I've managed to keep it sort of brief so far, if it gets too long I might not even have the attention span to redraft it. The next chapter has some fighting and I'll explore the abilities of the Archangels a bit better with some sappy romance stuff.
A simple tip to make your writing seem far deeper than it actually is, is to fill it with biblical references or homages to literature from the classical period, information about which is all available on Wikipedia. The Archangels are predictably named after biblical angels while Abaddon is an angel of destruction in the Hebrew bible and also as a hell-like abyss. The title Divine Tragedy is a reversal of Dante's Divine Comedy and also refers to Aqua as a goddess whose incompetence makes Kazuma's life a tragedy.
Chapter 2: The Devil's Curse on this Wretched World
"Master Kazuma" Darkness inquired.
"That's my name" he said flatly, noting quickly that she seemed to be leaning in uncomfortably close.
She spoke very quietly, obviously to conceal her words from the other girls in the room, "I heard some terrible noises coming from your room last night"
"It was nothing" he said, playing it cool. A bead of sweat ran down from his hairline to his brow.
"Was there an intruder you didn't tell me about? It sounded like a pretty intense struggle"
A beet-red Kazuma exclaimed in a whispering voice "It was nothing, please ignore it!" More trails of sweat drops running down his forehead accumulated.
Darkness was naïve but leaned away slightly and gave him a sceptical look, scanning for signs of deceit. She brought her hand up to her mouth in a thinking pose, "You seem quite defensive"
Kazuma sweated profusely. She went on, "I hope you were not engaging in any sinful or degenerate acts in there by yourself"
"Uuuuh"
"Or at least, I hope you weren't thinking about me while you pleasured yourself. I want you to keep disgusting thoughts of me out of your mind" she said, slowly becoming aroused at the idea of Kazuma objectifying her. "Just the thought of you imagining me in all sorts of lewd scenarios, where I would be helpless to resist your whims and you use my body to indulge your wretched desires like the dirty slut I am…"
She went on for quite a bit more and Aqua almost seemed like she might awake and hear. Kazuma eventually grabbed Darkness to get her to stop, "It wasn't you, I was thinking about Aqua!"
Darkness stopped and said nothing, silently glaring at him in genuine offense. How dare he deny her the pleasure of being lusted after sinfully?
"Is that what you were doing?" Megumin asked dryly, petting the bunny rabbit on her knee. She had seemingly heard Kazuma from across the room and had come over. "It was quite a racket, what were you doing to your dick?"
Kazuma gasped. "How did you hear that, your bedroom is on several rooms and one floor away from mine?!"
"That's why I was wondering" she gave in droll reply, "I thought you were wrestling a dragon or something. I suppose I wasn't entirely wrong"
Kazuma had his head in his hands, "It was just like in the stables Aqua and I used to sleep in, where I would think about her to help me come faster. Although to be fair Darkness was there too in my fantasies"
Darkness leered at him distastefully, "You're disgusting" she said. "I forgive you"
Aqua began to turn, waking up but seemingly hearing nothing. She let out a yawn. "You'd think you guys would have the decency not to make noise when a goddess is sleeping in the same room"
"I assure you" Darkness said, "Kazuma has not an ounce of decency in his body". She covered her mouth and turned away to hide her blush.
"We were discussing how to defeat the Demon King" Megumin chimed in, giving Kazuma an inconspicuous thumbs up as if to say, "don't worry, I got your back, man!"
For Kazuma this was unhelpful as he'd rather not remind Aqua about the perpetual B-plot of their entire existence here.
"I was wondering when we were getting around to that" she moaned, "I don't want to stay cooped up in this place forever"
It seems weird to suggest one could be cooped up in a mansion but the Divine Realm was an endless plane so perhaps it's all about perspective.
"How are we even going to do that?" Kazuma said defensively, "We're nowhere near strong enough to beat him yet. He would obliterate us"
"WE SHOLD GO NOW!" Darkness added upon hearing this, her mouth watering at the thought of the proverbial and literal beating that would await her.
"We have Darkness as our impenetrable shield" Aqua countered
"And I have my explosion magic!" Megumin proclaimed. "The most powerful magic in all the land!"
"And my godly magic" Aqua said like a royal decree, "Like my Goddess Blow"
"But you can't use it properly" Megumin fired back.
Aqua looked offended. "How awful for a goddess to get such little respect in this place" she complained, "I should be pampered and waited upon and spoiled rotten!"
"Okay" Kazuma said
"Eh?!" Aqua paused in surprise. She wasn't sure what to say next, Kazuma sat smiling in her direction. "Of course, yes, that's correct!" she said declaratively, "Thank you, Kazuma"
She frustratedly lifted her bottle of wine that was always on hand and began drinking straight from the bottle.
I don't want my life with her to end, Kazuma thought to himself, so all I can do is make her life here as good as possible so she won't keep nagging me to help her get back to the Divine Realm. The truth is, I love her, and I'd give her anything. I'm just not sure what I even have to offer her.
Kazuma isn't so bad after all, Aqua mused to herself, I know how hard it was for him to get us out of those stables and into this mansion. He had to stop and fix all this damage to the town that totally wasn't my fault. Of course, I could do it all by myself but I'm glad he at least helped me get here faster. My life here isn't even bad. In fact it's pretty easy and carefree. I've got booze I can drink so I'm pretty happy. But my goddess life is mostly pretty stress-free so I don't ideally want to stay here forever. I hate to admit it but he's right about the Demon King, we're in no position currently to stop him.
Maybe, she contemplated, my low intelligence stat is holding them back. Unfortunately I can't leave the quest, because my returning to the Divine Realm depends on it. I hate Kazuma because he hates me, because I'm stupid. At least I'm smart enough to know I'm not a useless goddess. He's the idiot for not being able to see that.
Aqua ascended from her reclining positon to fetch another bottle, carrying the now empty bottle with a sway like a chaotic pendulum. Her arm swung in a large arc and she wasn't paying attention to her grip and the bottle soon flew from her hand and smashed over the floor.
"You scared my rabbit!" Megumin panicked before quickly rushing and fetching it after it had ran away.
Aqua tried to hold her eyes open, already beginning to sober up due to her godly powers purifying the booze in her system back into water. Shards of glass had rocketed out in all directions like shrapnel. Darkness had a few embedded her arms, painfully sticking out like hedgehog spines. She was very happy about this and began trying to remove them as painfully as possible.
Kazuma had a piece stuck in her hand, with blood pouring down his palm and over his wrist and down his arm.
"Kazuma!" screamed Aqua, rushing over to him.
"It's actually not too bad" Kazuma said, simply taking the piece of glass out himself with no hassle.
Aqua grabbed his hand to inspect the wound, hurting him in the process. "Ow" he said.
"Stop being a baby" she quickly muttered, "Purification!"
She turned all the blood that was dripping down his arm and on his wrist into water. "Don't you want to heal the wound first?"
Aqua was looking pale, she began to shake. "Oh. Of course" she said with a delay as though distracted and not thinking clearly. She cast a healing spell and then reused her Purification to get rid of the remaining blood. She was shaking, she felt nauseous.
Kazuma sat her down, leaning her against the sofa. "I'm so sorry, Kazuma!" she said in an infantile wail, "I just hope you are okay!" she continued at an even higher volume through monsoon tears.
"Sh, sh, sh!" he interrupted in a desperate attempt to calm her down, "It's okay, don't worry about it!"
She went on. "Get and hold of yourself, woman!" he said, shaking her violently. Her eyes darted open and she seemed to snap out of it. She rapidly shook her head like a dog drying itself off and regained her composure, resetting her brain back to its default empty-head mode. She sniffed hard and sucked back up the stream of mucus that was now streaming out her nose and dried her eyes.
"I'll get you a new bottle of booze if that's what you're worried about" he said
"I wasn't crying over some wine!" she protested. It had not occurred to her that Kazuma couldn't comprehend the fact someone might care enough about him to be concerned about him. The fact she was seemingly crying over him put the scenario firmly into 'inconceivable' territory. Of course, it wasn't normal for Aqua to show this level of concern for anyone.
"I didn't realise you had such an intense fear of blood" Darkness observed.
Aqua averted her eyes bashfully, "I get anxious when I see blood, a pit forms in my stomach. I had a bad experience with blood in the past"
"How much does it cost?" Kazuma asked her. "And since you're crying will you apologise for spending all my money on booze?"
"Absolutely not"
"There it is" came the voice from the trees. "Uriel's tracking spell has led us to here. General Abaddon's creature will be somewhere in there" Amitiel spoke.
"Who wants to do the honours?" asked Amitiel, acting in his capacity as the stand-in leader.
Raphael raised a hand and opened a dimensional pocket before him, which led to his inventory. From inside he conjured a large, bulbous body of liquid metal like a floating lake. It shimmered under the sun, looking like a mirror broke free of its frame. The reflections of the house and his fellow Archangels were warped like their psyches in the contorted, silver mass undulating above them. It morphed in midair like a large, gelatinous slime monster and began to change shape, opening its gaping maw and closing back in on itself and merging together into what looked like a large arrowhead or the tip of a spear with no handle.
Before it could fully reform, Gabriel jumped in, "Me too!" she exclaimed and unleashed a powerful laser beam from the air around her hands and fired it into the closing mouth of the metal cloud. The gap at the front shaped like a hollowed out sphere caused all the beams to be reflected in a singular direction, hyper-focused into one spot pointing directly at the manor. A spread mass of reflected light concentrating on the outer wall of the mansion. "You stole my thunder!" Raphael moaned.
The wall to the lounge room the girls were situated in was disintegrated, converted to ash as though through transmutation and all that was left was a window to the area outside where a large and imposing group of armoured demons looked down upon them like ants beneath their feet. Small fires started burning the wooden planks and window frames that barely survived the vicious beam.
"Who are these people?" Megumin gasped, "They must be from the Demon King's army; but why are they here?"
"Where's Kazuma?" Aqua asked, at first seemingly out of concern, "The coward fled the scene already? This is why I hate him!"
Amitiel made the first move and slowly sauntered into the open plan room. "Apologies" he said sardonically, "I appear to have misplaced something, I was wondering if you girls could help me"
Megumin conjured magical orbs around her hand, appearing like a freeze frame of an explosion caught within an invisible bubble, they were perfect spheres of orange and red that glowed like fireflies. They were quite a bit angrier than fireflies as she unleashed them in short and controlled bursts like precision bombing run. Unfortunately she was not aiming to avoid any of the furniture and happily destroyed parts of the wall and floor in her endeavour to attack Amitiel.
Amitiel seemed to teleport away from the blasts. Megumin was careful to preserve her mana and only fired singular attacks for fear of letting off a large explosion within their living quarters, as tempting as the opportunity was. Amitiel was suddenly behind Megumin, and his hand glowed as he prepared to launch his killing blow to her back.
"I'll save you!" Aqua yelled in desperation, "TURN –"
Amitiel was now beside Aqua, who backed herself against the wall to avoid Amitiel teleporting behind her. What puzzled Aqua was that when Amitiel appeared to teleport, Aqua simply stopped talking. She hadn't voluntarily postponed her attack for any reason, her mouth was simply closed and her sentence ended there. Amitiel continued the attack meant for Megumin but hit Aqua in the stomach and forced her through the stone wall behind her and into a pile of rubble.
"God I wish that were me" Darkness said.
"Then so be it!" came the voice of Raphael, now targeting her.
Megumin picked up a dinner knife, silver and sharp, that was lying on the ground next to her. One of her previous explosions had knocked over to where she was standing, which she could surely claim as proof she planned this. Megumin used a charged explosion to launch the knife like gunpowder propels a bullet and aimed it at Amitiel who was planning another attack.
Amitiel was now standing directly in front of Megumin while the knife had pierced through the wall behind him. Did he dodge it? Did he turn intangible like a ghost and let it pass through him? No, if anything it looked like he teleported in front of it. No, Aqua thought, because from her perspective behind Amitiel the knife didn't continue its trajectory, it simply vanished and appeared in the wall.
"Megumin!" Aqua shouted over, "He doesn't teleport, he somehow stops time and moves while time is stopped!"
Raphael split his liquid metal orb into two smaller ones, and they began to morph into fists, opening and closing and curling their fingers. "If you want to fight that badly then you'll love this!"
One of the metal hands gently flicked Darkness and sent her careening across the room and into the solid stone wall.
"This is what I'm talking about!" she exclaimed. Raphael was a little puzzled.
"Fine, I shall happily indulge!" The fists tightened and flew towards Darkness, pummelling her in a volley of punches stronger and faster than any organic being can perform with their bare hands. Blows raining down on her like a meteor shower the rubble it kicked up was tremendous. An almighty dust cloud of devastation accumulating in the corner and rising out of a deeper and widening crater where Darkness' unbelievably battered body was being driven down further into the ground beneath the mansion.
Raphael stopped when he heard a loud and joyous chuckle emanating from the ditch. "Are you actually serious?" he quizzed aloud.
"Excellent!" Darkness screamed, "This is unlike anything I've ever experienced on one of my quests. The thrill is unreal!"
"I'm slowly getting fed up of your crap" Raphael finally growled. The fists began to form deadly spikes along the knuckles, while Raphael unleashed a torrent of electricity from his body into the fists which acted as lightning rods. "I have had it up to here with you! Die already!"
Several minutes later Raphael started to wonder if Darkness could absorb kinetic energy to convert it into some kind of massive attack and stopped his honestly futile onslaught.
Another archangel, Uriel had been hiding off outside away from the battle. Sensing something was wrong he came down to assist. "I'll take care of this" he said.
Raphael lifted Darkness within the grasp of one of the fists and tossed her up in the air where she landed on the ground within a large circle. The circle was filled with marking all along the perimeter. It was a rune that Uriel had drawn.
"I'll cast my tracking spell again using the energy of this human as payment instead of my own" he explained. The rune glowed and Darkness screamed, this time in discomfort.
"What is this cursed ability?" she howled, "Like pain but with none of the good parts!"
Dark energy like black beams of light rose up from within the rune around her, and she glowed a muddy green. The location of the bunny rabbit became clearer as Darkness grew weak.
"Even those who cannot be hurt or damaged are unable to escape my power. I cannot take all the energy she has but I can leave her with too little to do anything"
What he obviously didn't realise is that Darkness cannot attack anyway, at least not well enough to hit anything large and standing still directly in front of her. They obviously wasted every second of their time trying to weaken someone who posed no real threat.
Darkness wondered how Uriel was able to draw that rune without her seeing him. Perhaps he had casted a spell to make himself invisible.
Aqua stood up from the rubble defiantly and let out a calm and controlled breath, channelling her divine mana into one of her most powerful spells.
"Sacred Barrier!" she cried, creating a blue aura or energy around Amitiel, who was shockingly caught off guard by the whole thing.
"This barrier will instantly kill anything that passes through it. It blocks outgoing magic like your own, meaning you can't teleport out and you can't stop time and escape the barrier. You have nowhere to run, once Megumin's explosion goes off its curtains for you!"
"Rise Crimson Devils and lend me your power" Megumin began as a kaleidoscope of scarlet and vermillion emanated from her staff, "may I conjure flames and the very molecules of destruction itself and rip the elements of my enemies' beings from this realm entirely, leaving only memories. I call upon the angels of creation to undo the existence of these demons and let chaos cometh again!"
Dark, black flames rose in a cylindrical torrent from the rune around Megumin, leaving Amitiel trapped in a bubble of impending atomic deconstruction.
"Cataclysmic forces, savage as black holes, FLY FREE! EXPLOOOO…"
Amitiel was eerily calm, thought Aqua, as Megumin stretched that syllable out for at least another 30 seconds. The rest of the Archangels did suspiciously little to stop her, perhaps believing they were safe. Aqua wasn't sure if her barrier could even contain Megumin's blast, it was likely the entire mansion if not the surrounding region and all inhabitant human, magical, divine or demonic would be obliterated.
"…OOOOSION!"
The room was obliterated, the ground a chasm with not even a trace of the manor's foundations left. The temperature dropped as the heat had been sucked in and the oxygen for almost a mile around was sucked away. Aqua, Megumin, Darkness, Uriel, Raphael, Gabriel and Amitiel – were all completely unharmed. There was no explosion. The area all around – simply vanished. Megumin was completely drained of mana, and collapsed onto her face in exhaustion.
"Megumin!" screamed Darkness and Aqua together. Amitiel gave a mischievous smile.
"Good to see you back again, Kazuma" spoke Wiz's soft voice, cheerfully welcoming him to the store.
"Do you have any expensive booze?" Kazuma asked, "Like, really good stuff"
"I might have just what you're looking for in the back" she said with a declarative finger and a wink, "In the meantime why don't you have a look around and peruse my wares?"
"If I didn't already know what that meant I would assume you just said something dirty" Kazuma said, turning to browse the selection.
"Oh my" said a somewhat concerned Wiz before retreating into the back room awkwardly.
"Fancy meeting you here!" came a voice. Before Kazuma had even turned around he knew it must have come from someone he really didn't want to talk to. He was right.
"What's your name again?" he asked, already looking like his patience had run out on a guy who had spent no longer than 5 seconds in his presence.
"Kyouya Mitsurugi" he replied with a smile and wave.
Kazuma couldn't remember who he was at all. He was an Earth resident like Kazuma who had also died and was reincarnated by Aqua into the same world to defeat the Demon King. He previously bumped into Kazuma and, assuming Kazuma wasn't good enough for Aqua, tried to get her to join his guild. Kazuma happened to agree he wasn't good enough for her, but he took umbrage at the notion that Mitsurugi was good enough. In Kazuma's mind, no mortal was. And to think at that time he hadn't even realised he was in love with her yet.
Wiz brought Kazuma his booze, which Kazuma thought was a perfect excuse to leave rather than speak to this guy, and perhaps Wiz would be distracted enough to forget she hadn't charged him for the bottle.
"Buying booze for Aqua?" Mitsurugi mused, correctly guessing Kazuma hadn't bought it for himself, "I wasn't certain you even cared enough for her"
"I don't" he lied, to get a rise out of Mitsurugi.
"Maybe you don't care if Aqua is killed by the Demon King due to your subpar skills" Mitsurugi mocked, "But I'll warn you anyway in case you do want to keep her safe. I've heard the Demon King's toughest general is in the area. Emmanuel Abaddon"
Kazuma yawned as he was walking out the store.
"You're ignoring me!" he called after Kazuma.
As Kazuma opened the front door he noticed faint rays of purple laminating the buildings outside like a sunset. But the sun wasn't setting, and if it did, it would set directly behind the shop, not from the direction of the lights. There were some traces of what must have been loud noises in the far distance; crackling of lightning, searing of lasers, clanging of metal and crumbling of bricks and stone.
Kazuma's head darted over to the mansion, certain that if any trouble happened within the town that his loveable idiots would he involved if not responsible. He was looking in the direction where the mansion should be, but it wasn't there. Having noticed this too, Mitsurugi ran after Kazuma to help, which the latter didn't exactly object to. Whatever threat it was, Mitsurugi might be valuable to keep around.
"Ugh" Megumin groaned with a face full of rubble and dirt. "I don't have the energy to move, let alone cast another explosion"
"But you didn't cast explosion!" Aqua moaned
"Then where did our house go?" Darkness wondered, also drained of energy.
Looking around, it was hard to believe what had happened. Everything they owned was gone. Just an expansive abyss where their hard-earned possessions once resided.
"Kazuma's going to be so mad at me" Aqua said, "In my defense it was Megumin's fault this time"
"Although it was also my idea" Aqua continued, "But let's pretend that isn't true"
"Where's that rabbit?" asked Uriel, "Did we kill it?"
"No, the rabbit will surely still be alive" Amitiel spoke, understanding precisely what he had done. "But there should be nothing blocking our way now"
Sure enough, the little hopping creature, although spooked by Megumin charging up her non-existent blast, had not managed to scurry very far.
"There it is" said Raphael, forming his floating liquid mercury into a harpoon. He licked his lips while he spoke, "I'm going to skewer this little pest"
A piercing red beam carved through the vacuum around them and lanced straight through Raphael in a manner not coincidentally like what he planned on doing to the rabbit.
"A Phoenix Beam!" spat Gabriel, "It's an instant kill against anyone not wearing Trinity Armour, which Raphael thankfully always is"
Raphael groaned, he was certainly too weak to move, and had been caught off guard. "It must be someone else" he growled, "If one of these harlots had done it they would have been smart enough to go after Amitiel"
"What did you call me?!" asked an incensed Darkness slumped on the ground not too far from Raphael. She went on with an excited grin, "Say it again so I can hear it more clearly!"
"It was me!" said Kyouya Mitsurugi, with Kazuma trailing behind him. His hand was still glowing hot with steam rising from it.
"Kazuma!" Aqua screamed, "Where were you? You left us here all alone and I was starting to get worried, and we were all nearly killed, and I skinned my knee being thrown through solid stone, and Megumin's passed out again, and Darkness was actually hurt and the mansion is gone…" she went on, blubbering inelegantly.
"I was getting some booze from Wiz's store to replace the bottle you broke if you must know!" he responded
"Oh" she said, instantly falling silent, "Fair enough. Uh…thanks"
"Impossible" said Gabriel, "The Phoenix Beam takes 10 seconds to charge and has an extremely obvious tell. When it charges it projects a smaller, harmless beam that traces the path the Phoenix Beam will take, giving any target plenty of time to see when they are in the line of fire and escape"
"Ha!" Kyouya responded smugly, "So did I charge a beam for ten seconds without anyone noticing? I'm sure you can figure it out yourself!"
Gabriel smiled, "I think I already know!"
Kyouya waved his left hand to cast a spell and appeared next to Gabriel, swinging his sword. "My Wyvern Buster is also a one-hit-kill, of course I fully expect you to be wearing Trinity Armour, but I have no delay, so I can just use it again"
Gabriel still had some energy left, but wouldn't be able to cast any offensive spells that required mana. And given Kyouya's armour, no spell would even be able to hurt him if it didn't cost some substantial amount of mana, so she was at a loss. She used the little energy left to make her retreat while Raphael shielded himself behind Uriel.
"Without Gabriel's spells" Uriel contemplated, "I won't be able to safely draw any runes around them. I can set runes all around myself as traps to instantly drain anyone who tries to approach, but I can't advance"
"This guy here" Gabriel revealed, "Uses Time-Stop Magic. He can stop time for up to 5 seconds where he is the only one who can move. However, he can use these 5 seconds to charge up his Phoenix Beam and aim. So nobody saw the line of fire because he unleashed it instantly after resuming time again"
"Yes!" he said proudly, "I took the most impractical ability ever, the easiest-to-dodge attack in the world, and made it into an unavoidable insta-kill!"
"If you launch your attack soon enough after time resumes, even if I anticipate it, I won't have enough time to escape. But you can't hit what you can't see"
Gabriel bent the photons around her body to become completely invisible. She couldn't concentrate any of them into lasers with her low energy, but she was at least somewhat safe.
"Clever" said Kyouya, "And I assume you know that when I use Time-Stop I must wait an equal amount of time that I stopped time for until I can use it again. What you may not have thought of, is that I have honed by senses of sight, smell and even taste to detect you even when I can't see you!"
"You can taste me?" she asked with great concern.
Aqua suddenly found herself able to move, that sly dog, she thought, Kazuma had secretly granted her some energy. Did he trust her to use it wisely? No, but Megumin would require more energy than Kazuma could spare in order to cast another Explosion. But Kazuma had limited faith that she could do some good with it. Aqua proceeded to immediately prove him wrong by charging straight at Amitiel.
"Goddamnit" Kazuma muttered, angry at himself for expecting any different.
Aqua unleashed a flurry of divinely enhanced blows at Amitiel, specifically honed to defeat anything that possessed Demonic Energy. Every one of her attacks was aimed exactly where Amitiel was, with his feet stuck in a sludge of hardened lava formed from Megumin's explosion that had cooled down. Amitiel couldn't go anywhere. He would quickly break free but Aqua could kill him before that happened.
Every one of her attacks seemed to pass straight through him.
"What the actual hell?" she screeched.
"Odd" Kazuma puzzled, "It looks like her attacks pass right through him but, while it's hard to tell because they're so fast, I can't actually see a single one touch him. If he was a ghost wouldn't her fist become imbedded in him, like if submerged in water? It gets close to connecting, and then suddenly her fist is on the other side of him, like it never touched him at all. Maybe she didn't completely waste my help after all, I might be able to figure out what this power is"
Kyouya decided Gabriel could wait, Aqua had to be saved and Amitiel pacified. He took his turn, pulling Aqua out of the path of Amitiel's counterattack. Amitiel had now freed himself from the molten rock he was trapped in and could move freely. Kyouya's own attacks suffered the same fate as Aqua's futile barrage. At least this loser served as distraction fodder while Kazuma dragged Darkness and Megumin out of the crater to safety.
"If you use Time-Stop to dodge my attacks" Kyouya said, "Then I can simply use it to dodge your counterattacks until one of us is caught off guard"
"You think I use Time-Stop like you do?" Amitiel laughed softly, "How cute. Let me show you the gulf in our abilities"
Amitiel stood perfectly still, baiting Kyouya to strike her. He removed the chestplate of his Trinity Armour, so that only one hit would be required to kill him. "So be it" he said, and his blade glowed blue. The colour was not aqua blue but he liked to refer to it as such in homage to the goddess. "Time-Stop!" he said, preparing to unleash his instant kill.
"Huh?" he said, the Time-Stop never happened. He looked at his timepiece, five seconds had indeed passed, but nothing happened. Did he not cast it correctly? No, he still had to wait 5 seconds to use it again. He had indeed paused time, but he experienced a second of it.
"It's over" Amitiel said, preparing to end this quickly.
"Amitiel, help!" shouted Gabriel. Kazuma had managed to transfer some of the energy Darkness absorbed and transfer it into Megumin, combined with some of his own. Megumin didn't know where Gabriel was, since she was invisible, nobody could see her. But she was surely somewhere in the radius of an Explosion Spell, so that was all Megumin needed to know to land a hit.
"If she casts" said Uriel, "The rabbit might be killed in the blast, and we'll have completed our mission"
"I don't want to lose Gabriel" he replied
"Abaddon is more powerful! We need him back in the fight if we hope to defeat this group!"
"But Abaddon isn't gone forever, he can wait. If Gabriel is killed in the blast we're down one member permanently. We can come back and finish our mission later and then we'll have every member alive and able to fight!"
Amitiel overruled Uriel's judgement and grabbed the unconscious Gabriel from the floor. Uriel cast a portal spell to instantly teleport them all back to Abaddon's lair to regroup.
"We'll be back!" he warned them before his face disappeared behind the closing portal. Everything was quiet, the symphony of destruction was over.
Kazuma had frozen, "did he say Abaddon?"
Cold sweat formed on his forehead, "I said I wasn't ready yet, that's why we couldn't fight the Demon King!" His hands began to shake, "But now his strongest general's here already?"
I can't lose Aqua this soon.
"He's right" said Kyouya, as the bunch of misfits began to regroup, "Aqua, I have no right to force you to do anything, but for your own safety you have to leave this guild and join mine. You have no hope of survival fighting alongside this boy"
Aqua was cradling the drained Darkness in her arms, while Megumin had begun to pick herself back up. She glanced around as the dust settled around them, she was struggling to think, and she was exhausted from the battle. He extended his hand out to her, hoping for her to take it while he ran away with her to his castle or to a tropical beach far away from anything that could trouble her.
"It is a tempting offer…" she said, intending to turn him down. There was nothing wrong with him, she supposed, but she thought of him as little more than an annoyance. She hated Kazuma, she thought, but at least she had strong opinions about him.
"He's not entirely wrong" said Kazuma, his fist clenched, "You have a much better chance of survival with him than me"
"Kazuma, don't say that" Megumin interjected, "We all lost here today" he coughed, forcing out the breath necessary to finish her sentence, "Whatever his name is here almost got creamed"
Kyouya accepted nobody bothered to remember his name. He countered, "But it's you they all seem to be after, Kazuma, not me. Aqua is safer with me. With me she could live in a castle, you don't even have a house anymore. Would a goddess want to go back to the stables?"
"…and since we all know Aqua is useless she's better of being safe and away from the fight" Kazuma said as though to continue what Kyouya was going to say. "You know" he went on, picking himself up, "I'm not a selfless guy, in fact I've hardly done anything for anyone in my entire life. It would be a bit out of character to let her go now, wouldn't it?"
"What?" Kyouya asked, "This isn't how this speech is supposed to go"
"I'm going to be a little selfish once again." He sat down next to Aqua, and took her hand, causing her to drop Darkness. She was so focused on Kazuma she didn't even pay attention.
"That's it" said a smiling Darkness now lying face down in the ground, "Toss me aside like a dirty piece of garbage"
Aqua was transfixed on his face, but he was staring off into the middle distance. "Before I came here" he said
"…you were at Wiz's shop" Aqua said, trying to finish his sentence.
"No, not here specifically; I meant before I came to this world. When I was alive in the human world"
"Oh" Aqua, said, "I misunderstood"
"It's ok, don't worry about it. Anyway…" he went on, "I didn't have many friends. In fact, depending on how strict a definition of 'friend' you used, you could say I had none. People didn't like me that much. I hated school, I was scared of it. I just sat by myself for hours, not talking to anyone. Time moved so slowly, it was excruciating. I could hear them laughing at me behind my back, at least after a while whenever I heard a chuckle I just assumed it was at my expense. Some of the bigger kids beat me up. So people started staying away from me so they wouldn't get caught in the crossfire. They stuffed me in a locker one time and I swear blind the teachers heard me and ignored me. They said I never paid attention in class, if I made any of my trademark snide remarks to the wrong people I would get what was coming to me. They enjoyed my torment, like I was finally getting comeuppance for something I didn't do"
Aqua snickered at the thought of him in a locker before noticing his aghast look, "I'm sorry" she said, "It's not funny"
"I stayed in my room all the time and just played videogames, the characters felt more like friends than any actual living human. There was a beautiful, popular girl at my school called Miyuki. I decided one day I would swing for the fences and maybe escape my isolation chamber. She agreed to meet me for a date…"
The others nearby began to smile, even Kyouya seemed happy for him. "But" Kazuma continued, "Later that same day she was seen in the cafeteria kissing another guy, some 6 foot 5 hunk. She said they had just started dating that day. Her 'yes' was just a lie. I was so ashamed, I stopped going to school entirely. I wasn't very happy. I left the house one time, and saw a little girl about to die. I thought, if I did anything with my life, giving it to save one person might make my horrible existence worth it, to give my life to someone more worthy. I couldn't believe it when I found out I threw it all away for no reason"
His knees were now up at his chest, but he remained surprisingly stoic; no point crying about it once it was over then? There was nothing left he could except laugh about it. He was laughing about it now, how he hoped he got run over and how – well, at least he died – at least his death gave some people a good giggle.
"I thought that was it over, my chance at any semblance of peace and happiness, gone for good. But then, after all that" he said, "I saw the most beautiful girl I thought could possibly exist"
"Who's that?" Aqua asked.
Kazuma laughed, "I hope you never change" he said, "I've had more fun with you and Megumin and Darkness than any time in my life. You treated me better than anyone had, which is kind of sad when you think about it, but it's true. Coming here was the best thing that ever happened to me, I don't know what I would have done otherwise. Bringing you here with me was the second best thing that ever happened"
"I'm glad you're happy" she pouted
"I am" Kazuma said, smiling uncharacteristically, with wide-eyed joy, "And I'll be damned if I give it up without a fight"
"Kazuma?"
"Aqua" he said finally, "I love you"
"Whaaaa?"
"I'm in love with you" he said, grabbing her shoulder, she had now gone quiet and was listening to him intently, she could feel herself breathing, her chest heaving underneath her breasts, she was suddenly very conscious of how beautiful she was, she could feel her silk-like hair flowing gently against her back, how soft her skin must feel to his touch as she held his hands in her's. To think she had actually charmed this immature NEET after it seemed like he'd never pay attention to her.
"If you're going to leave my life, then I at least want to tell you that before you go. It's up to you" he said, quivering a little, "But I don't want to lose you. If you want me to pamper you and spoil you rotten then I will, if you want to live in a castle then I'll build you one, I'll do quests until I can buy all the booze you can drink" Kazuma's face turned a little sad, as if begging her to stay, but not wanting to appear undignified, "Please. Do whatever will make you happy; unless being with him will make you happy, in which case please pick me"
Kyouya was even crying a little, "Well, if you really think he can make you happy, then I won't stop you. But do you really think he build you a castle?"
"The stables weren't that bad, actually" she said.
Kazuma's eyebrows raised, his face started to morph to a smile, a hesitant little smirk like he didn't want to get ahead of himself.
"If we have to go back to the stables then maybe things aren't that bad after all. Do you want to go see if they'll let us in?"
Kazuma pulled himself towards her and kissed her, a grip around her waist and shoulders like she was the mast of a ship being tossed around in a storm, being held by someone who didn't want to let her go in case he never got to hold her again. Aqua closed her eyes as well, and gently relaxed into it, going limp in his arms. She didn't know such a cold and aloof boy could have such a warm heart in his chest.
Everything about her; her softness, her warmth, her taste, the feeling of her tongue against his, Kazuma wasn't thinking of any of it strangely enough, he wasn't paying attention to anything except that she was there; he cared for nothing except that he knew she would never leave. He tried to pry his lips from her's but he couldn't bring himself to, just as they seemed to separate he came right back in, he wanted to never stop kissing her. To him it was such a beautiful moment.
"But" Aqua said, finally pulling herself away, "How can you care so much for me? I'm an idiot"
"But surely even idiots deserve love"
"So you're just not going to tell me I'm wrong to say that?" she asked in an annoyed contralto.
"It's not your fault that you're stupid, so why shouldn't you be loved just because your body is all you have going for you? I want to love you for all your positive attributes, not just the 'right ones'"
Aqua blushed a blood red. "I could say the same about you, you know" she said, "You're cute but you're a total dick"
"I know"
"Why don't we ask Kyouya if we can all sleep in his castle since we don't have a house anymore?" Megumin asked
All faces turned towards him. When he wanted Aqua sleeping under his roof he didn't exactly plan on her new boyfriend Kazu-Scum sleeping in there with her, let alone Explosion-Fetishist and Pain-Fetishist. But in the interest of being a good person, he reluctantly agreed. At least until they got a new place.
