A New Game for this Unproductive Party!

When you are the only guy in an adventuring party all living together under the same roof, there are few places you can rely on to get some quality alone time. Usually, your bedroom ought to provide that sort of a safe space, but to do what I'm doing right now, I chose to occupy the one place that is truly a haven:

The bathroom.

It's a place no girl would enter if she knew a boy was using it. That's just common sense.

It's just common sense.

From my seat on the porcelain throne, I heard the front door at the entrance to our mansion slam open.

"KA! -ZU! -MA! -SAAAAAANNNN!" A loud voice called, clearly distressed and likely crying. "I'm sorry, Kazuma-san! Sniff! I spent all my allowance for this month already and now I can't pay back the money I owe the guild! I'm sorry, Kazuma-san! Please help me!"

I inwardly groaned and activated my lurk skill, hoping she'd give up on finding me and leave.

"Oh, welcome home, Aqua, is everything all right? If you are looking for Kazuma, I think he is in the bathroom at the moment. Here, I'll listen to your troubles while we wait for him to finish up."

Crap, sounds like a certain loose-lipped crusader had to go and open her noble mouth. I'll have to think of a way to punish her later.

"―The bathroom?"

Footsteps.

"A-Aqua? Wait, where are you going?"

Within moments, the rapping sound of knuckles was pounding at the bathroom door. "Kazuma! Please lend me a little more money! I have to pay them 20,000 Eris by tomorrow for breaking the table I was doing party tricks on! I'll pay you back, I swear!"

"Go away!" I shouted. "You reap what you sow, so go find some other way to earn the money!"

"Nooo! I can't go back to working those part-time jobs! What would my believers think of me if they saw me selling tomatoes again?" The pounding continued.

"Please! Kazuma!"

"Aqua, please calm down a little, before you break the door! Show a little decency!"

"Can't you see I'm a little busy at the moment?" I added after Darkness attempted to halt the barrage.

A girl would never enter the bathroom if she knew a boy was using it. Even if she happened to hear some weird noises coming from it, she wouldn't dream of it.

It's just common sense.

"Sacred Dispell!" I heard the voice on the other side of the door utter.

BAM!

The lock magically unlatched itself via the spell, and the door flew open.

"Kazuma! I promise I'll be good next time! Just give me the money and I'll―!"

With my hands preoccupied with something close to my knees and my trousers loosely draped around my ankles, my eyes locked with hers. A second later, the blonde-haired aristocrat peeked her head around the doorframe, and instantly, her ears flushed red before they squeamishly ducked back out of sight.

Aqua's eyes turned to the hard thing I had in my hands, then flicked back to my face. "Pervert! Pedo-NEET! Are you trying to bring God's wrath down on you, you shitty-NEET!?"

"Shut-up!" I shouted back. "What kind of an idiotic woman barges in on a man who's trying to enjoy some alone-time in peace? So I had to take a shit! How does that make me a pervert or a pedo-NEET?"

"Because you are! You're a stinky, shitty, perverted NEET for hiding that from me!" The girl lunged and grabbed the thing out of my hands. "How'd you bring a Gameboy over to this world? I was the one thing heaven allowed you to bring over, wasn't I? Why have you been hiding this from me?! I wanna play it, too!"

The treasure I found in the Crimson Demon village while defeating one of the Devil King's generals was pulled from my grasp. This was exactly why I was playing it in the bathroom, since I thought it would be the one place I could play games without disturbance.

Not feeling inclined to fight her for it in this vulnerable state, I merely screamed, "Fine, you can play it for a while! I've already finished the game three times anyways! Just close the goddamn door!"

Unfortunately, this goddess of nasty toilet water truly has no common sense whatsoever.

By the time I came down to the living room, Aqua was sitting cross-legged on the couch with an absorbed look as she played the Gameboy. Darkness was seemingly quite curious about it as well, watching Aqua play from over her shoulder.

"What is that, Aqua?" Apparently, Megumin had been roused from her post-Explosion nap by all the noise. She casually stifled a yawn as she plodded down the stairs, clearly still too low on mana to walk normally.

"It's a Gameboy," Aqua succinctly stated without looking up. "It's an object from Kazuma's hometown that you can play games on."

Megumin tilted her head and hummed before coming to take a closer look. "An object from Kazuma's hometown? That's strange, it looks like a powerful magical item, but I don't sense any mana coming from it."

I took the initiative to lazily stake out the space under the kotatsu. "I don't know about any sort of 'powerful magical item,'" I said as I got into a lounging position. "It's just a toy really. Every kid has one of these while growing up, unless they had a really rough childhood."

"Really?" Megumin sounded fascinated. "What is the game?"

"Pokemon!"

"Poke―"

"―Mon?"

Darkness and Megumin repeated Aqua's syllables to learn the new word before leaning in closer to watch the screen.

"Is that a person?" Megumin asked.

"That's me!" Aqua cheerfully explained. "The point of the game is to catch all the Pokemon and become a Pokemon Master!"

"Is that a Pokemon?" Darkness asked.

"That's a Squirtle! I think I'll name him Gamera, because he's gonna level up and become super strong!"

I chuckled and tossed Aqua a sneer. "You chose Squirtle, huh? I could have seen that one coming a mile away!"

"So what if I picked Squirtle?! He's the cutest, and he's a water type! He's the perfect choice for a Goddess of Water like me!"

I just shook my head in response.

For some reason, that riled Aqua up. "Well, what starter do you take, Kazuma? I bet you take Charmander every time because you want everyone to think you're cool! Ksu Ksu!" She laughed at herself for some reason, and it kind of pissed me off.

"For your information, I have already beaten the game using all three starters!" Although, if Pokemon were real, and I had to pick a starter, I might take…

"What are these 'starter' Pokemon?" Darkness asked. I decided to enjoy my kotatsu and let Aqua explain the important first choice every rookie Pokemon trainer has to make.

"Hm," Megumin put a finger to her chin. "I think I would pick Charmander. Because once he evolves into a Charizard, I would have my own personal dragon! I could become like the Dragon Riders from that nearby country! That would be so cool!"

"That sounds very like you, Megumin," Darkness smiled. "I believe I would want a Pokemon who has a strong defense, like me!"

Aqua thought for a second, then said, "Oh, then maybe, you could train a Machoke!"

I snickered. I don't know what about having a strong defense makes her think of Machoke, but the idea of a muscle-headed Pokemon like that seemed to suit Darkness well, so I didn't say anything.

While the three girls were all enthralled by the game, I gently dozed off to sleep. The last thing I remembered hearing was Aqua complaining about losing her first battle to Blue's Bulbasaur.

Early the next morning, shortly after I had decided to go to bed after using my night owl powers working on some of my ideas for Japanese products I could sell to Vanir―

"Kazuma!"

My door flew open of its own accord, and Aqua came bawling into my room.

"Kazuma, I can't beat this gym! I spent all night fighting the gym leader over and over again!"

I rolled onto my other side to turn my back to her annoying intrusion. "Then go raise your level up some more and try again."

"Can't you just beat the gym for me?" She held out the Gameboy in her hands.

I signed and glanced at the screen. "Well what did you expect would happen if you challenged Lieutenant Surge with a team full of nothing but Water Types? No wonder you keep losing! Just go catch a Ground Type and use it to beat him. I'm going to bed."

"Wait! Kazuma! Don't you know who I am? Even though your intelligence stat is supposed to be kinda high, you seem to forget this a lot, for I am indeed the Goddess of Water! Yes, that Aqua, the Goddess of Water! I have to use Water Pokemon!"

I attempted to pull the covers up over my head, but she tore them off and shook my shoulders vigorously.

"Get off me! Fine, if I beat the gym for you, will you let me go to bed?"

She nodded and finally released me. I grabbed the Gameboy and hit a sequence of buttons. It only took a minute before I handed the game back.

"There. You beat him."

She looked down at the screen in wonder. "Whoa, how'd you do that so fast?"

"I used an X Special. Your team was already overleveled, they just needed a little extra buffing to survive all those Electric attacks."

Aqua tilted her head at the explanation. "I don't really get it, but thanks! You can go back to sleep now."

I shooed her away with my hand before fluffing my pillow and settling back into my mattress.

And so her incessant pleas for help in the game began.

"Hey Kazuma, I'm stuck! The guard won't let me pass without a bike!"

"Kazuma-san! I'm stuck again! This time, the guard won't let me get into Saffron City!"

"Kazuma, I can't find a high priest Pokemon to use Turn Undead on the ghost of Cubone's mother! Eh? What do you mean there is no such thing as a high priest Pokemon or the move Turn Undead?"

"Hey, Kazuma, Kazuma! Can you teach me how to evolve the Magikarp I bought so it'll turn into a Gyarados? Ow! What did you hit me for? Of course I bought the Magikarp! It's not a ripoff! It'll turn super strong once it evolves!"

"Kazuma! Now I can't beat the Grass gym leader! Can you beat her for me again?"

I finally got sick of it and asked Megumin to go out for our daily explosion walk early.

"Aqua sure is into that game," Megumin said as I carried her back down the path to Axel.

"The good thing is that it keeps her quiet a little more than usual," I responded. "If only she would just stop bugging me, I would let her keep it."

"That might be a problem," sighed the arch-wizard. "If she keeps acting like this, it'll be even harder to get the two of you to leave the house and come take on quests."

"I already told you, between defeating another one of the Devil King's generals and my deal to sell more inventions to Vanir, I'm set for life. No matter what you say or do, I'm not taking any more dangerous quests and sending myself on a one-way trip to Eris-sama ever again."

Megumin puffed her cheeks out in displeasure. "I really don't understand this guy," I think I heard her mutter.

"What's even so great about that game, anyways?"

"Well," I answered, "for one thing, you can use Explosion in it."

Suddenly there was a hand squeezing my shoulder like a vice. "Tell me more," she whispered into my ear.

A few days later, Aqua had finally beaten the game, and Megumin asked if she could have a turn. Surprisingly, she didn't come to me asking for help over and over like Aqua. Or maybe I shouldn't be surprised, considering that Crimson Demons are supposed to have above-average intelligence. So when Megumin finally did come to me with a question, I was a little bit intrigued.

"Kazuma," she searchingly asked, "why doesn't Explosion work on Ghosts in this game?"

"Because it's a Normal move, so of course it doesn't affect Ghosts." I raised an eyebrow, even she should know that.

"But that doesn't make any sense! Explosion is such a powerful move, it even kills most devils and undead monsters! So shouldn't it affect Ghosts too?"

"Huh?"

"Huh?"

I suddenly got the sneaking suspicion that what was common sense in each of our respective worlds was once again conflicting.

"Well, if that is the case, then I suppose I'm finished with my turn on the game," Megumin sadly concluded after I explained to her multiple times that those were just the rules of the game. "Darkness, would you like to try?"

"Well," the crusader mumbled, "maybe just a little. Some of the monsters in that game looked kind of interesting, so I'd at least like to learn more about them."

"Wait," I said as she was just about to hand the console over, "do you mind if I take a quick look? I just want to confirm something."

Yep, just as I thought.

Megumin's team consisted of only Pokemon who could learn Explosion. Graveler, Weezing, Electrode, Exeggutor.

All of them only had one move. The Charizard and a Tentacool in the back were just her HM slaves. They all had really weird nicknames, too.

You guessed it. She was stopped cold when she reached Agatha of the Elite Four.

I saw Darkness playing the game quite a bit in the days that followed. She didn't seem to make much progress though. When I occasionally watched how she was doing, most of the time she was using nothing but stat-changing moves and status moves, so her playthrough went pretty slow.

"This one looks like its attacks would be really powerful," I sometimes would hear her mutter.

"You know, Darkness," I mentioned offhandedly one time, "it's too bad we don't have the sequel. It has a newer Pokemon that you would love: Shuckle. It has the highest defense stats in the game. But it comes with the worst attack stat, it basically does only 1 HP of damage per turn. It's just like you!"

The next thing I knew, I was being strangled by her freakishly strong hands, clear signs of tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

END

"Thanks for reading zapdosmaster145's Konosuba fanfiction! You know, I wrote a couple of fanfics back in middle school, come to think of it."

"Hah? I didn't know you went to middle school, Kazuma! I assumed you had already begun ditching class when you were in your elementary grades."

"I did go to middle school, I didn't start skipping until my first year in high school! And I did have friends, I'll have you know! Lots of them!"

"But Aqua didn't say anything about you not having friends."

"Shut up!"

"Ow! Kaw-suma, pwease don't puww my cheeks like that! I'm sowwy, I apowogize, okay? Eh? Oh, you didn't have to stop right away… You could have pulled them for a little longer…"

"Hu hu hu! My name is Megumin! And if any of you who are reading choose not to review, follow, and favorite this story, I'll unleash Explosion magic upon you in recompense ten-thousandfold!"

"Save your explosions for the actual monsters, you loose screw!"

"Just who are you saying is a loose screw?"

"Hey Kazuma, rate my team please!"

"Oh, Megumin? What's this, the team you are challenging battle tower with? Oh, let's see, Azelf, Metagross, and Heatran. Well it's not bad. Azelf is a really good suicide lead, I see you already gave it a Focus Sash. Good. And if you back it up with Metagross you will have fairly good type coverage. Going with the Choice Band too, I see.

"Heatran makes your team a little weak to Ground Types, but that could be remedied if you have it hold an Air Balloon instead of the Scope Lens. I think it's not a bad team, all things considered. You might be able to get a pretty good steak with this team! As expected of a Crimson Demon, your intelligence is actually pretty high when you put your mind to something… Hey, wait a second. It doesn't work if all three of them are suicide bombers! Teach them some other moves besides Explosion!"

"Never!"