Aqua awoke to the smell of sweat, coins, and wool. A scent she'd come to associate with Kazuma. She opened her eyes as she slowly came to, happy to see how her morning was starting off. She only vaguely remembered even making it to her bed, as distraught as she had been, and didn't remember Kazuma joining her at all. She took further stock of her situation, pleasantly surprised to realize he was the one holding her today, her face pressed up against his chest and neck. She knew today was going to be long and stressful, so instead of rushing into it she chose to enjoy her wake up, nuzzling further into him and just breathing him in.
All good things must come to an end, though. After what only felt like a scant few minutes, Kazuma began to stir, stretching his body out in an attempt to fully awaken. When he did, he was greeted with the sight of a quite smug and content blue-haired goddess staring up at him.
"So, couldn't keep your hands to yourself finally, eh?" she teased, pinching his hip lightly to get him to let her up. "You can get changed after me, just relax for now, alright?" She then rolled over him to get out of the bed, taking longer than was strictly needed, just to mess with him. One of these days he'd grow a spine and actually do something when she made a move like that.
Kazuma stared at the wall, his mind going places best left unexplored as he listened to the sound of her clothing moving, hitting the floor and what not. There was a woman, a solid 10/10 woman, undressing and redressing right behind him. She sounded so close he could just reach out and touch her if he tried. He was trying to be good though, her day ahead likely to be stressful enough.
"Alright, all yours. I'll be waiting downstairs" Aqua said, pouting cutely as she closed the door. He hadn't even tried to peek. Maybe she needed to be a bit more direct with him.
Shortly later, Kazuma, Megumin, Darkness, and Aqua are all gathered around a table, going over the plan.
Kazuma started them off, "Alright, what did you learn Megumin?"
Megumin looked more than a bit ill, the young mage not used to seeing the kind of strife she'd witnessed. "I didn't see many people. Arcanletia is supposed to be a resort town, but almost all of the stores were sealed up with only a handful of people moving about. Even then, they seemed to be moving in packs, some with Aqua's symbol on it, and others with a modified one. I don't know it well enough to tell you which is which, but the few people that were willing to talk to me told me a little bit. The modified holy signs are what the reformists are using, something about it representing a willingness to change. They honestly looked the same to me, but they said it was the only way to know who was on what side if you didn't already know." Megumin paused at that point, letting what she'd said so far sink in so they might picture just how bleak things had gotten. "The reformists are open to help, but they're also suspicious of the Traditionalists trying to sneak spies into their ranks, so they're keeping any help at arm's length. One was openly claiming I was a spy even, the jerk." She sulked for a moment before continuing, clearly unhappy. "I did find out that the old High Priest, Zesta, is leading the Reformists though. He had a vision showing him Aqua being more understanding and kind of went with it. A bunch of the Traditionalists had supposedly been looking for a way to defame him for years and this was just the excuse they needed. So, they took over the main church and the reformists are mostly hiding out in basements and closed down shops. That's everything I was able to find out."
The info dump done, the other three started thinking, considering their best options. "Well, none of them are combat centric, right? Between the three of us, we should be able to just 'storm the castle' for them and call it a day, right? Megumin, did the town guards take either side?" Kazuma asked, stroking his chin in thought.
"Arcanlatia doesn't really seem to have guards? Apparently the fanatics scare off any bandits enough they don't need them. The few times something like that has happened they kind of went mob on them" Megumin explained, shrugging her shoulders. She'd thought it was weird too, but it's what she was told when trying to find out what kind of fighters they might need to deal with.
"Well, that makes it oddly easy. If we just walk up to the Church, we can probably take out their leadership in one fell swoop. It would take dozens of non-combatants, at least, to take Darkness down if she were just fighting by herself. With all four of us, it shouldn't be that hard at all" Kazuma decided, nodding to himself as he tried to think of non-lethal ways to take Aqua's Traditionalists down. He'd started practicing with his sword a little bit more and could use throwing knives he'd stored in his Bank fairly well, but those would both possibly lead to deaths. He could fight fairly well hand to hand, but he didn't have the raw stats that even Megumin had to back it up. He did have one idea that might work though. "I'll be right back. I just need to buy something from the general store."
-Ko-No-Su-Ba!-
Once the party was ready to go, Megumin teleported them all straight to Arcanletia. Directly in front of the church, to be precise.
Kazuma asked, his voice dripping with contempt, "Oi, Megumin?"
"Yes, Kazuma?"
"Did you teleport us straight in front of the church?"
"Yup!"
"Right where the radical Traditionalists are more likely than not lying in wait to tear us apart?"
"Yu-!… oh" Megumin finished, realizing the problem she'd just created, only accentuated by a loud shout coming from the belfry.
"Heretics! One of them even has a symbol of Eris on her!" The man's voice shouted, ringing through the street and down into the depths of the church.
Kazuma, not wanting to give the fanatics a chance to surround them, quickly made use of the idea he'd had just before they left. Holding his hand out, he started 'firing' marbles out of his hand as fast as he could, ejecting them straight from his Bank to in front of the doors so that they wouldn't be able to have solid footing. While it didn't cause a comedic pile up of bodies as cartoons had taught him it would, it did significantly slow down the angry cultists as they carefully stepped on the glass balls. "Darkness!?"
Darkness, needing no further direction, dashed forward, beginning to bash the weapon hands of the aggressors with her sword, still in its sheath. Only four had made it out so far, the rest tip-toeing around the marbles to not trip, but four men with spears could still be dangerous. Well, dangerous to anyone less tough than Darkness.
"Megumin, put a barrier around the exits if you can! Make it so they can only come out this door so they can't surround us!" Kazuma shouted at Megumin.
Megumin puffed her cheeks out in anger, stomping her foot. "I am a master of Explosions! Not barriers! That's way more skill than I have with that kind of magic!"
"Well, do something that won't kill them!" It was then Kazuma had a terrible, awful, no-good idea. "Hey, remember how you imbued Mana Bolt with Explosion?"
"Yeah? What about it?" She shouted back, stopping to hit a cultist that had gotten to close away with her staff.
"Do that, but with teleport right in the middle of them."
Megumin stopped moving. She may have even stopped breathing as far as Kazuma could tell. After a few moments of her eyes darting rapidly around, as if looking at numbers only she could see, her expression became one of glee that could rival Darkness at her worst. "Kazuma, you are the best rival I could have ever asked for." She lifted her staff up, spinning it for effect as a manic glee overtook her face. "Tele-SPLOSION!" She shouted, slamming her staff onto the ground and vanishing, only for a loud 'kaboom' to shatter the doors of the church and send nearly every cultist falling to their hands and knees. Darkness was only left standing because of her training, but it was enough she had to brace.
Laying on the ground in the center of it all was Megumin, a derpy grin on her face. She lifted a thumbs up to the others, letting out a little cough with a plume of smoke as she did so. She was completely scorched, not having quite gotten the spell right on her first try, but it had done the job. The moral of the cultists and their cohesion had been shattered. Trying to stand up, she said the only words she felt appropriate. "I am become Explosion." Only to fall back down onto her face. For once, it wasn't from mana depletion either.
Kazuma realized at this point he fucked up bad. He'd put glass marbles down right where Megumin was going and marbles shattered. In addition to getting battered around, they all had fractal pieces of glass lodged into their bodies, leaving them all bloodied and in no condition to fight.
"Oh shit, Aqua! Get to healing!" Kazuma shouted, trying to round them up so they wouldn't be able to fight back as soon as they were healed.
Aqua hadn't moved once they landed, having just watched the impromptu skirmish. She couldn't do it, these were her children! Who could expect a goddess to slap her children around for trying to do what they thought was right?
"You foul heathens and heretics! Retribution will come for you lot when Aqua strikes you all down! How dare you strike out against her faithful?!" One of the radicalists started ranting, only to be joined in soon by the others, the awful vitriol they were spewing soon becoming a droning cacophony of abuse.
Aqua couldn't just hear their words, though, she could feel the emotion behind it via her link to them. They weren't just saying these foul things, they truly and utterly meant it. How could her children have fallen so far? Was she truly so monstrous in their eyes that they thought she would strike people down for not following her?
Kazuma had taken to tying up the fighters alongside Darkness, allowing Megumin to recover. It took a while, but he eventually noticed the distinct lack of Aqua's voice. Normally, she was so talkative and verbose, her silence was more noticeable than if she had been blathering on. He took a moment to look for her, only able to find the goddess by the loop of hair she always wore up. She'd hidden behind a fountain, knees to her chin and arms wrapped around her legs. Aqua was broken, again. As he got closer, he could hear her chanting to herself, "I am a monster. My followers are monsters. I am trash." She just kept repeating the three sentences, oblivious to the outside world.
"Aqua, come on, if you don't pull it together, they might die!" Kazuma implored her, trying to shake her from her stupor. It was no good though, the goddess clearly broken. "Gods damn it. Megumin! Where can I find the Reformists!?" Megumin couldn't answer though, passed out herself and was unable to move or speak.
"They're right here, boy" came the voice of an eldery man with a priest's staff. He had an air of importance about him that Kazuma couldn't quite place at first until he realized he was wearing the garb of a high priest. This must have been the head of the church Megumin had mentioned, Zesta. "Gather them close together, I'll do my best to keep them alive. They may be angry and misguided, but they're still children of our goddess." A pale, comforting light started to radiate from the head of his staff as he started walking amongst the wounded, other Reformists joining him in gathering and securing the Traditionalists in a rough circle so he'd best be able to heal them. "We heard the explosion and figured there would be wounded. We didn't expect it to have been them that were hurt though." Zesta explained, pulling a shard of glass from the cheek of a young Traditionalist who couldn't quite meet the old man's eyes.
Watching as he helped his 'enemies' so easily, Kazuma realized something about the priest. "You weren't angry with them at all, were you?"
A small, demure smile was the priest's answer, nodding. "Of course not. How could I be angry at them for fearing change? Change is one of the most terrifying things in the world, even if it is handed down by the goddess herself." Turning back to another one of the wounded, he let out an annoyed huff, grabbing the man's wrist. "Really Theodore? You know you can barely hold a hammer and you still tried to fight? I'm going to have to set this bloody wrist again."
It might not have been intentional, but Kazuma had given the people of Arcanletia exactly what they needed, a reason to work together.
As he continued to heal, he kept talking to Kazuma. "So, are you going to explain what happened?"
"Oh! Sorry, yes. We were sent from Axel to stop the civil unrest. We found out most of the aggression was coming from the Traditionalists so we were, you know, going to stop them. I put out marbles to trip them and… I didn't think things through. I had our mage use a new type of Explosion magic and it shattered the marbles. I didn't even think of it when I told her to do it either, I just didn't want us getting overrun." Kazuma had barely breathed during his explanation, only just realizing he could have accidentally killed all these people. Just as bad, he'd have made Megumin a killer too. His stomach lurched at the unpleasant realizations, his face turning green before he bent over the fountain, heaving into it all the breakfast he'd had.
A firm, calming hand started to rub his back, a light flicker of healing magic helping to alleviate some of his stomach's unrest. "I see you realized your mistake. Sit down for now, we'll talk more when the work is done."
Kazuma didn't need to be told twice, collapsing down next to Aqua. He was almost catatonic, but his presence was still noticed by the bluenette. Needing him as much as she needed her, she grabbed his hand with one of hers, still holding her knees with the other while the aftermath of the skirmish was cleaned up.
