A series of interesting choices.

That, according to the veteran game developer Sid Meier, is the definition of a game: having the player choose and having that choice be interesting in some way.

This, sadly, immediately disqualifies most JRPGs.

Should I equip the +1 sword or the +5 sword? Should I grind for a few more horribly monotonous hours or get trounced by the dungeon boss and then grind for a few more agonizingly tedious hours? Should I hit the fire monster with an ice spell or the ice monster with a fire spell?

And should I follow the horribly linear plot with absolutely no branches whatsoever or play a Western game with a thousand branching choices and absolutely no worthwhile plot whatsoever?

As much as I complain, though, there’s a reason for the genre usually eschewing too many branches in the plot tree. Yes, part of it is that every single deviation requires more man-hours and money spent into making the game memorable rather than on coming up with another character skin for the latest DLC pack, but there’s a more fundamental truth at play, and that’s that JRPGs tend to focus on a story to be told, with a start, middle, and end. There’s consistency and plot beats to consider, and there’s only so much deviation such a game can tolerate before you end up with a flowchart of endings rather than an actual story.

And yes, that, of course, leads us to Chrono Trigger and its thirteen endings, and that would seem to be a counterargument, but is it? Really? When most of those endings amount to little ‘what if’ scenarios revolving around the main narrative and the actual, canonical ending?

No, the truth is far simpler, and it’s been employed by visual novel developers since the start of the very genre: choice is naught but an illusion. You’ll always exploit the same elemental vulnerabilities the same way, you’ll always go for the healers first, and you’ll always finish the game with a staggering amount of untouched elixirs. The genre is about as linear as a Final Fantasy XIII corridor, even if it sometimes goes to (very much welcome) extremes to disguise it.

So.

Choice is an illusion.

Free will is a lie.

And thus, in the often-paired elements of choice and consequences that so many Western RPGs swear by, we, the proud Japanese people, have one irrefutable answer:

If choice is an illusion, why the Hell should I suffer any consequences?!

“You… you all right?” the goddess perched on her throne says, peering down at me over her knees as she keeps hugging her robe-clad legs to her, proven without a shadow of a doubt, padded chest.

I glare at her.

She eeps and hides behind her knees.

… Okay, what the Hell?

“Eris?” I ask, looking up from where I’m sitting cross-legged on a cool marble floor that is not precisely accommodating to the most prominent sign of my orcish ancestry.

“Yes?” a tiny voice answers from beneath a floppy hat-veil-cowl-whatever.

“Why are you pretending to be shy and scared?”

“I am shy and scared,” she says like somebody who put quite a few ranks in her bluff skill since the last time I shoved my cock in her mouth.

“You are Chris. Chris. The girl who ruined my reputation at the guild by loudly crying about her stolen panties only to then shoot me a cheeky, bratty grin over her shoulder. You’re about as skittish as Megumin is eco-friendly.”

“I’m not Chris! I’m Eris! And I didn’t ruin anything at all—”

“I’m pretty sure I just creampied both of you—”

“I’m a virgin!”

“Are you… are you insulting my orcish pride? My spear of orcishood? My bitch-goddess-breaker?!”

“Your what?!”

“That’s it, I’ve got another bitch goddess to break—”

“No breaking! I demand cuddling! And sweet nothings over a silk pillow!”

“Why not both—”

“And I’m still a virgin!”

“Okay, what?” I ask in the middle of standing up, which, given the current circumstances, means doing an approximation of what some cultured fellows call a superhero landing, except wearing pretty much what the Hulk would wear if writers knew how little it takes for a green-skinned monster to tear clothing to shreds.

This, of course, means that I’m currently unable to stop Eris staring wide-eyed at my orcish pride, my spear of orcishood, my bitch-goddess-breaker.

And so, following ancestral rules that I’m bound as tightly by as a Final Fantasy XIII character is to linear plot progression, my hyperweapon twitches.

“Aaaaahhhhhhh!” she, understandably, comments.

“It does it by itself! I’ve got no control over it! Free will is a lie!”

“I’m a goddess! I know how much free will you have!”

“I won’t take that from the woman who owes me a brand-new pillory!”

“Wha—I absolutely don’t. Go ravish your women like the gods intended and without financial aid, orc.”

“Ah, well, if you insist,” I say.

And I, naked as the day I was killed by a spurned goddess (that is, today), stand up fully, my cock precisely at eye level with the sitting goddess’ wide open eyes.

“What… what are you doing?” she says, rudely avoiding meeting my gaze.

“What the gods intended,” I say.

Of course, what follows is me walking forward and clasping her thin waist between my hands, lifting her entire, suddenly limp body up as she dangles freely from my thick fingers and keeps staring into my red eyes before biting her lip and blushing as prettily as only divine beings or magically engineered supersoldiers are able to.

Oh, and Darkness, as well.

Wiz adds a certain exotic note, what with her blush being purple.

Then Vanir-chan—moving on!

“Kazuma?” she asks with a tiny, fretting voice that makes my orcish pride stand as a horizontal bar pressing against her long, flowing robe and between her calves.

So, I narrow my own eyes and do precisely what my barbarian ancestors demand of me. The only thing a conquering orc can do in this setting. The very fulfillment of my evolutionary imperative.

That is: I sit on an empty throne.

As is my right as a (not) sandaled hero, I trample upon the very tenets of authority by landing my viridian posterior on a plush pillow. The only thing that mars the completion of the scene is that the throne in question is not jeweled, but, really, it’s ornate enough.

Particularly when I sit the proverbial jewel of the crown on my lap.

“Eep!” she exclaims for a second time, yet, somehow, a bit more cutely than the first.

I’ll attribute it to skill progression. It’s somewhat more practical than Aqua’s Nature Beauty.

“So. You’re a virgin,” I say, trying very hard not to roll my eyes at the ridiculous statement I just told the woman I was balls deep in minutes ago.

“I… I am! Really!” she protests with a devastating moue as if she is the one who should be offended.

“I’ve had my cock inside of you. I’ve filled you with a gooey, creamy center. I’ve had you deliriously beg for more while splayed over my thighs as I kept pumping the entirety of my recently-kicked-balls output deep enough inside you that it’s a wonder you aren’t burping cum bubbles. Oh, and I guess we also made love or something like… you know what I mean!”

“Whaaaaaaa!”

“Stop struggling! You’re only making it worse!”

“Stop talking like a rape monster while cuddling me against your chest with your cock lifting up my whole body!”

“But I refuse!”

“And don’t quote JoJo at me!”

“You know JoJo? Wait, later; my cock under your butt is a literally more pressing concern.”

“Don’t press it! Don’t press it!”

“Give me a reason not to!”

And she kisses me.

Which, somehow, I feel like I should have predicted, but, really, I…

…

She feels nice.

Soft. Smells good.

And… she’s not demanding, or rough, or… or enthusiastic. She’s just… tender. Her arms around my neck, pulling herself up, but not pressing deeply, just… just her lips on mine. A slight moan.

… Goddamn feelings.

She finally pulls back, and she opens her eyes, a shy, cute smile shining almost as brightly as her amethyst irises glinting under all the stars revolving around this throne and the two of us on it.

“You’re beautiful,” I say. Stupidly and with a sad lack of inner filter.

“Thank you,” she says, her smile growing just a bit wider, the corner of her eyes crinkling with delight.

And I, still as stupid as ever, caress the side of her head and pull her toward my chest so she can rest against it as I idly play with the pseudo cat ears of the thing covering a hair that is just a shade away from Chris’ silver.

“So. A virgin,” I repeat yet again, for lack of something better to do other than feeling her soft warmth against my chest and her hand lying flat in front of her smiling eyes.

“I am not Chris,” she murmurs.

“I think that ship sailed—”

“No. I… I’m really not Chris. She’s… She’s me, but another me? The bodies are separate, and I… I feel a bit unrestrained, down there, like I’m so much freer than I can be up here. Less rules. Freedom to actually help when asked. I can… I can be bold, Kazuma. I can be… who I wish I could be.”

I keep playing with the tip of the pseudo-ear and try not to imagine Eris, Chris, or the two of them wearing feline-themed lingerie.

I somewhat fail at that, but it’s at least a good way to stop myself from thinking about how having another body can make you feel all that different. So much freer. So unbound by fears and doubts you held onto since you came to be in another world.

To not think about how different things would be if I hadn’t drunk a stupid potion offered by Wiz just because I was pretty sure that one of the two goddesses I regularly talk with could reverse whatever happened.

I was wrong. And there are many other things I could be wrong about.

But I don’t want to think about them.

“I understand,” I finally say.

“You do?” she answers with insulting doubt.

So I sigh just loudly enough for her hat and the hair below to flatten at the passage of my breath and keep petting the side of her face. Feeling her cheek on my chest. Her palm in front of it. Her warm breath washing over green skin.

“It’s… real. But it isn’t,” I explain. “It happened to you, but would it have happened to you? There’s… a difference. A separation. And you can’t help but feel that… that what Chris just had maybe Eris wouldn’t have. That how you act as Chris is far enough from how you act as Eris that it doesn’t count. Not really. That you’re faking it. That when you win… it’s not you winning.”

She’s staring up at me, her eyes full of something that is embarrassing to look at.

And the hand on my chest leaves to settle on the side of my jaw.

“Look at me,” she asks with a voice soft enough that it’s not quite a demand.

But I still do it.

I still look down into somebody beautiful enough that I’d never have doubted her if she’d claimed to be a goddess, no matter if she wore shorts or robes.

Of how much lavender mingled with silver locks.

If she smiled cheekily or gently.

“Kiss me, Kazuma. Me,” she says.

And I…

I lower my head and meet her lips, as gentle as I’m able, as she deserves, before she opens them and blows a soft sigh over my mouth, keeping hers open until I take the invitation and let my tongue out to lick the thin line between soft lips before pushing in. Not in a conquering rush. Not as deeply as I’m able.

Just… just deep enough to touch her own tongue. To prod at it until a muffled giggle comes out between us, and I feel her smile forming around my tongue as hers joins me, and we add a slow back and forth to the kiss.

It lasts. And yes, I can feel a part of me that just wants to tear her robes off and utterly conquer her. To make her moan my name until it’s the only word she knows. To fill her as deeply and violently as I did her other body.

But… But it’s the part of me that’s just terrified of what would happen if I didn’t. If I didn’t give her as many orgasms as she can stand and then a few more, making her see me as the best lover she can ever have.

Making her… Cling to me.

Or, at least, to a version of me.

“Eris…” I breathe out as she finally pulls away, but not far. Staying as close to me as she can without our lips brushing in a continuation of our kiss.

“Kazuma…” she murmurs, eyes lidded as she shifts on my lap, no longer sitting sideway, but with her legs open and her feet planted on each side of me.

“Are you… sure?” I ask, something in my throat trying to stop the words. “With me?”

“Yes. Yes, with you,” she says with a smile so radiant that it hurts to see until she adds a cheeky note to it. “At least you have experience taking my virginity.”

I shift against her body, my own cheeky smile coming out past my tusks in a way that I hope is not as terrifying as I’m imagining, and I shift forward, my cock brushing over the front of her robes and staining them a darker shade of lavender just right beneath her padding.

“Achievement unlocked,” I whisper, remembering my earlier musings about how many deaths it would take to get this particular missable. “Sex with Eris.”

She tilts her head cutely to the side in a way that her pseudo cat ears make even more devastating, and I barely restrain myself when I reach for her waist and—

“No. No, fuck, no. I’m not watching this twice in a day,” Aqua’s voice calls out.

“Wha—for fuck’s sake, woman! Can’t I get a bit of heart-pounding intimacy over here! I was just about to make Eris confident enough to drop the padding!”

“Wha—I don’t pad my chest!”

“Wait, is that just you lying out of habit, or does it actually mean that your chest is—”

But, before I can get the answer to such a vital question, the ethereal winds of the afterlife howl, and I’m dragged out of Eris’ throne and toward my room by the will of a spiteful bitch that I’m about to—

“Here,” Aqua says, shoving a parcel straight at my chest hard enough that I stumble back. “This is for you.”

I grab it on reflex, and she crosses her arms over her non-padded chest, looking up in her most affronted pose, which is somewhat incongruous with her sleeveless hentai maid outfit.

“What the Hell, Aqua! I was having a moment!” I say, waving the stupid parcel around for emphasis.

“Open it,” she mumbles.

“No! You’re going to explain yourself and—”

“Open it!”

“I will throw it out the damn window if you don’t—ouch!”

The sulky goddess glares at me as I jump on my non-stomped-by-stiletto-heels foot, her cheeks about as red as when she’s at her drunkest, and the tears on the corners of her eyes reaching critical ‘Aqua is trying to solve the puzzle that comes with the kid’s menu’ levels.

“Don’t. If you… If you throw it, we’re done,” she says.

And I blink at her.

“What?” I say, trying to reassert the natural order of the world.

“Done. Over. I’ll break up with you right this very minute.”

I tilt my head.

Blink again.

“Is this some kind of scenario? Am I supposed to chase after you and rape you into a mind-broken mess to force you to acknowledge you’re mine or something? Because that sounds like something out of a series of books that got some very weird notions about BDSM into the mainstream public.”

“Just open your damn present!”

“No, no, this is important. We just had that whole ‘I’m your cheat item’ thing, and I won’t stand for my reincarnation bonus to just up and leave. I demand at least a point refund, with an extra percentage added so that I can get at least two cheat items, and one of those better be a goddess who doesn’t murder me just to vent—”

“Fine! Be that way! Now it’s my present!” she says before snatching the parcel’s wrapping and tugging on it.

Only to keep tugging.

Okay, the thing that is actually going on? It is that the present, rather than being wrapped with gift paper or whatever they use around these parts, is enveloped by a black satin cloth that looks suspiciously similar to the one Aqua used to sew the maid outfits out of, the ribbon is made out of lace that is identical to the trim of her short miniskirt, and both those things are slightly more durable than paper.

Which means that I’m holding the parcel in one hand, with Aqua dangling from it like a particularly dumb kitten.

And glaring at me.

Also, tears, but let’s ignore those so that I can rely on my entertaining inner monologue to distract me from her just threatening to break up with me—

“Let go!” she says, grabbing the stupid thing with both hands.

“No! It is mine! I won’t let you—it go!”

“You don’t even want me—it!”

“Maybe I do! Maybe I just want to look at the nice satin wrapping for a bit longer before taking it off!”

“Maybe? Maybe?! Fuck you! Either you want me—it, or you don’t! If there’s any ‘maybe’ at all, I’m leaving—taking away your present!”

“It is my cheat—present! You can’t take it away from me!”

“I’m getting very confused about how to continue this conversation!”

“So am I!”

“Can we at least stop yelling?! My throat hurts!”

“That seems reasonable! And so we’ll obviously not do that!”

“Stop confusing me!”

“Never! If you stop being confused, you’ll realize I’m about to grab you with both hands and never let go!”

“Then stop—wait, what?”

And… well.

I grab her.

With both hands.

And position her so that her kicks won’t unwittingly trigger another Chris-like backstab on my most vulnerable parts before smushing her against my chest.

“Mine,” I growl into blue hair.

“Not if you keep ignoring me, you jerk,” she mutters.

Then we just… stand. In the middle of my room. By a bed that is well-made, but only because of how much Aqua has taken to her worrying hobby as a cosplay maid, so it’s a wonder the bed itself hasn’t been set on fire at this point.

… There’s an alarming amount of silence for a room that contains an Aqua inside of it.

“Hey,” I finally whisper.

“Fuck you,” she answers, completely unwarranted in her aggression.

“Do you realize I’m the one who was murdered? I am fully justified in being pissed off at you.”

“It didn’t even hurt. It just puts you in a time-out with your onahole goddess.”

“… You still mad about that?”

“It was our first time.”

“Yeah. And you loved it.”

She presses her face against my chest and rubs it side to side, leaving some tear streaks on my skin that…

Look, it’s Aqua. She cries in outrage or frustration on a daily basis. Actually, a few times a day. Her crying during an argument is not at all something I should feel guilty about, particularly because, as a stalwart defender of gender equality, I’ve been inured to the cynical display of crocodile tears. Don’t you think I can cry as well? Don’t you think I have got enough piled-up trauma that I can shed fat, not particularly manly tears on command? Heck, just since I came into this world, I’ve been decapitated, exploded, dissolved in acid, and plenty of other things that scarred my psyche rather than my body, things that a simple healing or resurrection spell won’t get rid of.

Such as Darkness’ arranged marriage.

… Damn it, her father’s gonna want grandchildren.

“Stupid…” she mutters, the irony thick as a boss-tier slime.

“Sorry,” I finally say, bowing not to the prejudice that the man is always wrong in any argument but to the wisdom passed down from my dear father back in Japan himself:

‘It doesn’t matter who’s wrong or right; what matters is who can make the other more miserable as the argument goes on.’

Thank you, honored Father. It is thanks to sayings such as this that I’ve become the man I am today.

“… I’m sorry for killing you,” she mumbles, still not looking up at me even as her arms wrap tightly around my neck.

“Aaaaand…?” I ask, about as leadingly as if I was asking, ‘Was it me?’ of a bashful, virginity-confused goddess.

“And… I’m sorry for being mad at—no. No, I’m not sorry for being mad at you ignoring me and my present to go off and fuck the ironing board.”

“Be nice,” I chide her.

“She’s not here. I can be as nasty as I want while she and Darkness do whatever the Hell they’re doing.”

“Hey, Aqua—”

“No. I… You just… You ignored me and then were nasty to me, and after I spent so much time… I…”

“Oi, if getting killed is not enough to wipe my slate clean, I don’t know what you expect me to do to—”

“Open it,” she says, finally looking up at me with a glare that is slightly less schadenfreude-inducing than usual.

…

“Are we talking about your present, or is this still a coded metaphor for me to undress you—”

“Present.”

“Ah.”

I, for reasons I’d rather not elucidate on, look around the sparsely furnished room and finally decide to sit on my bed, with Aqua still clinging tightly to me so she ends up sitting on my lap with her head at about the height of my solar plexus.

She lets go of the parcel.

And… Well, I guess there’s no more running away from it.

So I tug on the lace ribbon, and the elaborate knot unravels in a way that makes me kinda regret not preserving the ornate display that, once again, shows how masterful Aqua is when it comes to the most pointless of things. Except it’s a ribbon for a present, so it’s not so much pointless as… as showing a lot of time and care went into it.

I purse my lips and very much not cringe with embarrassment and self-reproach.

I mean, she did murder me. That balances things out.

Obviously.

“Come on…” she weakly urges me, her eyes never going away from mine, drinking every second of my pure, bashful musings.

…

That was sarcasm and irony. Just felt like pointing it out for no reason whatsoever.

“Kazuma…” she mutters in a way that’s not entirely dissimilar from her happy mumblings when she cuddled asleep on top of me after our first time, even if now it’s tinged with some… with something a bit, slightly, somewhat, not quite happy.

I wet my lips, and…

And undo the wrapping.

And I maybe kind of understand why she was so offended that I would throw it away.

“Is… Is this…” I don’t even finish asking as my eyes tear up.

“I had to use silk because there’s no polyester here, and silk’s the closest I got. And the teeth of the zipper were hand-crafted one by one, but it works. I made sure to sew each one in place, and… and it’s reinforced, so it won’t tear easy, and… And I worked so hard on it, only for you to…”

“I’m sorry,” I say, for reasons not entirely guided by parental wisdom, as I hold her close to me just before she starts her second daily crying fit.

“You are?” she asks, her tone quivering.

“It’s… It’s a wonderful present, Aqua. I shouldn’t have ignored you,” I tell her, shockingly sincere in…

Damn it. Stupid, invisible, flying onions.

Shut up. In this crazy world, those are most definitely a thing.

“Are you…?” she asks.

“No. Just… Just some dust. You’re a terrible maid, and I’ll have to discipline you,” I say, wiping dust from my eyes.

“Really?” she asks, her eyes so bright and clear…

… Damn it.

“Thank you, Aqua,” I tell her, the line desperately needing some sarcasm for it to make sense.

But she’s smiling so brightly, and…

And she’s given me a jersey. My jersey.

So I guess I should… could…

…

Damn it.

“I love you,” I tell her.

Only for her to start squeeing.

“You love me! You said it! You can’t take it back now!” she says, bouncing on my lap.

My naked lap.

With predictable results.

“Ah,” I say as she stops moving all of a sudden.

She… doesn’t quite reply.

It may have something to do with her whole body trembling after she has impaled herself on the upper half of my orcish pride.

“Are you… all right?” I ask a woman who seems in dire need of an exorcism.

“Gah,” she cogently answers.

“I… this is objectively not my fault. You can’t blame me for reacting to you jumping on top of me, with your breasts bouncing all over the place, and your skirt flying just high enough for me to see you aren’t wearing any underwear. This is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, all on you,” I patiently explain.

“Uck,” she expresses her agreement.

Or, at the very least, stops quivering.

It may have something to do with her eyes rolling back and her jaw falling slack.

…

Okay, see? When I claim to believe in gender equality? What would somebody think of a boyfriend who, after selfishly cumming all on his own, falls asleep on top of a frustrated girlfriend who’s nowhere near her own climax? Despicable, right? Nobody likes a selfish lover. A proper relationship is built on reciprocity, and nowhere is that more apparent than in a dead bedroom, where cooled passions can spell the premature end of a shared lifetime.

Now, reverse the genders.

A man who keeps making his girlfriend cum without caring about his own orgasms? That, at first blush, may even seem the epitome of a giving lover. Somebody to be valued. Maybe given a medal.

But that is a lie!

The gender reversal doesn’t change the underlying toxic dynamics; it only makes them that much worse because it invalidates the man’s suffering! The boiling seed in his balls raging to come out and baste the walls of a goddess’ womb! It is the epitome of unfairness, the very definition of discrimination, to believe that a man should be all right in the exact circumstances that all female-targeted magazines tell us are valid grounds for a woman to get a lover on the side!

Never mind that the man in question already has enough other lovers that some scheduling will need to happen in the near future! It’s all consensual, so it’s all right because, clearly, nobody ever consented to something harmful or toxic.

Thus, as Aqua’s quickly flowing juices count as non-verbal consent, and as much as I care about the bond between the two of us, my course is clear.

I need to fuck Aqua’s insensate body.

Yes, some may say that my reasoning is questionable and self-serving, but I’m only guided by my genuine beliefs and core principles, not to mention how much I value this relationship and the work I’m willing to put in so that it endures.

And, when the whole country claims that something wrong is right, when they tell you to move, it is your job to plant yourself by the river of truth and say:

‘No, you move.’

Or, in this particular case, you move Aqua up and down like a jerk-off aid, AKA an onahole goddess.

“Ah!” she says, somewhat more conscious than before I started my reinvigorating routine.

“Fuck, you’re tight,” I mumble as I pull her toward me so that her clothed breasts slide along my body helped by the smooth satin of her maid uniform.

“Ah… wha—hn!”

“Gods, why do you feel this good? It’s fucking unfair, you know? I just want to speed up. To move you as fast as I can and have your blue hair flying all over, your juices splattering on my lap…”

“Ka—Kazuma?!”

“Good morning, sleepyhead.”

“What the—you’re fucking me!”

“Well, yes. Yes, I suppose I am.”

She glares at me. Which is somewhat hilarious, given how she struggles not to have her eyes roll up when I bottom out inside of her.

“Harder,” she mumbles.

“Excuse me?” I say as I twist her back and forth, feeling the wonderfully snug fit of her pussy around my cock from different angles.

“Harder. You… You just told me you loved me. So take me,” she says.

I wet my lips.

And I stand up.

My hands tighten on her sides, my thumbs digging deeper into her belly until she gasps as her legs bend around mine, pulling herself closer to me before grabbing my wrists and holding onto them with a strength that reminds me that all of her stats except two are god-tier.

That includes stamina.

So I’m going to put that to the test.

“Fuck!” she says as I pull out all at once, my very tip just resting against her opening.

And then I thrust forward.

All of it. All of me. Everything I have, ruthlessly pushing inside of Aqua, her eyes slowly widening as her mouth moves without uttering a single sound until I grind against her clitoris, and her teeth click when her mouth snaps shut.

“You asked for it,” I tell her with a growl deep enough that I can feel it rumbling all the way from my chest to my rough throat.

“Yes,” she says with the closest thing to religious fervor I’ve ever heard from her.

So I pull her up, agonizingly slowly, as I back my hips, taking good note of the precise moment when her intermittently clenching opening gets stuck right beneath my cockhead.

And then I slam her down as I surge up.

Her legs fly up, the muscles standing out on her soft thighs visibly spasming, and her nails dig into the green skin of my wrists, close to hurting but only making me feel like she’s losing control. Like I’m making her lose control.

And, well, that part of me? The one who wants to make my lovers feel so good that they’ll be forced to cling to me? The one that wants to make them cum as many times as they can stand and then a few more for good measure?

I let it take the wheel.

So I stare into her eyes, ready to meet them every time she manages to focus enough to look up at me, and keep fucking Aqua. Keep jerking myself off with her body, but carefully taking note of when even a hint of a wince tells me it’s too much or when her eyes stay open and on mine for too long. I keep making her feel precisely as good as she can stand.

I…

I guess that I…

Okay, fine, I admit it:

I’m making love to Aqua.

I’m mesmerized by the way her face shifts every time I rub myself against her. By the soft, close-eyed smiles when I pause while inside of her. By the little, surprised gasps when I shift gears and thrust a few times slowly and languidly enough to make her savor it before going back to a rougher pace.

By her melodious sounds of pleasure. By the glimmering droplets on her brow. By shining sapphire staring up at me with open-eyed wonder and…

And…

“You never told me,” I say, leaning down so that my face is in front of hers.

“What?” she asks after the moment it takes her to focus enough to roll her eyes back in place.

“I said… you never told me,” I insist.

“… I’m sorry, but I did get your sword out of the pawn shop before you noticed.”

I blink at her.

She blinks back.

“I… I have some good liquor hidden under my bed?” she offers.

My eyebrow, finally back from its solitary retreat on the mountains to regain its perspective on the harsh world of bodybuilding competitions, arches.

“I swear I purified that tea before you drank it!” she says.

“What the Hell does that mean?!”

“Nothing! Absolutely nothing! I’m cock-drunk and rambling nonsense!”

“Then tell me you love me!”

“I love you!”

“Okay! Fine! That’s all I wanted to hear, and nothing about possibly poisoned tea—”

“It wasn’t poisoned! Just—wait a goddamn second—”

“Too late! Can’t take it back! Now I’m going to fuck you into a loose, disheveled, nonverbal mess so that you can’t!”

“I wasn’t going to—oh fuck!” she says.

And, well, I’m a man of my word. Which is somewhat easier to be when being a fuck-you-huge orc, paradoxically enough.

So Aqua is now clenching her teeth and hissing as I hold her steady in mid-air and hammer my cock inside of her, making her copious fluids splatter over our thighs as her nails go white against my wrists, her exposed arms all but vibrating with how tightly she holds onto me, as if afraid I’ll let her go and…

Oh.

“Love you,” I murmur into her ear, bent over her body as I shift to moving her with my hands.

“More,” she answers before biting my earlobe.

And I, rather than comically misinterpret what she just said and jerk her up and down fast enough that her weird hair loop will come undone…

“I love you, Aqua.”

Her hands let go of my wrists, and she falls back for a single moment before she clasps my cheeks between them.

And she lunges up.

Into a fiery kiss.

She… she twists her hips around me, repeating all on her own what I did earlier when I used her with my hands, yet again making me feel every crevice of her pussy. Making me hold steady as her tongue goes past my lips, and she frantically licks all over mine, her mouth shifting against mine as her whole body does between my hands.

“Love you. Love you, you stupid, asshole womanizer. You shitty NEET. You… You Scumzuma.”

“I’m getting some mixed messages, shitty goddess of unemployment and bankruptcy.”

She smiles.

And, going from the strain at the corners of my lips, so do I.

Which she takes as an invitation to clench her sex around my cock’s head when it’s the only part of me inside of her before she bites her lip and gives me the kind of look that would get rid of all our debts if she used it as a bartender. But NTR is a shit fetish, and…

And…

And her fingers are playing over the black satin top of her maid uniform, tugging at something I can’t see before she pinches a single thread, and…

…

Oh.

With just a single pull, her top falls open, looking precisely as it would if green hands had ripped it apart in a frantic, desperate bid to grope the breasts suddenly revealed to me past the scraps of black clothing.

“Oh, poor me!” she declares, throwing her head away from me as she rests the back of a slender wrist on her forehead. “Captured by a rapacious orc! Prisoner of the very beast I betrayed my noble companion to! What will I do when the lustful creature fills me up until I become pregnant?”

… Tempting.

“Just to be clear, you aren’t going to get pregnant, are you?”

“Just play along for once in your worthless life, you—hn!”

“Is that a ‘no?’” I ask, grinding myself against her clitoris.

“No!”

“Wait, does that mean you’ll get pregnant or that you won’t? It’s always confusing when—”

“Just fuck me already!”

“Okay, no need to yell at me!” I say, very offended on behalf of all the henpecked husbands who put up with this sort of nonsense for no reason whatsoever.

And then I, on behalf of all the henpecked husbands who put up with this nonsense for one very obvious reason, fuck her.

Not for long, though, because…

Well, because Aqua.

Because of how she writhes. Because of the sheer joy I can see in her eyes when they open before they close back and make her look like she’s having the happiest dream of her life.

Because she’s beautiful, and a moron, and caring, and devoted, and clumsy, and selfish, and…

And Aqua.

“Going to cum,” I grunt.

“Give it—to me!” she begs, her words interrupted when I make her let out all the air at once with a sudden thrust.

“Are you sure you’re not going to—”

“Give! Me! Your! Cum!” she says, punctuated by her own rhythmic clenching around me.

“Fine! But I’m going to be a terrible father! Just ask Megumin!”

“What does that even—ah! Fuck! Fuck me, Kazuma! Fuck—coming, coming, coming!”

Her eyes shut tightly enough that two glittering droplets come out of their corners, and she spasms all over me.

And then I fill her up.

My hips against hers, my hands holding her as steady as I can manage, her legs kicking behind me, her hands falling from my cheeks as her arms dangle limply from bare, elegant shoulders as her eyes roll back one last time, and her head falls, her hair only waving back and forth when each spurt of my seed hits her insides.

When I fill her.

When I come hard enough that my knees wobble and I take one step back to my bed, falling back on it and pulling her up so that she’s on top of me for a single moment, as straight as if my cock went all the way through her before she falls forward and her full breasts flatten against me.

“Kazuma,” she whimpers, immediately kissing a part of my breastbone with a slight, hollow indentation that seems made just for her and her tender lips.

“You’re mine,” I say.

“Yes,” she answers without thinking about it.

“My cheat item,” I repeat.

“Yours. Only yours.”

“My personal onahole goddess,” I say.

And she pauses mid-kiss, her lips pursed over my skin before she looks up at me with a radiant, tearful smile.

“A whore goddess all of your own,” she says, her tone quivering as she tries not to sob.

So I grab her and pull her up, dragging her over my body, making her hiss when my still-hard shaft comes out of her.

And I hug her.

Tightly.

Against me.

I feel like I could stand here for ages, just… just feeling her warmth and softness, her irregular breathing as she tries not to cry for the third time in a day.

But…

“I still can’t believe that you managed this,” I say, reaching to the folded clothes waiting for me on the now rumpled bed.

“It was expensive. And took a lot of work,” she says.

“Wait, expensive? How—”

“Try it on!”

I look at the suddenly enthusiastic goddess with a skeptical eyebrow that is pondering whether all those protein shakes really did any good, but she counterattacks with puppy eyes that should never work when coming from Aqua.

To my eternal shame, they do.

So I sigh and sit up, keeping her on my lap as I unfold a jersey jacket that has precisely the same design as the old one, even if it feels glossier and softer to the touch, taking a moment to admire the painstaking detail of the metal zipper before I—

…

“Aqua?” I ask.

“Do you love it? Do you love it enough that you want to rail me again and again until you’re too exhausted to keep finding ways to tell me that you love me?” she asks with those very same puppy eyes that are, once again, utterly ineffective.

“Why does my jersey have a skirt?” I ask.

She blinks at me before cutely (not) tilting her head to the side and raising a pointer finger to her lips.

“So that you can lift it up with your cock when you get hard at me going pantyless and bending over to dust a table right before you immediately push me across it and shove your cock inside of me,” she explains with the careful, slow tone that one may use to explain things to an Aqua.

And my eyebrow, having finally found back the fire and spirit that it needed to make a comeback to the professional circuit, twitches.

“You utter moron! What is the point of clothing that will still let my orcish spear rise in defiance! I need something to cover me, not advertise me!”

“Wha—after all the work I took to repurpose the pants, this is how you—”

“Repurpose the pants? Repurpose the pants? You had made pants?”

“Well, yes, but then I realized how much of a better idea it would be to—”

“Kazuma, Kazuma!” Darkness yells, barging into my room while dragging a drained-looking Chris behind her.

And a pillory.

I stare at them as they take in the scene before them.

Then, without a single word, I grab Aqua, stand up, and shove her inside the recently inaugurated pillory.

“Kazuma! Wait, Kazuma! You aren’t supposed to leave me here! The whole point is that you have to ravish me while I can’t fight back! Come back here, you shitty NEET!”

And, paying no mind to the screeching voice behind me, I step into a corridor that is slightly less linear than Final Fantasy XIII.

 

 

=========================

So, just in case you all thought the above chapter was too mild, sane, and sensible, the next chapter will yet again feature a guest of honor that will make everyone involved question their sanity.

Most of all, me.

Without any particularly revealing hints? It likely isn't who you're thinking about, even if it's also who you're thinking about.

Tee-hee~

Anyway! Sorry this one took so long; I'll do my best with the next one, but if all else fails, at least you'll get something for this year's Christmas Special, which is... rapidly approaching, so I'd better start working on that already. See you later!

As always, I’d like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: aj0413, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, and Xalgeon. If you feel like maybe giving them a hand with keeping me in the writing business (and getting an early peek at my chapters before they go public, among other perks), consider joining them or buying one of my books on Amazon. Thank you for reading!