The city of Axel in a Parallel World [KonoSuba]

((Note: All characters in this story are no less than 18 years of age and shall be depicted as such, regardless of source material. This will be the only author's note.))

In a parallel world, close to and yet very far from the Japan of our modern world, fantasy-like and yet somehow painfully realistic, a tavern provided shade from the bright sunlight of a busy noonday outside. In that shade, a young man drank alone.

He was in the city of Axel, the starting point for all adventurers to set out on their journeys! And here was the famous Axel Adventurer's Guild, full of opportunities! ... Except when it wasn't.

And here was the Guild's famous tavern hall, where lively parties could ordinarily be seen at every table besides this poor nobody's, sharing food and stories. Our story's protagonist, in contrast, was enjoying the smallest acceptable meal and cheapest swill his meager funds could buy. Kazuma Satou, one of the most famous and infamous adventurers due to his various impossible-to-ignore exploits, was, for once, blessedly free of his party. In a rare twist, the job board wasn't loaded up with the kind of bottom-rung jobs his band of four normally accepted. It wasn't loaded up with anything suitable at all. The bills and the debt never slowed down, though, so all four members had grit their teeth, set their jaws, and headed out in different directions, determined to find some way to make money that day...

All four except one: the team's unwilling leader, who was determined to make the most of his day without his teammates. There was no better way he could think of to do that than to waste the whole day drinking, and there was no way to do that with how little money he had on him but to stretch his funds out as thin as possible. The brown-haired young man stared miserably at the excuse of a meal before him, challenging himself to cut the loaf into ever-smaller pieces. His green cloak hung limply around his shoulders, his attitude giving him the look of a destitute pauper rather than the more-or-less fit young man he actually was.

The reason Kazuma was so down went beyond monetary troubles. Truth be told, while he didn't have money to be throwing around or day-drinking, he did have funds set aside for emergencies. He wasn't literally in danger of starving. The real reason for his mood was, probably, he felt guilty about ducking work while everyone else was out trying to find it-

"As if!" Kazuma defended to himself, suddenly shoving the entire meaninglessly diced meal into his jaw and chewing, his brow darkened in frustration. "What would I be feeling guilty about?! I'm the one who's always looking for jobs for us, anyway! As if I could leave it to that careless runt, or that messed-up meathead, or that useless goddess! In fact, isn't that what I'm doing right now? That's right! From my position, right here at this table, I'll be the first to see any new jobs posted. That's working smart, not hard." The young man took another big draft of his rapidly dwindling mug, realizing his haste was bringing him perilously close to finishing his meal and trying harder to convince himself he'd be doing something by sitting there doing nothing. "And also! This is what all good quest-takers do, isn't it? Putting my ear to the streets, hearing the voices of the people, their stories and their needs. Why, isn't that what being an adventurer's about? Helping people with their problems? And then finding out how much they can pay for it after the fact?"

Having successfully convinced himself that he was offering the city a vital service by sitting on his ass drinking at midday, Kazuma wore an unearned smirk, shut his eyes, and took in the voices of the scant parties around him (eavesdropping, in other words). He was sure he'd quickly pick up on something worth doing.

Sure enough, two adventurers were speaking at a table nearby! And it sounded like they were discussing a problem...

"Hey, you know that one Arch Wizard of the Crimson Demons? Not the short one, but the hot one that hangs out here alone sometimes?"

"Oh yeah! Not the small one, but the stacked one, right? Yunyun!"

Kazuma's smirk fell to a frown. The Yunyun he knew definitely fit this description. In spite of her odd personality, she was surprisingly capable. He didn't think anything good would come of listening to idle gossip about her, but, having nothing better to do, he kept his ear to it.

"I heard she's off today."

"Off work? A lot of people seem to be. No good quests."

"No, off, like, her personality is off."

"Well, yeah, not just today. For a Crimson Demon, she's off, right? She doesn't do the poses all the time. Hard to even picture her doing it."

Kazuma stifled a yawn. Were these two guys really the only two here to listen to? Didn't they have anything better to do than sit around and shoot the shit about other adventurers? Also, why were they complaining about Yunyun when Megumin was in the same city... assuming she was in the city, and not wandering out to find something to blow up? He wanted to give them a piece of his mind, but decided it was none of his business.

"No, I heard she's way off today, like... super weird. Like she has a problem. I mean I heard she was wandering around the city half-naked! And, like, that was just the tip of the iceberg. Seriously weird shit."

"... What the hell? That doesn't sound anything like what I've heard of her."

"Yeah, what the hell?" Kazuma agreed, pulling up a chair at the table with sudden interest. "I know Yunyun pretty well... As well as anyone knows her, I guess. This sounds like suspicious behavior worth investigating. It just so happens I have free time for a good deed. Tell me where you saw her, and I'll go check on her."

The two looked at each other, then looked at Kazuma, then back at each other. Without responding, each of the two took a long, silent sip of bubbly.

"..." Kazuma sighed and fetched the last coin he'd been saving for drink from his pocket, flipping it to the adventurer who'd been yapping and not caring if it hit him in the face.

With his drinking hours behind him, lacking any buzz from the watered-down drinks, and with a new fire of heroism, adventure, and other driving forces burning in his heart as well as other parts of him, Kazuma headed towards the gate out of the city, towards the central part of the kingdom. The information he'd bought hadn't been much to go on, but her trail hadn't been hard to follow. There were some truly bizarre stories about what she'd been up to, and it seemed like everyone had an opinion on it. If they were talking about anything else, it meant he wasn't heading in the right direction.

To hear everyone tell it, she seemed out of her mind. For Kazuma, there was a simpler explanation. There was no need to put a fine point on it: Yunyun was **** to make friends with anything with a pulse. While she wasn't annoying like Kazuma's own party members, she did have at least one pathetic side to her he'd seen in action. Yunyun was an involuntary loner, and when it came to the subject of making friends, all of her above-average intelligence seemed to fall out the window. It was easy to imagine her being duped by some bastard's scheme and getting carted away to some far-off dungeon. Ordinarily, Kazuma would sigh and say "that's the way it is," recognize that she was a prodigy of an arch-mage, convince himself that she could take care of herself, and leave it at that. Of course, there were extenuating circumstances in this particular instance...

As Kazuma passed through the gate leading out of the city, he continually reminded himself that his intentions in this were purely noble. While the way he'd heard she was dressed was undeniably interesting, it wasn't his primary motivation. Despite his reputation, he'd defend that to anyone he had to, until he was blue in the face! Yunyun's naivety was her Achilles heel, and if she'd gotten all the way out here with people still talking about her, it meant she hadn't found a quick way to get herself out of whatever mess she was in. He owed Yunyun for a lot of things, so he couldn't just ignore that.

Still, this was starting to seem like a bad idea. There wasn't a trail of people to talk to outside the gate like there had been in the city. He resolved himself that if he turned the next bend in the road and hadn't caught up to her, he'd need to consider catching a cart. Maybe he'd even need to gather his party. He'd wanted to leave his party out of it... Again, not for any perverted reason! Obviously not. It was just because imagining the reactions of Darkness, Aqua, and especially Megumin to Yunyun's predicament was too painful.

The main reason he hadn't already turned back was that he assumed, from what he'd been hearing, that he'd be moving faster than her. When he finally saw her after the bend in the road, he learned that assumption was justified. Arriving here and seeing this felt like a triumph of his high intellect and especially high luck.

The woman's long brown hair easily identified her, done in two ribbon-tied front-tails that gave her an immature appearance despite her age and well-developed figure. Besides that, however, her figure and the occasional chirp of her voice were the only recognizable elements. Yunyun wasn't carrying any kind of weapon, tools, or magical implements. Kazuma realized the reason he'd heard all kinds of vagueness and descriptions of "half-nakedness" was that the people of this world didn't have an adequate base of knowledge to describe what she was dressed in. Her cute bottom was snugly wrapped in what appeared to be a pair of traditional red gym class bloomers, a size too small for her. Her plump thighs were on full display, pinched by the small bottom, tall white stockings up above her knees, and, most notably, a colorful jumprope that was wrapped around her, binding her arms to her sides and her feet together so that her progress had been limited entirely to energetic forward hops. She had colorful-looking sneakers on, at least, so her feet weren't being torn up by the unpaved dirt road. She had a white tee shirt on, but it didn't fully cover her back: another size-too-small garment, Kazuma noted.

The young man, covering his mouth to prevent a gasp and hide a nosebleed, started to close the distance between himself and the woman he'd been looking to rescue. Quickly, however, he found himself diverting to the bushes nearby as her head turned to face him.

Why didn't he want to be seen? Well, it probably wasn't to avoid an uncomfortable conversation, and it definitely wasn't because he wanted to further engrave this image into his mind before finally helping her out. No, it was because his Enemy Detection was going off like an alarm. Whatever was up with Yunyun, Kazuma didn't think she'd done it to herself. Whoever or whatever she'd been moving towards, they were close by... And, if Enemy Detection was right, full of malicious intent! Kazuma used his Lurk to move silently through the bushes, eager to get ahead.

He needed to catch a glimpse of...!

Yes. There they were. The shirt was small, like he'd expected, but there was so much more to it. Even though the garment was tight, the movement of her incredible breasts beneath suggested she wasn't wearing a bra, like they could slide out with any hop. Since the rest of her was bound with a rope, their bouncing stood out even more. Whoever had done this had a real sense of aesthetics, and there was no doubt intention behind it: the label on Yunyun's mock gym shirt didn't display her correct name, but "BOINBOIN" instead.

Kazuma might have watched this for a while, hypnotized in spite of the reasons he told himself he was getting involved with this, if it wasn't for his eyes accidentally moving to Yunyun's face. He'd expected he'd see her crying, red-faced with shame. If not that, she'd be like a stereotypical hypnosis victim, drooling and bleary-eyed. None of that was the case. Instead, she wore a big smile. The only sign of any discontent on her at all was that she was covered in sweat from hopping around in this heat...

Sweat!! Kazuma's nostrils flared as he realized where this was leading, and the realization snapped him back to reality. If he let this go any further, if that same sweat staining her pits and forehead appeared on the logical area on that tight white tee shirt, he was about to see something he could never unsee! Despite everything, Kazuma was a gentleman! So he told himself, but now, he had a chance to actually prove it.

The adventurer had intended to let Yunyun close in on the one behind this while he stayed out of sight, but the sweat emergency created a time limit. Instead, he moved quickly ahead under cover. If his enemy detection was right, he'd soon be upon the one responsible for this. Surely it was going to be some kind of demon or monster? With a properly executed backstab, Kazuma would...

Wood...

"W-what the hell, man?!" Kazuma blurted out at the fat, balding, unremarkable middle-aged man he'd just found stroking his junk in the bushes, ruining his own element of surprise. "We're outside, you moron!"

"W-w-what the hell?!" the pervert exclaimed, rushing to tuck himself back in and pull his clothes together around himself. "What kinda pervert sneaks up on someone in the middle of... s-something private?!"

"Pervert? Huh?! You just called me a pervert, pervert?! Is that right?! You know I talked to fifteen people picking up this trail, and among all of them, even the healthy young men, not one followed her and started jerking it just off the path, you sicko voyeur!"

"H-hey! I'll have you know, I'm an upstanding businessman. A-and for all I know... All anyone knows, actually... Y-you were the one out here playing with yourself, and I'm the one who showed up to put a stop to you!"

Kazuma flinched. That was a load of bull, but, unfortunately, it was a load of believable bull. Kazuma knew his reputation would feed that lie, and what little remained would be destroyed by it! "Is that so, baldy? Hate to break it to you, but I'm not here to take you to the guards. I'm gonna kick your ass myself! You're gonna put a stop to me, huh? You and what army?!"

The older man dabbed at his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief (Kazuma retched, wondering if the guy remembered what he'd just been doing with it). "You still don't get what's really going on here, do you? Well, today, I've got a very powerful new friend...!"

It occurred to Kazuma that the bastard had something like a book in front of him. That didn't make sense... It was like he'd been jerking off reading that, instead of watching Yunyun's bound peril and impending nip-slip. The man was picking it up again now...

Was it a spellbook? One way or another, Kazuma was about to find out.