quirks and norms and social standards of such a world as this. Someone like Mitsurugi, who seemed rude and arrogant to Kazuma, to many others in this world seemed more respectable than him. Mitsurugi was brave and forward, and he conformed himself readily to the standards of this world, which were not in the slightest the standards of Japan, or even necessarily of the modern West.

Darkness and Megumin had very different perceptions of normalcy than Kazuma did. Their basic moral standards were divergent from his, at least in the application.

Broadly speaking, of course, morality was a universal concept: humans had a certain fundamental sense of fairness, and they were naturally averse to things like killing other humans. Whether the source of this morality was evolutionary or spiritual, the most basic tenants of human moral codes tended to be fairly constant. Most of the variation came in how one applied or interpreted those intrinsic values, and this was what could usually be seen differing from one society to the next.

But that aside, even Aqua—who had supposedly been in charge of sending on the souls of those who died young in Japan—didn't have the same ingrained values as did Kazuma. This could be seen from how she continued to carelessly and unconcernedly kneel in the hay and swing her backside practically right in his face. The shortness of her skirt was frankly absurd, as Kazuma had thought nearly every time he looked at it. He was also struck, once again, by the fact that he could see no indication of panties.

Admittedly, he didn't see enough to say this for certain... but when he could see that much buttock and no hint of cloth, he honestly had to assume the worst. In another circumstance, with another girl, he might have called it the best.

Not here. Not with Aqua. Hell, even Megumin would seem more tolerable in this position. Even Darkness.

But Kazuma didn't really like any of these girls. Not in terms of their personalities—and wasn't that what you were supposed to judge by anyways, when considering a relationship? That's what he heard.

It's not that the girls were too assertive. Maybe that would have bothered another guy, but Kazuma wasn't exactly a traditionalist. He didn't mind a spunky, forward, assertive girl. Not in theory. His favorite females in fiction had always been the sexy older women, the confident and sultry cougars who teased and mildly harrassed the hero. He wasn't averse to the idea of a girl who knew what she wanted. Heck, if such a girl wanted him, he could gladly lie back and take it.

Out of the three, Darkness was closest to being the sort of woman he might fantasize about. If not for her extreme perversions and usually hopeless personality, he might seriously consider wanting to get to know her. But while Kazuma wasn't a prude, it badly grated him that Darkness had so little sense of the right time and the right place. He didn't even have anything against masochism. He could see himself enjoying being with Darkness and indulging some of her kinks. But she was wildly immoderate and painfully imprudent. It didn't help that she couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, either.

Megumin was someone Kazuma could imagine liking when they were older, although his present attraction to her was limited. He wasn't a lolicon, but the age gap between the two of them was small enough that sometimes, when he felt especially exasperated, he gave it consideration. She was... cute, in her own way. He could appreciate her love of Explosion, after the time they'd spent together, even if he still found it exasperating that, by this point, he was in most other ways a better mage than her. Her chuunibyou tendencies were the main turn off: that, and the fact that Kazuma still wasn't really a lolicon.

Now, Aqua. There was someone Kazuma could never see himself liking. This was the girl who made him seriously consider hopeless cases like Darkness and Megumin, the girl who made him so desperate with frustration that he was ready to get tied up with a hardcore masochist who had almost no concept of restraint, or to be tarred with the brush of a lolicon and date an explosion fetishist. Aqua was beyond hopeless. Even if her powers were considerable, even if on his first impression he had thought her unspeakably beautiful, and even if she seemed like she wouldn't even be too sincerely averse to him, if he just indulged her a little, Kazuma had not once given Aqua the slightest consideration.

Not as a girlfriend. Not as a possible wife, if he thought that far ahead. Not even as someone to bargain with for some no-strings-attached sex—the fact that she might genuinely agree to such a thing if she was sufficiently strapped for cash did not make him more likely to consider this. His first impressions of her attitude had been unfavorable. He still remembered how callously she had mocked the manner of his death.

Admittedly, now that Kazuma was sufficiently removed from the event, he could concede to himself that it had been kind of darkly funny. Had he heard of it happening to someone else... yeah, he would have laughed. The remark about his own family laughing at the manner of his death had been a bit much, though. And funny or not, wasn't a good goddess supposed to be kind and compassionate?

Admittedly, many pantheons tended to depict a number of callous or capricious deities. Even what little he knew of the mythologies of his own land suggested aloofness or sometimes dubious benevolence on the parts of many kami. The idea that gods should be nice and gentle and compassionate was really more of a modern conceit, wasn't it?

In that regard perhaps Aqua was true to her nature, and Kazuma was simply getting worked up over his own mistaken assumptions about how he felt things ought to be. What right did he really have to criticize a goddess? None, if he were to be brutally honest with himself. The cosmos weren't a democracy. Humans weren't really that powerful or significant. Aqua was of a divine race, and like it or not he was subordinate to her even in the fundamental material nature of his being.

That only made him surlier toward her, though.

"Get your butt out my face, you has-been so-and-so!" Kazuma snapped. "It's annoying. What are you even doing? Can't you just lie down and go to sleep?"

Aqua stopped whatever she was doing. Her backside went motionless, but it was still irksomely close.

"None of your business, you hikiNEET," she said petulantly. "So be quiet, or I'll sit on your face."

"That's sexual harrassment," he responded.

"Ehhh? What's sexual about it?" she retorted, spinning around to look at him. Her cheeks were puffed out, and she was pouting. Her breasts briefly bobbed within her blouse. "Are you thinking something dirty about my butt?" she asked. "For shame. I'm a goddess! Or have you forgotten? I could send you to hell for having such sinful fantasies."

"You can't send me to hell when I'm already there," he blithely answered. "And who'd want to fantasize about you? You might be cute, but your personality ruins it."

"Yeah? Well, I could say the same for you! So, there." Aqua blew a raspberry.

Kazuma cocked an eyebrow.

"Oh? Are you calling me cute?" he asked, unsure whether to feel pleased or insulted. He wasn't the most macho guy out there, but he still wasn't certain he'd like to think of himself as kawaii.

"Yeah," said Aqua. "So what if I am? You might be the cutest guy in the world, but your stupid attitude ruins it."

A beat.

"You don't actually think I'm the cutest guy in the world, of course," Kazuma said. It was a deceptively complicated statement, as far as the motivations behind it, and there was perhaps more meaning there than he would have liked to admit.

"So what if I do?" she retorted. "I also think you're the most annoying guy in the world."

Aqua sounded pleased with herself, as though she had just said something very witty. Her eyes were closed, and she held her nose high, smugly smirking.

"...you think I'm cute."

Aqua blinked. She looked down at Kazuma. He appeared somehow distracted, and a smile was curling his lips irresistibly upwards.

"H-Hey, whoa," Aqua said. "What are you looking so happy about, you jerk? I just called you the most annoying person in the world. What are you, some kind of a masochist?"

"I must be, if I'm pleased by a compliment from you."

A beat.

Aqua's face pinkened as her brain finally caught up with her mouth. She opened and close her mouth, comically resembling a goldfish. Erubescent cheeks starkly clashed with pale blue hair.

"Th-Th-That doesn't mean anything, stupid!" she said. "It's just an insult. I thought guys weren't supposed to like being called cute."

"Maybe not," said Kazuma.

He was still smiling.

Well, perhaps he'd been exaggerating a little bit. Things weren't really that bad, he supposed. Maybe these girls weren't actually so terrible, and maybe this world didn't really seem so crazy and unenjoyable.

That was when Aqua sat on his face.

Nevermind. He took it all back.

"Get off of me, you crazy has-been!"

"Not until you apologize, hikiNEET!"

"KEEP IT DOWN IN THERE!"

A/N: My opinion of Konosuba is that it's surprisingly pretty good. I'd initially been wary of trying it out, because I've been disappointed by many outwardly similar works like Danmachi and Outbreak Company: one of which was tolerably average, and the other which became quickly unendurable. I've long been a sucker for ecchi harems, and also for things in which you could extrapolate harems, but rare is the series of that sort which manages to actually catch and keep my interest. I think what worked in Konosuba was that it was genuinely pretty funny. It didn't try to take itself too seriously.

Admittedly, even for my very perverted self the bouncing was somewhat ridiculous. Although that could almost be considered a meta joke about the genre—like, the jiggling boobs get to a point where, in hindsight, I can only assume it was parody. I could honestly believe that, with Konosuba.

Mind, the second half of episode nine got a little uncomfortable, because I wasn't entirely sure where it would go.

But as for this fic... I dunno. I just started typing this out briefly while taking (what I intended to be) a short break from writing something else, and before I know I've spent half my morning churning out this schizophrenic piece of I dunno what. It's not quite a character examination, and it's not quite a story.

It just... is, I suppose.

Updated: 3-10-17

TTFN and R&R!

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