AN: Took me a lot longer than usual. Other things in my life keep me occupied at the moment, but I try to divert as much attention as possible towards this fic.

Have fun reading!


The time with Yunyun had ended at three pm on the dot thanks to a very eager archwizard, clawing him away with the fury of a possessive housecat. The makeout session with her rival had remained unnoticed to Kazuma's great relief. He wasn't sure how Megumin would have reacted to such a sight.

It would have involved a lot of property damage at the least.

Instead, the explosion fetishist had dragged him away without sparing another glance towards Yunyun, who had the smuggest grin imaginable on her face.

The two of them had gone outside of the city to prevent a panic while she argued he could do what he wanted as the city boss. Megumin as a whole was much more chipper since claiming the party leader for herself. The both of them haven't been on an explosion walk in a while and she proclaimed to milk this opportunity for all its worth.

"EXPLOSION, HA!"

"Try again you novice! Your expression, the pose and tone of voice is all wrong!"

Mostly through running Kazuma ragged through her incessant demand for perfection in terms of casting her signature spell. "This is my fifth rehearsal explosion. I eventually run out of juice too, you know?"

Megumin turned away with arms folded and pouting. "I won't join until you finally get it right. Unlike your overpowered ass, I get only one shot and won't waste it on a subpar performance."

He returned to going through the complicated poses with a sigh. "I can't believe you made me practise your silly routine for six hours. It's already pitch black!"

She watched his movements intently in the light of their small campfire, biting her lower lip in thought. It didn't take long until she broke the silence with a question. "When do I get my power up?"

Kazuma stopped his rehearsal and looked at her with a raised eyebrow, which infuriated his companion. "Stop staring and answer my question! Darkness and Aqua already got one, so where's mine?"

The first impulse of the half-devil was to scold the bratty loli-mage for her entitled attitude, but a gut feeling urged him to patience while she vented.

"Everyone's gotten so much stronger because of you, except me. You even helped Yunyun before me! Why am I last?"

The root of Megumin's frustration had revealed itself and wasn't as simple as her being bratty.

"Did poor little Yunyun tell the sob story where she had to eat her birthday cake all alone in her large house?" she asked in a bitter tone while staring in the campfire. "Do you know what I had for my birthday that same year? Crayfish from the local river and bread crusts I had to steal from school. My classmates were laughing for months about it behind my back!"

Her anger ran deeper than imagined. This was more than a simple rivalry. There was actual growing resentment for Yunyun, her village and the world as a whole. The expression on her face was hauntingly familiar to him. He had severely underestimated her situation because Megumin always seemed the most stable of the bunch besides her unnatural infatuation with explosion magic. Something he viewed as an extreme tick within an otherwise rational person.

This bitterness was a glimpse of something else entirely and he grabbed Megumin by the hand. "Let's do our combo explosion."

Of course, Megumin wouldn't miss the opportunity to cast her favourite spell even when her heart wasn't in it. The first stages of something vile had begun to fester inside of his party member and he would nip it in the bud before it truly took root and diminished her happiness.

A Megumin not enthusiastic about explosions was not Megumin at all.

Kazuma was by no means qualified to play shrink for this group of nutjobs. Hell, especially him, since he still had to get his own mindspace in order from yesterday.

Alas, there was nobody else to step up. "Follow my lead and respond with what feels natural."

"O.. Ok!"

The spectacle started with the ignition of his demonic blue aura, flames all around him as the magic circle formed under his feet. "My name is Kazuma, azure devil of the bottomless underworld!"

A lot of more mana than necessary poured into the spell by choice of its user to garner Megumin`s interest and as expected from a natural, she adapted to him instantly by releasing her own magical circle beneath her feet. "My name is Megumin, crimson demon of the blazing abyss!"

The performance continued, her reacting instantly to him and extending the lines.

"The fire of a loner burns in my soul!"

"The roar of my voice shatters all!"

Their movements synched up more and more until they seemed to move as one person.

"Devastation follows in my wake!"

"Earth and heaven shall quake!"

She instinctively seemed to know his intention before he even did anything.

"Nobody dares to challenge me!"

"My might is the last you will see!"

With a dramatic final pose, both pointed into the endless black sky before them to unleash hell.

"EXPLOSION!"

"EXPLOSION!"

Night turned to day with the synchronized release of their spells, an explosion large enough to see from space and introduce the world to the nuclear age.

Kazuma would have to come up with a whole new scale to rate this masterpiece and although the sight was undoubtedly breathtaking, Megumin's eyes were solely glued to her feet with a gobsmacked expression.

"I'm standing…" Megumin whispered astonished, doing small hops in place to test the strength of her legs.

In stark contrast to the chipper archmage, Kazuma felt the immense drain on his body. He put two and two together when the sum of lost mana came to almost twice the calculated amount. Megumin was using his power to fuel her spell and he couldn't shake the feeling her recent change of ownership to him had something to do with it.

Contracts, devils and all that.

"Looks like becoming my property has at least one benefit for you, but please be mindful with my energy. I still have limits and don't really want to find out where they are."

Even without the fact she still could stand on two legs, Megumin would have been able to tell something was out of the ordinary during her casting and after releasing the spell. Getting mana from external forces wasn't a foreign concept in this world. People used magical crystals and other items like potions to regain their magical power. A little more special were skills that allowed to get mana directly from other beings. Drain touch came to mind, a specialized lich skill capable of sucking out the life force from the living.

Whatever she had gotten from their party leader was beyond comparison to any of those methods. Using Kazuma's mana was an indescribable rush and swell of energy down to the tips of her hair. She felt Kazuma in that spell, molding a part of him and herself to create something more beyond the sum. In the moment of merging their essence together, Megumin was sure to know him better than anyone else in this world as if two souls had become one.

"Did you plan this when you bought me from my parents?"

"You all give me way too much credit lately, for real."

He sat down to rummage through the nearby picnic basket under her watchful eyes and grabbed a sandwich with some water. Suddenly his stomach was rumbling from hunger and his throat became dry as a desert. Gulping down the bottle in one go, he took a greedy bite from the elaborately made snack.

Going back into the city was forgotten in favor of sitting around the fire and enjoying a late evening meal under the night sky. "I didn't give Darkness a sword out of noble intentions. My frustration of her not being able to hit stuff reached its boiling point and something had to be done. Aqua getting more powerful is actually a huge headache for me. Can you imagine how much more difficult it will be to keep her in check?"

Megumin's eyes turned to slits, waiting for an explanation for the last person, the one she had the most gripes with at the moment.

"Yunyun…" he took another bite to stall for time and gather his thoughts. "She reminds me more of myself than I want to admit. Maybe I'm trying to erase my shortcomings by helping someone overcome theirs. It sounds petty enough to be something I would do."

Megumin interrupted his rambling by plopping down on his lap, a very popular spot lately if his memory wasn't failing him.

"You always expect the worst, even from yourself."

She seems to be somewhat mollified, despite her scolding tone and wrong assumptions about his character.

Very wrong assumptions.

He was as good as his new powers allowed him to be. In any other circumstance something like the past few days never could have happened in a million years. The fear of losing power and freedom drove him to action, not helping others for noble reasons.

"I don't trust me to do my best. There's a difference."

She leaned against him and took a bite from the sandwich in his hand with remarkable speed. The smell of cinnamon, ozone and cinder entered his nostrils. Focusing on her soothing fragrance, Kazuma rested his chin on her head while she chewed with satisfaction.

"Want to watch something while we eat?" he asked and produced the black crystal from his inventory. "The world is your oyster and this baby contains an endless stream of entertainment!"

Kazuma pondered what kind of exciting stuff from his world she would want to experience. An action movie? Anime? A documentation about the atom bomb? So many choices to impress and dazzle his party member with technological advanced entertainment.

"Show me something from your old life."

Kazuma was taken back by her request. He knew they were curious about his life on occasion, but they had literally the world at their fingertips and she wanted to see something from his small and insignificant part in it. Megumin noticed his apprehension and waited patiently until he would decide to show something worthwhile. The amount of time it took for his thinking to seize weighed heavy on her mood.

"I don't really have any good memories. I could show you some of my misfortune if you want a good laugh at my expense."

"No!" Megumin shook her head violently and grabbed his knees she used as armrests hard enough to make her fingers shake. "I just would like to know more about you and where you came from!"

The pained expression on his face changed to genuine confusion. "You all have already seen more of me than anyone from my old life. I used to avoid human contact. HikiNEET remember?"

For the upteempth time since she learned about the word, Megumin thought about what the slur Aqua kept throwing around to insult Kazuma meant. The general description of their archpriest for a HikiNEET was a lazy, friendless loser without any worthwhile qualities, who locks himself in from the real world to avoid responsibility.

This description had always rubbed Megumin the wrong way. Kazuma certainly could be lazy and unmotivated, but for a person with his diverse skills existed a multitude of paths to choose besides adventurer to earn an easy living. He was the most level headed and competent to come up with a plan to use their limited area of expertise to form a coherent party.

Despite that, Aqua kept calling him a HikiNEET.

What kind of life did their party leader have in his old homeland?

Why did he come here?

Why did he change so much if Aqua could be believed?

Questions upon questions stacked on top of each other inside Megumin's head, until one question in particular crystallized at the forefront as the most important.

"Would you ever go back?"

Kazuma wasn't sure about many things in his life, but this he knew without doubt and thus there was no hesitation in his reply. "Back to my old world or back to being a loner? Both get a definite and resounding no."

Naturally, Megumin latched on to a certain nugget of information in his answer. "Old world?"

Somewhere along dying a second time, losing half of his humanity and gaining the power of a devil, the truth about his origins had almost become an afterthought. He hid it at the beginning out of shame for his past self and failure to utilize his second chance. Now on his third try, there was no point in holding out on that piece of information.

"I came into this world by dying in mine like an idiot. The deal from heaven sounded really sweet at the time; get reincarnated in a new world to go on fun adventures and become a beloved hero. The only problem was their shitty blue-haired salesperson manning the desk."

Megumin remembered Kazumas's nightmare, especially the morbid scene of him lying in an open grave surrounded by mocking faces, and shuddered in discomfort. She couldn't be sure how much of those horror visions were true and what was exaggerated and couldn't bring herself to ask.

Kazuma was a lot more nonchalant. "As you can see, things didn't exactly turn out as Aqua advertised, although pretty much anything could be considered an improvement to the past. The Kazuma of that time and place was nothing. He did nothing, changed nothing, thought nothing and meant nothing to no one."

Megumin wanted to reprimand him for putting himself down, but everything she could think of would make his old life look appealing. She wouldn't risk the slightest chance her words would convince him to go back somehow.

A world without him was unfathomable.

They sat together in silence for what felt like hours, watching a random movie about people in powerful spandex fighting monsters and getting in a giant robot to fight a bigger monster.

"Are you happy, Kazuma?"

"I think so… but I'm also glad Aqua isn't here to verify."

It was definitely a better life than before and yet, the fact he couldn't say with certainty despite becoming this blessed worried him. Kazuma didn't consider himself a greedy person and yet there was still something missing.

"I am very happy." Megumin wrapped his arms around herself like a blanket, almost vanishing into his embrace. "I am happy to have left my village to walk the path of explosions. I am happy to be part of your adventuring group."

Even after several girls had already claimed his lips, the sudden kiss still managed to surprise him and make his heart skip a beat. Megumin didn't kiss seductively like Aqua or as possessive as Yunyun. A kiss from the archwizard was like herself, inexperienced and a little awkward while full of passion and vigor.

Against her honest advances he stood no chance and soon found himself lying on his back in the grass. Instead of stopping his fall, Kazuma used his arms to hug the girl who used his body as a mattress and lips as a chewing toy.

His heart swelled with love at the same rate as his cynical mind grew with worry. They all were getting impatient with him, getting more bold day by day to force a decision he couldn't even fathom to make. Real love was as alien a concept to him as quantum mechanics, always staying this elusive thing he simultaneously craved and didn't trust to last.

"I'm happy that you are still here, Kazuma."

"I am too."