The obligatory Fan-Fanservice beach episode

The world of modern economics is one riddled with many challenges. Let’s start with a simple problem.

Imagine you owe someone 30,000 gold coins. Subsequently, you manage to acquire 30,000 gold coins. Logic dictates you should be able to pay off your debt and live your life free of loan sharks bothering you at your every step.

However, that is not the legally acceptable approach. You have to pay a 20% tax, then add health insurance on top of that, oh, did I mention 30,000 gold coins is quite a lot? Extra tax ’cause you’re filthy rich. You’ve no idea what happened and somehow, 15,000 of those gold coins just went poof.

Fantastasia and Dezechiel are walking down a narrow stone road, each carrying a chest with about 15,000 gold coins worth of contents. Naturally, they don’t really want to lose one of those chests to legal procedures.

And Taxel Fraudman is just the man for that. Thus, they’re making their way to this mysterious man’s place.

“Hey Deze, you know how we won the 567th National Tournament of Rendentalia?”
The angel nods. “What about it?”

“I did some background checking and apparently, two years did not in fact pass while I was knocked out.”

Dezechiel shrugs. “Oh, yeah, I made that lie up so that you wouldn’t dig into my gambling expenditures too much.”

“Mmmm.” Fan-Fan is honestly handling this information a little better than one would think. This is because it’s been a while since it happened and this isn’t the first time she was bamboozled into thinking a large quantity of time has passed during her absence of consciousness.

However, there has been one unexpected development. The Fantaschiel duo no longer has any debt. What exactly happened off-screen?

With paid contracts, unless you have a middleman, it’s hard to be sure whether the other side can properly pay up. Naturally, you wouldn’t want to complete a job only to find out you’ve been scammed. Especially with bigger contracts.

And they just so recently happened to take on a 100,000 gold coin contract. Indeed, Dezechiel agreed to help Elmax retrieve his daughter from the villainous Lederkuchen. That being said, he was also smart enough to negotiate an upfront payment of 30,000 gold coins- just enough so that they can pay off their loan and focus fully on the job.

Unfortunately for Elmax, he severely underestimated the extent of the angel’s trustworthiness. The moment their debt was wiped, the demon-angel duo left the country and moved as far east as possible.

After all, they now have a surplus of 30,000 gold coins from their tournament winnings- enough to live a comfortable life by the sea in their own mansion.

Sorry Elmax, Lysterinn, but this is real life! You don’t just hand someone that much money!

\\

In a dark abandoned church, Lederkuchen keeps laughing. His daily routine consists of fifty evil villain laughs, five nefarious deeds and at least two hours of baking. He’s getting seriously good at all of them.

Even though there’s no ceremony taking place, the pews of the frigid stone building are filled to the brim- not with people, but motionless puppets. The floor is lined with various body parts, all the ones Hans has been testing for his newest ’creation’. Indeed, few living creatures remain in Buddhapest after the Gods have left this town.

In front of the altar stands a cross. And on it, Lysterinn, each of her limbs tied to the wooden construction with a thick rope.

Hey, doesn’t this story contain a little TOO much bondage?

“You won’t get away with this!” she protests, squirming around. “Dezechiel will surely come to rescue me!”

Lederkuchen stops his training and walks over to the defenseless girl. He grabs her by the chin, running his fingers through her cyan bangs.

“Indeed, nobody would abandon such a beauty. And that’s exactly what I’m counting on!”

He turns to the audience of puppets and roars with laughter, the sound echoing thousandfold within the small church. The puppets begin giggling in a high pitch, unanimously clapping their hands in rhythm with their creator’s voice.

“You!!! Don’t tell me you intend to kill him??” The girl’s face reflects the fear of losing a loved one.

“Yes! Yes, I do!! Once they barge onto MY land, they have no choice but to face their inevitable end! And now that I have you, there is no doubt! In fact, they are probably on their way right now! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

“Khakhakhakhakhakha!” the animated audience laughs with their leader.

However, Lederkuchen overlooked one crucial detail. Dezechiel was, in fact, not coming. Far from it, actually.

\\

Stylish swimming trunks on, a dating guide in hand, Dezechiel scouts the beach for cute chicks. And as his teachings say: ’Seek and you shall find’. Indeed, the resort is filled with beautiful girls, start to finish! In the sea, under the parasols, near that stand with utterly overpriced refreshments- you can’t escape them!

He opens the book in his hand. “Right, the pickup lines, where were they again? Page 104, yes, hmm…”

Before he has time to revise those wise words, the pole of a parasol stabs right through the pages, pinning his copy of ’Pickup 101- a dating guide for DUMMIES’ to the ground.

“Don’t tell me you seriously brought that embarrassing piece of crap targeted towards lonely losers to the beach.” Fantastasia, rocking her white one-piece swimsuit and Jordan Belfort sunglasses, quickly disrupts the lonely loser’s plans.

“THE SACRED TEXTS!” Deze cries, falling to the knees, trying to salvage what’s left of his last hope of not dying alone.

Fan-Fan sighs. The beaches of Okichiwawa are definitely one of the better places to pick up girls, but she’d rather protect these unassuming lasses from the terror that Dezechiel can be whenever a woman gives him the slightest bit of attention.

“Not even gonna compliment my swimsuit?” she bickers.

Dezechiel turns to her with a stone cold face. “You know, those pads will slide out once you go into the water.”

Fan-Fan gags. “As expected of the pigeon brain, the first thing he looks at are boobs.”

The angel turns back to retrieving the book from under the parasol. “Well, other than that, it’s pretty cute. That one-piece definitely suits you.”

The demon girl blushes. The world may never know whether that’s from the unexpected compliment or the embarrassment of being seen with the loner.

“Uhm, hello!”

Fantastasia turns around after her shoulder’s tapped. To her surprise, a beautiful black-haired girl is the perpetrator of this act. She’s so hot it’s making her swing a little.

“H-Hey,” she responds while fidgeting with her fingers, “w-what’s good?”

“May I have a word with the gentleman over there?”

And just like that, the one and only hope for a yuri arc within this story fizzes out like a faulty firecracker.

“Eh? Him?” Fan-Fan panics while aggressively pointing at her partner. “Did he harass you or something?”

“No, it’s just that, he seems like the person I’m looking for.”

Watch people die inside, this time, featuring Fantastasia. The girl was ready to reconsider her sexuality, only to once again be left hanging like a childhood friend in an indie-produced visual novel. It feels like even though the National Tournament of Rendentalia has ended, its legacy keeps on living. She reluctantly turns to the angel.

“D-Deze, there’s a girl who wants to talk to you.”

With a kick of a foot, the sacred texts are covered by sand, abandoned by their sole worshiper. Dezechiel gets in front of the girl who’s looking for him so fast he probably crossed a speed limit.

“Hello there, wonderful, my name is Dezechiel. You are…?”

Fan-Fan yucks while silently laying out her towel. That was awfully cheesy. This is the guy she’s getting overtaken by???

“Nekketsu. Nice to meet you…”

Nekketsu? Neko? These two words push out every other thought process from the angel's mind. A real life catgirl? Approaching him? They were right when they said Okichiwawa is a heaven on earth!

“You seem lost, little kitten,” Dezechiel casually places his hand on the girl’s shoulder. “How may this gentleman help you out?”

Fantastasia facepalms. This is awful. This is what modern media does to a person’s brain. He’s not just a clown; he’s the entire circus.

She opens up a can of FanFanta and decides to watch. She wants to see him getting beaten in real time.

Nekketsu, the black-haired beauty, embraces the angel. “Ah, Dezechiel, I can’t wait any longer…”

Fan-Fan spits out her FanFan soda. Wait, that actually worked? THAT ACTUALLY WORKED? What sort of twisted reality do they live in where THAT works?!?

Deze smiles, repaying the embrace. “No problem, lost kitty, let’s find you a new home.”
The black-haired girl whispers into his ear. “Can’t wait to avenge my brother.”

Before he has any time to react, a dagger stabs him in the side. He can’t even move a muscle- his whole body is paralyzed. Cursed weapon, of all things?!

Fantastasia wants to jump in and help, but she’s quickly snagged by a mountain of a man standing behind her.

The mysterious girl tosses her hair. “My name is Nekketsu Hen and that over there is my younger brother, Tekketsu Hen. Does that ring a bell?”

Dezechiel browses through his thoughts, painfully discarding the ones of how he was going to have six children with this woman. Hen, Hen, Hen. Oh.

Hen, Tai.

The man they accidentally killed in the tournament.

Right, he was from some sort of a clan. Oops.

This is bad.

Nekketsu walks over to the paralyzed angel, nudging him with the tip of her shoe. “We’re going to take you to our father, the 420th leader of the Hen clan, Reiketsu Hen.

Fan-Fan sighs with relief. After all, this is only the second worst case scenario. Right after Dezechiel scoring a chick. With that horrific approach, nonetheless.

And just like that, the story reaches its fifth point where someone’s being kept captive. Splendiferous.