Unfortunately for you all I'm back at it again.

The joke in the original anime is basically that Aqua perfectly fulfils the role of a standard love-interest but the pair have basically no romantic interest and think of each other more as annoying siblings - in much the same joke as how Aqua always wanders around without underwear and nobody takes any interest - so I'm abandoning canon entirely to tell a more interesting story as you'll see in this chapter because it's fun to imagine an alternate continuity where something like this could unfold and pretend the romantic or sexual feelings actually do exist and I've also added non-canon backstories for some of them.

The stock of Kazuma/Aqua fics out there isn't as crowded a field as it should be given how objectively awesome the pairing is, so maybe with a little effort I could write the best Kazuma/Aqua fanfic on the internet. In pursuit of that goal I've got ideas I came up with from about fifty different stories (or chapters of larger stories) I wanted to write but may never find the motivation to do so, so I'm just going to go for broke and use them all here. Before I start writing I can see the word count getting rapidly out of hand with this one. Anyway, wish me luck.

Chapter 1: Descent to Abaddon

Whenever you see a beautiful woman, as you typically do – but not exclusively - at the start of any romance story, the first question your male protagonist asks himself is how he gets to be with her. In imagining the series of plausible events that could lead to this conclusion, for men like Kazuma it is inevitably tied to the question, am I good enough for her? Kazuma weighted the probabilities; she was a goddess. Not figuratively. Already prospects were not looking good for him.

She was a ten out of ten at least, which was par for the course with divine beings, with long aqua blue hair – suitably because her name was Aqua – and large breasts, which Kazuma noted due to having his priorities sorted out. They were round and shapely without being absurd and they weren't padded like some other goddesses; Kazuma could write a book of poetry about them.

So how did Kazuma weigh against this? Well, he was a shut-in NEET, at least before he died, and an outright pervert. He rarely left his room, even to go to school, and mostly just played video games and jerked off. The one time he did venture into the path of the sun's warm glow – leaving to go to the store for another video game – he died. He did what he pretty much considered the only good thing he's done in his life, pushing a girl out of the way of an oncoming truck. It was all in vain, because it was a slow moving tractor that had no chance of running either the girl or Kazuma himself over and Kazuma in fact died of fright believing he had thrown himself into the path of death.

So the deck was stacked against him romantically speaking. So he had nothing going for him except his high Luck stat - so what did Aqua having going against her? She was a complete and total moron.

Maybe there was a chance after all.

The point where the winds seemed to change occurred one day when Kazuma and his guild were hanging out at their manor. Megumin had taken Chomsuke out for a walk while Darkness was having a bath. There were a few baths in the building but she was in the one with the door that was double barricaded and the "Kazuma Keep Out" sign hanging outside it. The sleepy goddess napped on the sofa; shortly beforehand she had been haranguing Kazuma to make progress in defeating the Demon King so both of them could return to their original worlds. Kazuma could resurrect on Earth while Aqua would resume her godly duties in the Divine Realm.

Sure, he could do that. But he lived in a manor now with three other girls, including one goddess, instead of with his parents. If there was a reason he could want to leave this behind to return to that, Kazuma hadn't found it.

He laughed to himself villainously, about how he'd stay here forever. He had a goddess who could infinitely revive him, why give that up? A pang of introspection hit him. It wouldn't be right to keep Aqua away from her Divine Realm for his own sake.

Not deliberately anyway. He cared for her, he felt sorry for her. Life was hard in a cruel kingdom like this when you're as dumb as she was. But Kazuma wasn't selfless; he tried that one time and died with everyone laughing at him. He looked at her snoozing softly. It was a lot more dignified and graceful than the disjointed heaps she used to position herself in when they slept together in the barns. He thought nostalgically about the nights he used to rub one out right next her with no idea she could totally hear him doing it the whole time.

I'm not keeping you here out of malice, he said to himself, I'm just procrastinating. "I'll let you return one day. But don't complain if I take as long as possible to get around to it".

Between Kazuma and the Demon King, however, was a man accepted to be the King's mightiest general, known as the Angel of Destruction. His squadron, the Archangels, were feared across the kingdom. They left a path of destruction so devastating their march literally carved a gaping chasm through the hills, the mountains and the cities. A demon-made crevasse so gnarled that to fly high enough to see the whole region all at once it was still visible. It was known as The Scar.

It was still growing.

The people unlucky enough to be caught in its path were all killed. Some were lucky enough to die painfully after only a short while, others were tortured or burned, flayed or torn limb from limb while their flesh and muscle tissue carved off with serrated or rusted blades, bones broken, skulls cracked in, eyeballs squeezed out, veins drawn out like a loose thread on a sweater, teeth snapped off and organs devoured while they still operated and blood boiled to soup while the victim could still see it. The lucky ones got to see it happen to them and die before they had to witness their loved ones or children suffer the same fate.

They operated under the direct of command of the Angel of Destruction, a demon known as Emmanuel Abaddon, who had the power to invoke creatures directly from the Hellish Realm.

"Heh, heh" Abaddon said, pointing at the creature he had summoned, "It looks just like a bunny rabbit"

He followed it around, clapping and smiling and trying to touch its soft fur. He removed his heavy, black gauntlets.

"This is the downside of your power, sir" said his right-hand lieutenant Azrael, "You summon your creatures at random so there's a chance you may invoke one that isn't threatening at all"

Abaddon folded his arms, "Well if I can pet it then it was worth it either way"

"True" Azrael continued, "But you can only conjure one being at a time. In order to summon one capable of defeating our foes you must first let the current demon die"

"I know" he said with a single tear, "But's is so precious! I don't want to kill it!"

He looked down at it remorsefully, "Oh, well. I have no choice"

He drew his sword.

The rest of his crew were used to dealing with shenanigans like these from time to time. Behind his helmet he was indistinguishable from a bishonen pretty boy. He had soft features with a delicate jawbone, silky, flowing hair and droopy eyes and a quiet, breathy voice.

Aside from Azrael, his trusted advisor from before he rose to his rank, he had Uriel, Gabriel, Raphael and Amitiel. Each was absurdly powerful in their own right, but Abaddon was considered the worst because his power could invoke fear. The Hellish Realm was the antithesis to Aqua's Divine Realm, functionally the same as being to summon gods themselves, except he summoned devils. The power of the creatures could defeat almost any foe and it often took entire armies to bring them down, being able to battle hundreds if not thousands at a time.

Its only weakness, was he had no control over what creature it summoned, and could only allow one to live at a time. This time around, it conjured up an adorable fluffball no bigger than Abaddon's fist that couldn't harm anyone and instead scurried around sniffing the grass and plants and blood-stained weapons on the ground in childlike curiosity.

"Anyone have any idea where we're headed next?" asked Amitiel.

"I've heard about this town" said Uriel, "Seemingly there's an adventurer's guild there that are so incompetent they are set to destroy the entire town themselves. They battled one of our generals already…"

"And?" asked Gabriel.

"They won"

Raphael chimed in now, "Shouldn't that concern us?"

"No, they nearly flooded the place and caused millions in damage in the process" Abaddon stopped to add, "They caused more destruction than he did. Honestly my plan was just to sit back and let them"

"But it'd be more fun, surely" said Amitiel, "To speed the process up a bit and do it ourselves?"

Abaddon glowered coldly at him, "We do not kill for fun, only necessity. These people, the enemies of the Crown, threaten the very fabric of our civilisation, and we must put a stop to this menace whenever we can" He began marching intently towards a now trembling Amitiel, "But they are people whose lives have meaning, we mustn't be senseless"

"Of course, general" Amitiel spoke from a bowed head, avoiding Abaddon's entrancing gaze, "I spoke out of turn, I apologise-"

"Where's the bunny?" asked Gabriel.

Abaddon's head spun around, finding it had scampered off. "Goddamnit" he muttered aloud.

"We have to find it" hissed Azrael. "I'll stay here with Abaddon, the rest of you find it as soon as you can!"

"Chomsuke!" Megumin called, having taken him out to a large open area where she could practice casting her explosion spells, "Come back here!"

He's gone off chasing something, she mumbled to herself discontentedly, he still wants to hunt even though he's supposed to be a house cat.

She found him in a bushel, not playing with its target like a predator toys with its prey but playing like it had found a new friend.

"What's this you've found, Chomsuke?" Megumin queried, "Some kind of bunny rabbit?"