Moshi Moshi, Aqua Desu

By CharlieGM
Tags: Twinning, Konosuba, Male-to-Female, Mental Play, Identity Play, Anime Seinfeld

“Alright, last order of business,” Kazuma said, thumbing through a book of hastily scrawled
notes.

Predictably, he turned and saw three blank stares looking back at him.

He asked again with consternation. “... did… anyone read the monster bill? Are we sure this
is even the right place?”

Lighting flashed in the vicinity of their next dungeon, followed by a sinister cracka-boom of
distant thunder. For a brief, brief second, the spires of the castle were bathed in the light of
truth, casting shadows of pointed minarets and the battlements of an evil-aligned keep.
Blue bled back into the red black of the horizon, shrouding the lair in darkness once again.

The party’s dark mage (with as many quotation marks as allowed on the word dark as
acceptable) Megumin, gasped in awe. “Yessss, perfectly aesthetic.”

To her left, the party tank, the paladin Darkness Ford Latina, huffed and brimmed a small
blush. “I can feel the cruelty of this place already…”

Kazuma’s skin crawled. Of course she would say that. These two weirdos were tolerable -
sometimes inconpetent, but Kazuma was barely a hair’s breadth a better adventurer than
they were. Their quirks were tolerable. Sidestepping his questions could be assumed as an
act of modesty, some shred of intelligence that kept them from saving face.

He wouldn’t dare say that about the last numbskull in this party.

Aqua did the thing she normally did when she knew she was caught being bleedingly
ignorant of the task at hand. She crossed her arms and faked it. “Well… I know the
monster bounty. Of course I do! Lady Aqua is always prepared.”

“Bullshit,” Kazuma cut in flatly.

Aqua snorted. “Are you implying that I don’t know what I’m talking about?”
“Yes, I am implying that. You’re far from the smartest person I know.”

“Poor Kazuma Satou doesn’t want to admit he’s unprepared and wants to go home~ How
embarrassing!” That smugness was almost unbearable. It made comeuppance all the
sweeter.

But comeuppance wasn’t happening anytime soon; just another argument. Megumin
leaned back against a gnarled oak tree on the edge of the grounds. “She’s got a point.”

Kazuma snapped back. “Don’t you take her side in this, complicated quests aren’t my deal-”

It was fairly complicated, to the poor NEET’s credit. A pastiche of events led him to this
point, resisting the urge to throttle his ‘goddess’ with both hands and wring the stupid out
of her.

To start - Kazuma Satou was not a native to this fantasy world. Not to the Kingdom of
Belzerg, nor anywhere sufficiently fanciful enough to put on pretensions. He came to this
world because he died horribly. Not in a gory or tragic way, no - though loosen the
definition of tragedy to comedy and you might get a good approximation. In the process of
reincarnation, he was given the choice to become anything he wished in another world.
This choice was sadly arbitrated by a blue-haired goddess - that would be Aqua - who
harangued him for his poor lifestyle choices in his past life.

And… the fact he died of shock in front of a runaway tractor and pissed himself in view of
every EMT who tried to resuscitate him.

Anyway - Aqua, a goddess as lazy as she was dim-witted, expected Kazuma to spin off to
another world, like any good isekai protagonist. He would leave her to other, more worthy
mortals, while snacking on low-fat chips as one does. After all, the afterlife is a very
stressful place. Kazuma, upset at his verbal defenestration, used the legal byline of wishing
for one item to take with you in reincarnation, and he used it on Aqua. The other goddesses
eagerly granted his wish. No one in heaven liked Aqua. She didn’t know that, but to be fair,
she didn’t, does not and will not know many things.

When they arrived in Belzerg, Aqua’s first instinct was to throttle Kazuma and babble and
whine loudly about all of the things she left upon being ‘demoted’ to adventurer. This
should have been a sign, but Kazuma tried to ignore it. Becoming a fantasy character was
something of an upgrade for him. As he soon discovered, the magic and job mechanics of
Belzerg fit conventions he was used to, a stolid level-by-level class-based affair. The job
assignment wasn’t spectacular. However, ‘trained thief’ was a better job title than ‘shut-in
social parasite,’ so he ran with it.

He ran with it as long as he could before Aqua’s debts began to pile up.

Where did those debts come from? It was a caustic formula of high living standards,
gullibility, maintenance costs, repairs and ‘church dues.’ Aqua was a goddess. She could
still derive power from the Axis Order ministry to power her healing magic. In a bid to
make the most of her status and inflate her ego, all the money her and Kazuma made to
fund their meager housing situation in a stable went down the commode.

Aqua possessed all the power of an archpriest. She commanded maximum stat values on
his job card (save intelligence and luck). She possessed perhaps the most exhaustingly long
spell-list Belzerg could have afforded a cleric. It was a shame, then, that Aqua not only
lacked common sense; she lacked basic self-awareness.

It was because of Aqua’s antics that Kazuma was forced to hire two more party members.

Megumin - the archwizard bearing a button-eyed witch hat - was a breath of fresh air. She
was the childhood prodigy of the Crimson Demon Clan, a storied cabal of archwizards.
Excitable, roguish, a little too chuuni sometimes, she nevertheless brought some stability to
the growing party. The only spell she could cast, however, was EXPLOSION. She knew no
other spells, nor sought to learn other spells. Further, she can only do it once a day, before
being completely sapped of energy.

She was useful for one crucial moment, then utterly useless.

Darkness - the blonde in wingguard armor - filled the party role demands almost too well.
At first, she presented herself with a mature air, one that satisfied the power vacuum in a
party that lacked adults. She was even referred for her selflessness in combat and heroic
acts. This was a farce, as Kazuma slowly realized. Darkness was no noble crusader (well,
technically, she was, but that’s another story). She was a masochist first, drawn to the job
for the tendency of most crusaders to be beaten within an inch of their lives and then
physically and sexually tortured by the demons that haunted Belzerg.

Kazuma learned quickly not to take her quest recommendations.

The party could barely be construed as motley, but by some measure, it managed to work.
Over a year’s time, the four nincompoops managed to take jobs of escalating strength.
From hunting giant toads to purifying lakes to stopping undead revenants from sacking the
quest hub - somehow, Kazuma and company thrived...

Kazuma wondered if thrived was a good word as he snapped out of his reverie. Darkness
was already itching to stomp into the fortress arms outstretched. Megumin held her back in
a shoulder lock. Aqua was too busy extolling the virtues of proper quest preparation. He
figured he might do the same as well do the same. He thumbed through leaflet notes...

Their mark had sequestered themselves in the farthest reaches of Belzerg, near the blasted
heath border with the Demon King’s realm. Nestled in the bosom of the Dead Forest, set in
the shadow of Mount Ravage, the demon general built a forward base of cursed limestone
and mortar. Its walls sheltered the hordes of undead pouring into the cracks of human
civilization. In its time, the fortification was known as Ghoullfestung, the fort of the
men-eaters. Unfortunately, the name wasn’t as intimidating as hoped. Adventurers began
equating ‘fort of the men-eaters’ to a succubi brothel, and the demon general felt
uncomfortable keeping the name. It was changed then to the much more broad and vaguely
menacing Kyllburg.

Kyllburg survived not as a permanent battlement, but a cursed place. The humans and
adventurers who pushed its undead occupants out found it impossible to purify. Horrors
haunted the walls. Nightmares danced in the shadows of its cellars. The corpses of
thousands of undead abominations shuddered through the stonework, reviving with no end
in sight. If this is beginning to sound like brochure material… it was. Guildhalls advertised
Kyllburg as a place of untold monster riches once the demon general was driven out.

But like any gold vein, the riches eventually run dry. High-level patchwork giants, vampire
lords, liches of untold arcane secrets, mindflayers from dimensions beyond the mind’s eye -
they were all claimed at some point. The big creatures, the ones worth the most experience
and gold, were carted out in wheelbarrows, mourned by the skeleton mobs and
impressionable slimes. The medium ones - the monster middle class, as it were - were
dwindling, and soon, Kyllburg will be empty. Perhaps even livable.

Kazuma knew that they had a good bounty here. The guild put a big arrow pointing here on
the mapboard for a damn good reason. He had the castle map in his hand, the mob
densities, their stats, hell even the mark’s likely location (west wing, far-west spire)… but
not the target. It annoyed him not to have it, dredging up his insecurities.
Aqua’s monologue continued to jammer on as he continued to focus. “... notice the sheer
amount of undead here. Oooh, eheheh, I bet you didn’t even know about castle Kyllburg’s
special curse~”

She laughed into her hand with an especially self-satisfied smirk. He had to ask: “Is it too
much for you to tell me what you’re talking about? I haven’t heard of any-”

“Kazuma, Kazuma!” Megumin suddenly chirped.

He knew this bit. Kazuma put on his best straight man voice. “Yes, I’m Aqua.”

Everyone went dead silent. Fitting for a dead place. They could hear the tumbleweed
rolling behind them.

The only reaction Kazuma could be sure of was the shit-eating smirk out of sight, the one
plastered on Aqua’s face. He felt a surge of utter indignance flooding through his cheeks,
this altogether familiar yet still bizarre heatflow, embarrassed magma roiling under the
mantle.

But then something crackled, a bubble of pyroclastic flow popping in the back of … of um…
his name, what was Kazuma’s name…

As he mentally scrambled for something fitting, a neon blue star grew and popped over the
crown of his head. Hair tickled. It threaded through the hole between new accessories
silently. The boy reached up, patting at the jingling phantom weight on his head.

A hairloc was styled there, fit through a sapphire clip. Wobbly tall, wrapped in a circle.
Kazuma understood this intruder as Aqua’s dinky hairpiece sticking out of his head.

Megumin snorted and snickered. “... o-oh the gods… that’s...”

“Whatever you’re doing, stop.”

It was too much for Aqua to contain. “Bwaaaahahahaha~ Looks like the curse got
yWEEH-”

The nameless boy swung her around by the collar. “What curse?!”

“Huh????”
“You mentioned a curse, Aqua! Think really hard! What was that curse and what’s
happening to me so I can stop it before something terrible happens to me!”

“Stop… harassing your goddess… bweeeh! Okayokayokay, I didn’t know! I don’t know
about a curse, Kazumaaaa! I don’t knnoooooowwww!”

Megumin interjected with her finger before things got more violent. “Iiiif it helps at all, I
remembered what we’re supposed to be hunting.”

All eyes fell back onto her. Even the thief formerly known as Kazuma stopped shaking the
daylights out of Aqua.

“It was in the secret monsters catalogue,” the little archwizard began. She pooled into her
self-important narrator’s voice. “I stole a look at it while searching for a worthy foe. This
creature - this monster - is a challenge that has eluded the bravest and most sinful warriors
who dared step foot in this darkened shadow hall. A threat to living things in the most
sinister of-”

“We get it,” the boy said. “He’s scary. What’s his name already?”

Megumin puffed her cheeks out. “... Golgotha, the vampire demigod of names.”

Aha. That was the curse Aqua accidentally stumbled on.

The boy with a pretty hairloc clenched his fist. “Right. The demigod of names, eh? Maybe
that’s why I grew this when I said my name was Aqua.”

His scalp buzzed. The boy’s eyes briefly crossed from the feedback, shuttering his thoughts
to a dizzying halt. Blue trickled out of the roots of his hair and dripped down into his bangs,
sideburns, erasing the natural brown. It reached out with guiding hands, invisible to the
naked eye. Down the nape of his neck, new lines of blue hair fell like downed trees,
knocking against the small of his back. As he came back to reality again, spectral fingers
pulled the linking latches of his top coat out and stretched them, fitting them into a
green-and yellow-tipped ribbon.

“Bwah…!” he verbally lurched. He pawed wildly at the candy blue bangs hanging in his
vision.
“Tchihihihihi~” He knew that noise. He despised that noise. “Are you turning into meeee,
Kazuma?”

Kazumaqua wasn’t sure who he was, that Kazuma. Still, he answered with a spit. “Just a
mistake. All just a mistake.”

Megumin flushed. Demon magic was afoot. Which was bad, because normally, it was a
shrunken head or a lopped off hand. “Darkness, ah, do you happen to have anything like
protection from evil?”

“Hoooo, yessss~” Darkness heaved.

Megumin blew a sigh of relief. “Great. Cast it so Kazuma can get back to his old self.”

“He can change my name to Eternal Punishment Slut, oh the goddesses! Oh, the potential
such a terrible ability can do to a mortal woman!”

“... … … “

The rest of the party didn’t have time to question her statement. Darkness drew her
claymore with a hot breath.

“Please no,” Kaqua said lowly, pleading to whatever god was listening to them.

“It is my duty to… ‘eradicate’ this evil where it stands. It may irrevocably destroy my very
self… mmmh, in the most excruciating manner... but it is my duty to go forward and slay
it!”

She stomped off. The party ran after her in a panic.

“Wait,” Megumin yelped! They crossed a creaking drawbridge with no shortage of fright in
their step. “You can’t just go in alone and pull the big bad like that!”

It was bad logic, because it thrilled Darkness to hear it. “Don’t fret - I can handle Golgotha
by myself! It’s my duty!”

Aqua and Aquma lagged behind. As soon as they crossed from wood bridge material to the
obsidian stone, the gate dropped. Wrought iron hit the ground with a scratching hiss that
staggered them, further stretching the gulf.
They lingered too long on a loose panel. The ground gave in. Gravity yanked the two from
standing and sent them careening downward into the castles innards!

Kazua could hear a faint ‘Kazumaaaaaaa!’ echo down from above, and, terrified, he could
only manage a question back. “Who is Kazummaaaaaaaaaaaaa?!”

Down they careened. Down they spun. Aqua landed face-first in a roaring stream, followed
sharply by their party lead bouncing off her hind end and sending them tumbling down.
They were falling in a passage, Kaz’aqua realized. Chiseled curves indicated a cistern,
maybe an aqueduct, channeling water down through curling tunnels into the heart of the
dungeons. It lanced them through a narrow straightaway, and briefly they flew in plain
view of a towering superstructure…

But then water caught them in a crash. Kaquazuma gasped and paddled through torments
of foaming water until he could reach a steady outcropping and lift himself out of the drink.

Behind him, he heard another creature struggling in the water pool. “BBbbll, hey!
MMmbnbl- HELP! HELP, I CAN’T SWIM-”

Typical of his luck. “Hold on,” the boy said, crawling around and reaching an arm out to
help Aqua get out of the very thing she was supposed to represent.

It took them minutes to situate themselves. They had survived a trap door. That was good
news. They had also missed a pair of corroded spikes jutting out of the pool’s bottom,
which was extra good news.

However, that was about all. As Aquma checked himself and pleated over his clothes, he
suddenly felt a cold breeze hit his legs. He glanced down, and found that his pants were
gone. They had peeled, like opening flower bulbs, and were midway through retracting into
a frilly ring of fabric. A skirt, he dimly recognized. Bands of lacy blue pop-popped on his
thighs and squeezed them, giving him a jolt of activity. He squinted, held his breath, and
suffered through his legs turning doughy and thick.

“... damn,” he said after a beat. “I’m changing really fast…”

Aqua threw him a dismissive glance as she wrung her stockings out. “You can admit you’re
enjoying this now, you perv.”
“Excuse me?” Aquaka barked back incredulously.

“Yeah! How else are you changing so fast?”

“Because it’s demon magic and demon magic is meant to screw with you in weird ways.”

Aqua scoffed. He could tell she found the situation fun. There was a flicker of concern in
her eye, sure, but definitely still a gout of sadistic flame that wanted to play this out for all
it’s worth. “You don’t even remember your name, huh? Huuuuuh?”

The boy fumed. “Yeah! It’s…” He shrank in on himself and paled. “...
um…Kazzzzuuuumaqua? Aquama? Akazuqua?” Every name he tried felt like a bad fit. He
cringed too, as each one seemed to pull Aqua’s sneer back up from the grave.

“Kazuma’s such a boring name anyway. I bet you’re glad to have a goddess’ name.”

“I swear, everyone’s calling me Kazuma, and it’s annoying, because that’s definitely not my
name.”

“H-hold it!”

The pair looked behind them. Standing ahead of a spiraling moebius strip of volcanic
arches and a spiraling staircase hex was an enemy at the fore. A skeleton mob draped in a
leather jerkin and ragged undergarments. His knees knocked with trepidation. Behind
him, an insecure goblin gussied up in stolen fashion pointed her crossbow at them. They
were scared out of their wits.

“Yyyou are… tresspassing(?) on the grounds of castle Ghoullfestung!” the skeleton

informed them dutifully. He did his duty as a skeleton to dark lords long gone. “The uh…
the central aqua vitae chamber! Tuh-tuh-turn around and please fall on those spikes and
relinquish your blood to the all-powerful demon general.”

“No,” Kazuqa said.

“Oh…” the skeleton suddenly looked dejected. “Would you kindly suffer d-despair for us?”

Aqua turned her nose up at them. “As if I would do anything for a skeleton.”

Goblingirl cocked her bowgun. “Do what my skeleton bro says, or I’ll pop you!”
Skelly’s sallow cheeks turned rosy. “You called me bro…?”

“Let’s pause for a moment,” Kaquma asserted. He stepped forward with his hands up. He
wasn’t keen on starting a fight without his tank. Even with two low mobs, the boy wasn’t
quite sure he could handle them. Aqua knew the Turn Undead spell - but whether or not
she would remember to use it was still a known unknown. He approached the goons,
leaning on guile instead of the strength he didn’t have.

There was anxious silence between them. Naught but slow bootsteps and shuffling
equipment rang through vast halls of buttressed stone and non-euclidean shapes, echoing
to deep channels in parts unknown. Another unknown pressed at him - were they alone?
Were these mobs relics of the distant past, let to ossify and perish to dust in the ruins under
everything? Or did the trap bring them to a forgotten antechamber of horrors, where
hundreds or thousands of dessicated bodies lay ready to be reanimated and feast again on
the blood of the living?

“Hey?” the gobbo raised her hand.

“Shoot,” Kazumaquazuma said.

“Why are you wearing a skirt?”

The boy blinked. He summarily seethed, grabbing the hem of his garment and shoving it
down. “That’s my business.”

Skelly scratched his skullcap. “I-I suppose it is his business, I mean, humans can choose
whatever they want to wear. You do too, gobbie.”

Aqua fufufu’ed. “He’s training to become a goddess.”

“No, I’m not,” Kazua bit back through clenched teeth. “Shuddup.”

“You think I could be a goddess too?” Skelly asked. “M’not exactly cut out to be a guard…”

This was inane. A curse was coursing through the thief’s veins, and they were caught in the
middle of a casual conversation with evil-aligned muggers!

Ah, but wait, this was perfect. He let the other three prattle. A plan began to brew in his
noggin. It wasn’t elegant, but it didn’t need to be elegant. The only thing Kaquza needed
(aside from an extended moment to figure out his or name) was an opening. He
remembered an ability inherent to his class, a powerful tool perfect for pinch-hitting. Only
thieves got it, for good reason. When played correctly, it was a mortal blow. He was sure of
it - this was their ticket out and up the stairs to find his lost party. His brow furrowed and
his lips twisted as he put his hand out…!

“Aha! Got you! Turn UNDEAD!” A white glow bloomed out of his palm. “...
waitnoImeantSTEAL! I meant STEAAAL!”

But it was too late. The air crackled with energy! Skeleton and goblin covered their eyes to
protect themselves! A great radiant flame erupted from the boy’s palm! It grew and grew,
until it consolidated into a loincloth.

“... what?”

Kazaqua looked around. Skelly stared dumbly back at him, until he realized, with growing
humility, that his pelvis was showing.

“O-ohhhhh, no, not like this…”

Kaqzua was speechless. Aqua was not. She bowled over, laughing her guts out.

If he was being honest, he would have gone for the skeleton’s shield, stole it, equipped it
and shoulder-checked the goblin into submission.

But instead the poor skeleton was trying desperately to cover his modesty with bony hands
and waddling around in a tizzy. Gobbie was struck, wondering who to help and who to hold
at bowgunpoint. She eventually relented. “... wait, wait Skelly, hold on, we can find
something to cover you up…!”

For the first time in days, Kazuqua felt genuinely dumb. It bubbled and gushed in his hands,
that sinking feeling. Reluctantly, he checked them, beading lines of sweat as the precarious
cliff of a lost identity flashed in his head. The long sleeves on his arms were breaking,
disintegrating. They were twisting around his wrists and squeezing the masculinity out of
his calloused fingers. Top-coat hems fall away to dust, and underneath, the tickling of soft,
supple, godly skin rippled down to manicuring fingers. He swallowed and out a moan, an
unsteady, weary moan that drew high up. The tone became tinny, annoyingly familiar. A
copy of the hellion cackling and rolling on the floor.
“Gwaahahahahaha~ Oh… o-oh wow, that was the worst turn undead I have every
seeeeen~”

Kaqua eyed away, fighting back the urge to squeal at his double like a brat. Ruffles rippled
along his neckline. A diving line of white split his undershirt firmly in twain. Dark blue
bled into the material, a contrast to the detached sleeves he now possessed and a
compliment to a full head of twinned hair.

He meant to give her a bon mot, but something YANKED at his junk. He hurked and
doubled over, clenching at open space. He swallowed and coughed until they became a she,
with a gash and a small mound hiding under panties.

At least she’d never have to admit she was crossing dressing.

But now Aqua was in a very strange bind. All that was left was breasts, boots, and perhaps
her boyish face. Otherwise, Aqua was Aqua’s clone!

Aqua inclined her chin and crossed her arms. “Are you done already?” she squealed. “I can’t
change back if you keep doing this whole laughing thing, y’know.”

Aqua (the original one) rolled her eyes and picked herself up, gamboling up to her virtual
twin. “That doesn’t sound like a bad thing right now.”

“Of course you would say that,” Aqua retorted. “... whatever. Let’s try to get to ground
level…”

They approached the spire-object in the center of the chamber, the one with a helix of stairs
spinning around the base and reaching several stories up. The material was glossy, almost
marble-like, reflecting imperfections in the hardened lacquer. Those imperfections, Aqua
realized, were made of tortured faces, ripped from the victim and distorted by the soul
harvest, molded into the very minerals that made this place. Red webways etched their
way around the face marks, stretched like spider’s silk, winding up the column-like shape.
When she stared too long, the lines pulsed, throbbing to a heartbeat she couldn’t hear.

As deeply transformed as she was, Aqua could still recognize a setting too great for her to
handle. Though its mobs were feeble, castle Kyllburg brimmed with an unnatural life that
bordered on the edge of an eldritch god. There was something wrong in these halls that
would never be safe, a presence that could swallow the sun and cast her world into eternal
night.

Tentatively, they examined the stairs, and took them, stepping by the column. As they
ascended, a distant organ sang eerie notes and devil’s thirds from the vast darkness above...

“Mmmh, yes… this shall be my greatest masterpiece…”

Pallid fingers clipped along ebony keys. Long, graceful legs reached out, deftly swifting the
key of the mighty pipe organ. Minor tones bellowed to higher and lower registered in a
dark hymn, catalyzing arpeggios as reaching hands clasping at the mortal flesh and rending
it open. Unnatural harmonies made the cathedral windows sing, vibrating to an intensity
that could shatter them, but never quite.

Golgotha’s dirge was nearly complete. With it, he would drive the soon nameless humans
mad, and retake this castle for the rightful vampiric breed.

He stopped for merely a moment to lick his finger and turn the page. With pen in hand, he
filled in several bars with a reprise of the main motifs. A final despair, he supposed, before
the sanity winked out of their skulls.

He was nearly finished with it when his pointed ears picked up sounds coming from two
angles.

A two-pronged attack? the bishounen monster mused. How quaint. They must be
desperate. Or maybe new… brand new meat.

Golgotha spun on the piano stool, crossing his legs with bold regality.

He caught sight of the first two coming up the main corridor. A crusader slashing past his
undead retinue of….

… no, not slashing. The blonde heroine missed every strike.

Behind her, wheezing, a wizard in red raiment twatted several confused skeletons on the
head with her staff. “FFfhh… nnnfhh, h-hello…!”

“There you are!” the blonde shouted. She leapt forward in a combative crouch. “I am
Darkness Ford Lalatina! Crusader of Belzerg!”
Golgotha stared at her.

“A-and I’m… hoo… oh gods, I need to lie down…”

“Megumin, the Crimson Demon Prodigy!” Darkness added in. She smirked. “And we have
come to end your unlife, stealer of names!”

At least they got that right. Golgotha was a little bewildered this was even happening. This
wasn’t protocol at all.

He was about to purse his lips open and speak when a stolid wheeze came out of the spiral
stairs to the chamber door’s right. “HAA. AAAAH. WHY DID THEY… HAVE TO MAKE THIS
THING SO TALL…”

“Oh for crying out loud,” Golgotha groaned.

From the twisting dark came not one blue-haired gremlin but two - fancifully dressed
human women with an aura of utter incompetence swaddled over their sweating bodies.
They fell over one another at the top. One could only muster a weak ‘get off me’ to the
other. It was met with a konk on the head.

He recognized their detached sleeves and jewels as telltale signs of an archpriest. Fear
suddenly percolated. They thought to bring two holy priests, eh?

Megumin glowered at them. “Oh no… K-kazuma, if you can hear me, please give me a sign.”

The one on the bottom gave a whine. “I don’t know who that iiiis, stop asking me…”

Darkness pointed her claymore across the steeples in the cathedral, first to the two Aquas
then to the deeply unsteady vampire. “There! Victims of your curse! What a vile devil you
are.”

Golgotha ran with it. “... well well, it seems the geas hit something. How does it feel? Losing
one’s self to the all-consuming tide of another’s whole being?”

Bottom-Aqua moaned. “It suuuuuuuucks. I’m stuck as an idiot.”

“That’s not how this is supposed to go,” he muttered.

Darkness pursued his dramatics with ones of her own: “You dare play with the fabric of
names, demon? This isn’t the breadth of your powers, is it?”

“Oh, precisely, dear crusading knight. Why, there are so many dark things I could do to your
essence by merely…

“M-merely, ah…”

Golgotha stammered to a stop. Darkness was hanging on his every word. Her face glowed
bright. Her chest heaved and sank visibly under her breast plate. Her breath came in long
shudders.

“... go on…” she egged at him.

“I-I… I could reduce you to a base animal! I could make your lot a lowly vehicle of constant
punishment and agony, the likes of which humans could only fathom!”

“NNNNHHHHH, gods~” Her sword-hands shook. Her cocky smirk tore into a crooked grin.

Golgotha suddenly felt very skeeved out. “Are you getting off on this?” he asked.

“I bet you’d make me forget my name forever…!”

Aqua’s quippy self was fading fast, but she reminded herself in this moment not to let
Darkness charge in again.

Megumin, somehow carrying the foresight for the squad, took Darkness by the shoulder.
Despite being out of breath, she was full of ardent determination not to die. “Alright, buddy
- this is getting weird.”

“Agreed,” Golgtha said, pulling awkwardly at his ascot. “Shall we commence to bloodshed?”

Megumin shook her head. “Nope. Aqua!”

“Hm?!” squawked the two girls.

“Turn undead!”

“!!!” was the only action Golgotha could manage. A shower of radiant energy shot from the
twins hands and blinded the vampire’s world! “AAAAAAAAA-”

“Darkness blacker than black, and darker than dark, I beseech thee! Combine with my deep
crimson. The time of awakening cometh. Justice fallen upon the infallible boundary, appear
now as an intangible distortion!”

Dread welled in Golgotha’s breast, the only thing beyond a holy fight-or-flight response
animating his bones.

“This is the mightiest means of attack known to man, the ultimate attack magic…
EXPLOOOOSION!”

Almost all of the dark cathedral was swallowed by a tremendous gout of flame. The
windows buckled and shattered on impact. Pews, now mere kindling, ignited and
evaporated from plasmatic heat. Golgotha felt the sun itself burn through his skin and
atrophied muscle, cook the bone and sear it down to raw atoms. Never in the two hundred
years did he expect he would die this way…

And yet, his last moment on Belzerg was a shot of the ceiling splitting upward like an
erupting volcano. Molten debris carried him into the sky, and he was no more.

Rubble crumbled down the open roof. Megumin fell forward, suddenly drained. A blanket
of dust and ash rippled over her.

“... aww.” Darkness gawked at the lack-of-remains in disappointment. “I could’ve taken

him.”

Megumin whispered, “But at what cost.”

The twin Aquas gaped at the results of Megumin’s flanking supernova. They looked at one
another. All the animosity that rested inside at least one of the morons flit away like a
memory, and they held each other. They giggled and laughed belly laughs, and hugged one
another. They chanted: “We killed a vampire, we killed a vampire” and shouted “Ain’t no
rest for the wicked” with loud hoots.

Megumin craned her head back with difficulty, but it was a good pain. They were finally
getting along, Kazuma and Aqua. Even if Kazuma was momentarily lost in the smug bliss of
being Aqua, dancing over the grave of a mark whose only power was probably that one
magic trick. Now all she had to do was wait. Her father made mention of some curses
having a certain ontological inertia. Give a minute, and the strings holding the damnable
effects together would eventually give way.

… any second now.

Any second.

She counted the seconds.

She counted a minute of small-talk.

She felt a sneaking suspicion this wouldn’t be over soon.

“... hey… Kazuma-kun,” Darkness suggested eventually, as they picked the ground clean of
scattered loot. “Why are you still Aqua?”

Megumin, still stretched out on the floor, was embarrassed she couldn’t answer.

So instead, the Aqua formerly known as Kazuma tossed her head back with an indignant
snort. “Everyone keeps asking for this Kazuma-kun person, and I’m sick of it! Who is this
guy anyway?”

“Yeah!” the original Aqua rooted, entirely aware.

“He sounds like an absolute waste of living space! A neet fit for kissing Lady Aqua’s toes!”

“Hooo ye- hey, which Lady Aqua do you mean there?”

“... me, obviously.”

“Oh, you probably mean me. Silly imposter.”

“You don’t even know what imposter means.”

“HEEEE, how dare you speak to Lady Aqua that way!!”

“I shall speak to a second-rate goddess however I please!”

“I’m second rate?! What the heck, what about you?! Rule of association, you dumb idiot!”
“You take that back…!”

The fight between the two escalated into a tumble along the floor. Darkness sighed and
plopped down next to the wizard. “This looks permanent.”

Megumin arched an eyebrow, looking up at her. “You think?”

“Perhaps. I don’t know if Protection from Evil will do anything now.”

“You should have cast it,” Megumin muttered, eyeing away.

“Y-yeah, but… but you heard what Golgotha could do! I just had to see for myself! I’m
sorry…”

Megumin let her weariness out with a sigh. “Oh well. I guess we’re stuck with them.”

“It’s so disappointing…”

“Yeah?”

Darkness arched upright, gazing into the godrays piercing the momentary gloom of the
castle. “Really was expecting a good fight this time. Some real power. Some dastardly
abilities~... but I guess it’s gone.”

“... I’m not even going to ask what you really wanted out of a lord of names, Darkness.”

Darkness snorted, waving her hand dismissively. “At this point, I’d settle being another
Aqua.”

Her big blonde ponytail slowly unfurled, curling upon itself. Before Megumin could peep a
warning, Darkness swooned: “Maybe all of us…!”

And then Megumin felt it in her bones.

For stepping into castle Kyllburg, she was condemned to the blue.