The NTR experience

Let’s go back a few moments and see how we got here.

Debt is a truly atrocious thing to find yourself having. It forces you to do things your morals wouldn’t otherwise allow, throw your pride away and bow your head, or eat the chewy part of the chicken leg you can’t bite through. Eww.

As a result, Fantastasia and Dezechiel have signed up for a tournament. In a true Fantaschiel fashion- that is, without checking any of the rules or reading the TOS. And since they signed up last, they get to do the first battle right away.

“Let's start off the National Tournament of Rendentalia, or NTR for short,” the bald energetic announcer formally opens the tournament.

The pink-haired girl shivers. She has an odd feeling NTR has been going on since about chapter 6.

“The rules are simple, you have to defeat your opponent or force them to concede!”

So far so good.

“And with that, let us commence this wonderful series of battles to death!”

Dezechiel and Fantastasia look at each other. “Eeeeh?”

“On the off-chance you want to surrender, you can do so, but be warned. You will be tossed into The Unveiled Abyss…”

Oh, that’s not so bad. The reason is simple. The more you know about something, the less scary it seems. So even if The Unveiled Abyss is full of horrors beyond one’s imagination, since everyone knows all about it, they are no longer ‘beyond one’s imagination’ and thus drop a magnitude on the scary scale. This is actually fine.

“...and forced to pay a 10,000 gold fine!” the announcer finishes.

Fantastasia falls to her knees. They’re fucked. Having to deal with the Ones Beyond the Veil would be alright, but being sent further into debt would probably mean they’d have to give up a kidney each. And she only has one left!!

As she despairs on the ground, her partner approaches her.

“Fantastasia, that just means we need to win, doesn’t it?” With a confident wink and a warm smile, he offers the damsel in distress a helping hand. He can truly look the part at times.

About three and a half seconds later, he gets mauled across the arena just when she’s about to take his hand. She’s not even surprised at this point- the guy can’t look cool for longer than a few moments at a time.

Right, the battle has begun long ago.

With the incapacitated angel lying in the back of the colosseum, the crowd begins cheering the ogre they’re taking on. Fan-Fan sighs at the sight of her partner’s performance, then draws her spear.

The ogre smirks. “Don’t think I didn’t prepare for this fight,” he claims confidently, “I know all about the things you’re allergic to. And just so, dust happens to be one of them!!”

Without hesitation, Fan-Fan whips out the most expensive looking gas mask in existence straight out of her purse.

“This thing has Mythril NBC-77 SOF 40mm for a filter, so good luck with that!”

Even she doesn’t quite know what all of those letters and numbers mean, but it sounded cool and was the most expensive one available. So it has to be good!! She does look incredibly stupid wearing it though.

The ogre grunts. “No matter! I’ll just level you with my mace like that poor fella over there… huh?”

To his surprise, Dezechiel has already recovered from the blow.

“Yare yare daze,” the angel says a phrase he probably heard in some show during a cool moment, “it really looks like I have to do everything myself… huh?”

“Ah, sorry, I already knocked him out.”

By the time he finishes his edgy monologue, the ogre is already lying defeated with Fantastasia standing over him. When she notices Deze’s staring at her, she gets a bit pissed.

“What?? If you wanted to call dibs on this one, you shouldn’t have gotten blasted across the arena like that!”

“Dramatic effect, Fantastasia, dramatic effect!” the angel keeps scratching his head in disbelief. “Have you ever heard of it?”

“I’m gonna dramatically affect your chances of having children if you don’t shut up!” she threatens him while spinning her spear.

The announcer gets a little confused by the quick turn of events. “Err, it looks like a victory for Teaaam Fantaschiel!!”

The crowd goes wild. Some unknown duo has defeated the Ogre Gell, after all. This is going to be an interesting one.

“Tsk. Again with that weird non-canon name,” Fan-Fan curses, walking back alongside her overpowered, but utterly useless partner.

\\

“Hnnng, again with that weird non-canon name!” Lysterinn bites her nails. She hates that word with every inch of her being. “Everyone knows Dezerinn is the only canonical relationship around!”

Aaah, and that infuriating talk about affecting his chances of having children? If she so much as lays a finger on him…

Then, Rin-Rin comes to a shocking revelation. Oh, right. Wouldn’t it just be better for everyone if Fantastasia disappeared?

Now, we can kind of see where this is going. Fan-Fan wants to get rid of Rin-Rin and the other way around. But where does Dezechiel stand on this?

Well, we can say with utter certainty that anyone dubbed ‘playboy wannabe’ won’t be doing most of the thinking with their head, but instead, their Dick.

\\

Dezechiel awakens in an unknown place. When he stands to look aroud, there’s no floor, roof, no walls or anything of substance in sight. It’s almost like his consciousness is just floating in the void.

“W-Where am I?” he asks, more as a cliché and less to actually find out.

“This is the inside of your mind, Deze,” a familiar voice can be heard from behind him. He can’t believe his ears.

“Richard! Is that you? I thought I'd never see you again after that circum… circumstance?”
He might have jumbled a word there, but he’s just that happy to be talking to his old friend.

“Don’t worry, a wound like that, I can recover from,” Dick throws his luscious hair to the side. In fact, he looks exactly like a slightly smaller version of Dezechiel. The ’slightly smaller’ part has always infuriated him.

“I… how did I get here?” Deze asks.

“You got knocked out again,” Richard shrugs his shoulders.

“Eh? Third time today?” The angel doesn’t seem too happy about this.

“Yeah… it’s probably messing with your thinking a little.” The fact that he’s talking to a person inside his head is indeed indicative of brain damage. “Regardless, I noticed you’re a bit troubled lately… what’s the matter?”

Deze sits down on the non-existent floor. “Ah, well, you know, women…”

“Trust me, I know,” Dick assures him, “I’m a part of you, after all.”

“Riiight.”

“Trust me, Deze, what you need right now is to think. You’re standing before a choice. Fan-Fan or Rin-Rin?”

Dezechiel gulps. “Fan-Fan or Rin-Rin…”

“As a part of you, I am not going to be opinionated,” Richard declares his impartiality. “So, let’s discuss the pluses and minuses.”

“The pluses and minuses…”

The imaginary man leans in. “Do you want to go after the ruthless Fantastasia who never shows any affection towards you, beats you on every occasion available, treats you like shit, leaves you hanging and has a chest comparable to the sea level?”

The angel nods. “It’s true that she’s flat like a cutting board, truly a good point…” Somehow, that resonated with him the most.

“...or do you want to go after the wonderful beauty of the town, Rin-Rin, who reassures you with her love so much it’s borderline a psychiatric case, shows you so much affection it goes above and beyond any description of obsessive personality in medical literature and has a chest slightly bigger than that awful demon witch?”

Deze nods. Indeed, Rin-Rin is wonderful like that…

But still.

“Hmm, that ‘only slightly bigger’ part bothers me…” he admits.

Is that truly the only thing that bothers him??

Dick sighs. “I get your struggle. Maybe you should try naming what you like about both of them and decide based on that.”

A splendid suggestion coming from someone with such an ambiguous name. Dezechiel takes a bit to think.

“Well, for Fan-Fan, it would definitely have to be her luscious pink hair, her sharp chin, her long slender legs and slim build…”

The dubious man named Richard nods profusely. “Indeed, very good choices. Now what about Rin-Rin?”

Dezechiel puts a finger to his chin. “I don’t know… if I really think about it… her luscious cyan hair, her… sharp chin, long slender legs and slim build…”

Dick glares at the angel. It feels like the two of them switched positions. Or maybe they truly are one.

“Look, just pick Lysterinn bro, that’s who I’d go for,” Richard admits. He might have declared impartiality a bit earlier, but as the word suggests, his impartiality was only partial. And by partial, we mean he was having no part in it.

“Yeah, you’re probably right…”

As he says that, the imaginary man begins slowly fading away.

“Ah, it looks like my time has come,” Richard states, looking at his continually more see-through hands. “Seems like you’re waking up.”

Deze reaches out with tears in his eyes. “Dick! What am I going to do without your infinite wisdom??”

The fading man simply winks in face of the departure. “Don’t worry, my dear Dezechiel, just think with your head. I will always be a part of you…”

\\

“Dick!” Dezechiel shouts, reaching his hand towards the ceiling and almost falling off the bed.

“Idiot! What’s the matter with you! Why are you shouting weird things right after waking up?”

“Ah, Dez-Dez, you’re finally awake!”

The two familiar voices that greet him indeed belong to Fantastasia and Lysterinn respectively.

The angel runs his fingers over the top of his head, feeling a bandage on his forehead.

“W-What happened?” he asks, confused.

“You ran face first into the back of my spear and got knocked out,” Fantastasia instantly tells a very suspiciously sounding story.

“Well, anyhow, I’m just glad you’re safe!” the sweet voice of his future wife melts him like a chocolate on a hot summer day.

“I was just having a conversation with someone and…” Deze searches for words to use.

“Nope, probably just hallucinating. Looks like the meds did their magic then. Anyways, I gotta go to the toilet real quick, so if the two of you engage in something indecent, I’ll make sure to kill you both once I’m back, ok?” Fantastasia delivers that line with so much confidence you’d believe she’s done it before, then walks off like she didn’t just threaten them both.

Rin-Rin chuckles nervously. “Scary that one, isn’t she, hehe…”

Dezechiel grips his chest in frustration. How dare she just dismiss Dick, his best friend, like some kind of hallucination! Even if he’s gone, he will still live on as a part of him…

The cute girl leans in closer to the angel. With a soft voice, she whispers an impure thought into his ear.

“Hey, you wanna… chill together later?” The hot breath on his ear makes his head spin harder than a centrifuge at 10,000 rpm. Aaah, Richard, even if you’re gone, your legacy will live on! In fact, it is living on right now!

“You know it’s… not really possible with her around,” Lysterinn sounds very sorrowful, almost on the verge of tears. “But you want to chill together, right?”

Something’s been bothering Dezechiel since a while ago. Indeed, the cyan-haired girl mentioned a fascinating word. Chill. She’s even repeated it just now. Just now. What could the mystical world chill mean?

Going by definition, the word means to ‘make someone cold’. But that sounds much more like Fantastasia’s kind of thing. Indeed, this chill has a whole different meaning.

But even so, the true intention behind the phrase isn’t certain. Does she want to chill as in relax in a cafeteria? Or chill in the sense of going on a date? Oooh, a date with Rin-Rin certainly sounds thrilling!

Or, does she perhaps want to chill in the mystical sense of Net Flicks and Chill? Oh god, what if it’s that! Late at night, on a comfortable silk bed, watching movies together on a magical device conveniently similar to modern day television simply because the author was too lazy to think of an original joke for once… and then… and then…!

"Aah, Deze, I can’t bear to be apart from you… but that wench keeps ruining our level-headed pure love relationship!”

Yes! Yes! Yes! Level-headed! Pure love! He’s gonna go with that! It sounds better than love potions in a comically misplaced accident, that’s for sure!

Rin-Rin looks at him with her puppy eyes. “Oh, Deze, is there not a thing you can do to make it happen?”

The angel laughs. It’s readily apparent who wears the trousers in the Fantaschiel relationship.

Lysterinn gets so close their cheeks are basically rubbing together. He can feel her menthol breath hitting his nose the way a truck hits the average isekai protagonist.

“Hey Dez-Dez, what if I told you I can make her go away? Would you be willing to help me?” The girl's voice sounds incredibly innocent compared to the contents of her words. It’s like she believes what she’s doing is right so firmly that all morals fade into obscurity the moment love is involved.

There’s gotta be a word to describe a character so crazily in love. It probably sounds cool as hell, too.

Dezechiel gulps. After all, Fantastasia is his lifelong partner in crime- and we don’t mean crime as in ‘adventuring’, but as in literal crime. Over 300 years, the two of them have been in numerous accidents involving the law.

Would he be able to sell out his longtime crush, Fan-Fan, like that?

—-

This is not a cliffhanger. The answer is yes. Yes, yes, a hundred times yes. Seriously, you should know Dezechiel by now. He’s about as hard to read as a story translated into 300+ languages with font size 30.

In loving memory of Richard. You stood up for Dezechiel when no one else would.