Hiatus Gifting This Unfortunate Guy With Blessings

It got really late when I and Chris said goodnights to each other and I left her room. The inn got already pretty silent at this hour and I went straight back to my room. I was so happily tired that I almost fell face down on the bed and fell asleep immediately.

Happy people can be really forgetful at times! It was the cursed bed!

When I realized this I immediately enabled evasive maneuvers!

Which simply meant rolling down the bed onto the hard floor.

Haha! But I was not a fool! I rolled down together with a quilt covering my fall so it only hurt … a lot.

With a somehow lesser amount of good feelings inside of me, I snatched the pillow, crushed another sign-up sheet, and went to lie down on the rug. With how long I have spent together chatting with Chris I probably didn't have a lot of time before another round of noisy 'ghostly attack' would come.

Maybe I should've just flown out from the window and come back in the morning? With Aqua's assistance I could get rid of my human form's tiredness with a flick of her finger.

Speaking of her, I wondered what Teyla needed an archpriest for.

Without thinking about it too much I fell asleep.

***

The usual nightly performance started. At least it looked like usual at for the first two minutes or so. Various items flying around, wardrobe doors being slammed against the furniture. But surprisingly I couldn't see any obviously-placed sign-up form.

Then a change happened.

A lamp was placed in the middle of the room and it started flickering ominously. This wouldn't be too different from the norm but I soon noticed that the various object flying in front of this lamp created a very sophisticated shadow play on the wall.

From silhouettes of demons laughing boisterously to a giant spider obliterating a city with a laser beam. There were even depictions of a dullahan attacking adventurers or slimes eating them. As time went by more and more scenes were played out.

I was seriously stunned at today's performance. It could be said that it was 'scary' but probably only to people that have never seen a horror movie.

My vision was totally glued to the show. Today I literally felt like giving a standing ovation.

Midway through a very cool scene of a Demon King destroying a hero's hope the show abruptly stopped.

"Why?!" I exclaimed enraged. It didn't even last half an hour! They kept bothering me with that cheap poltergeist crap until the sun came up but couldn't handle even an hour of entertainment?! I tried rushing out of the room and urging that priest to continue but the door wouldn't budge, as always.

I transformed into a mouse, went into a hole in the wall behind the wardrobe and peeked into the corridor. As always I couldn't see anyone directly behind my door but currently, two women there were having a heated discussion there.

"-please, we had a deal for the duration of the entire night!"

"The guy should be satisfied already! Do you know how hard it is to do this stuff?! I need a break!"

"But-"

"I don't wanna! My cute Axis follower begged me to do this one thing for her but enough is enough! I still don't know why this guy is so important that you treat him so well!"

Huh? What? What is Aqua doing there and what is she talking about?

"This customer is very important indeed and just loves very scary performances. He paid a very large sum, so please continue!"

"I don't do performances for the money but I might consider doing ten minutes more if you give me some of that fancy bubbly-"

While listening to their conversation I got an idea. I used my mouse nails to enlarge the hole that was just not wide enough to let me out but with half a minute of digging made it possible for me to fit through.

When I got out of the hole I sneakily went behind Tayla without being spotted and transformed into my Crimson Demon form.

"Hello, can I help you with something?"

The look on Teyla's face was priceless. It transformed from panic after hearing the 'important customer's' voice behind her to a scared expression after seeing my face. I wasn't wearing the mask for the first time in front of her.

Before Teyla could collect herself Aqua looked from behind her and said:

"Oh, here you are, where did you guys vanish before?! I was so bored!"

"Ummm… there was an emergency so we had to leave. By the way, what are you guys doing in front of my room?"

Aqua looked confused after hearing my question and the innkeeper started sweating bullets. No idea if it was because of her ruse being on the brink of discovery or because of seeing my smiling face together with my crimson eyes.

Aqua moved away from my door so she could finally take a good luck at my clothes. My question seemed to escape her mind completely because she started loudly laughing and asked:

"What are those clothes?! Ahahaha!"

"You like them?" I kinda got used to Aqua's irreverent ways so I answered to her laugher with a wider smile and a spin around to show off my cool cape's glorious fluttering.

"They look so weird! Haha! Only a Crimson Demon would-" Aqua's gaze finally reached my face and she immediately froze.

"Who are you?"

Now you ask that?! And she seemed to genuinely ask that! So I gave her my genuine answer:

"It's me, your teammate Satou Kazuki. We were on a quest today together and took down a Demon Gator."

"No way, the Kazuki I know is a rookie Ranger and not a Crimson Demon."

Wait, was she really confused right now? I look almost exactly the same and sound exactly the same. She even saw my face before so that wasn't a mask's fault. Was she making fun of me? She had to.

I haven't shown this form to anyone but Megumin, Chris and Wiz but she couldn't be seriously asking me who I was, right?

But her suspicious gaze aimed towards me didn't change even after what would be considered enough for a joke.

Well, it took some time but Aqua finally realized it was indeed me without me having to change into a human in Teyla's presence. Who, by the way, stood there like an inn's beam through my entire exchange with Aqua.

With that matter out of the way, Aqua seemed to remember something, looked towards the unmoving Teyla and asked:

"Hey, by the way, do we have a deal? Ten more minutes for the bubbly?

That seemed to restart the innkeeper's brain and she absentmindedly answered:

"No, that's okay." and started walking away.

"Wait! Okay, okay. How about fifteen minutes?! Hey, you! Do you hear me?"

Aqua followed the innkeeper downstairs while she moved like a robot.

It didn't look like there will be more of those ghost attacks in my room in the following days. But other people might fell victim to this evil innkeeper so I had to do something further.

Anyways, that was satisfying.

How a single chat with the right person can change one's future…

I wouldn't be able to confront Teyla face to face before tonight.

...

After thinking how much a single friend can help you I remembered about one acquaintance of mine that would be a perfect fit for destroying someone's reputation in good cooking, which Chris pointed out, is the strong suit of this inn.

His initials weren't G.R. Well, he didn't have any initials at all.

But first I needed to 'ask' if helping me was possible. So without waiting around I came back into my room, closed the door, opened the window and flew out of the 3rd floor into the night. My destination wasn't that far.

When I was above a certain hay pile I changed into my mouse form and did a perfect dive nose first into it. And fortunately, there was the guy I wanted to meet.

"Hmmm? Oh! It's the newbie! You look like a different mouse now!"

Once again I somehow understood what the coolest mouse on the planet - Aniki was saying… um, squeaking? I now confirmed that I haven't had any delusions out of stress during my prison break out and could understand animal speech while I imitated said animal.

"It's the scary little brother!" x3

The same little mice trio was also present in the nest. Did they always speak in unison?

"Hello Aniki. I wanted to once again thank you for your assistance in the prison. Thanks to you helping me out I managed to sort everything out."

"Glad to hear that, yes. With what do you come here now, though? Why would a human go out of his way to thank a lowly mouse?"

"A human?" x3

And indeed Aniki seemed to understand perfectly that I wasn't a mouse. That made me think about Aqua not being able to connect my Crimson Demon form with my Human form which is almost the same in appearance.

I wanted to cry a little for Aqua right there and then but I didn't want to seem uncool in front of Aniki.

"I've come to you with a proposition together with a request."

"Then let's hear it."

Although Aniki might have a little bit more advanced cognitive functions than a certain goddess his simplicity was that of a mouse. When I mentioned that I knew a place with lots of food he just asked: "How much food we are talking about?"

I didn't even get to the request part before he agreed to come and raid the inn's food storage. All he needed to know if it's going to be safe and I promised to take care of anything that might threaten them.

With only that much of negotiations, Aniki and his three followers immediately headed out to another mice nests to gather as many mice as they could. I even didn't have to show them the way since explaining the looks of the building and its vicinity was enough for Aniki to know exactly what I was talking about.

I flew alone back to the inn and started looking for an easy way in and out for the mice. There were no obviously open windows on the ground floor or any holes so I had to work from the inside.

After getting inside my room, I went out to the corridor and walked down the stairs. I checked the area for people and unsurprisingly I didn't see anyone at that hour. The innkeeper Teyla seemed to be also heavily asleep judging by the loud snoring. Like me, she didn't sleep much in these last few days because she was keeping watch on the priest that was causing the furniture in my room to act crazy.

I chose one window with view on the street, opened it, and waited. Just as I started having light doubts about a mouse's ability to navigate multiple streets on such short notice I noticed mouse's head in the drain on the street.

It was Aniki. He spotted me and immediately knew it was me. He looked around the street to see if anyone was coming, came out himself from the pipe and stood on watch while instructing other mice to come out.

I internally gulped when I saw their numbers. There were at least a hundred of them! I changed into my mouse form to not scare the other and beckoned the way. In a matter of seconds, a hundred mice infested the inn.

The last one to come in through the window was Aniki.

"So, newbie, which way is the food?" He asked in jovial tone and I pointed to already opened kitchen door.

The army moved as one. At first, every mouse looked for something it liked and ate their fill. After they were done eating they started gathering the lightest stuff and taking it out to the drain outside the inn while carefully watching around not be spotted.

Suddenly one of the mice exclaimed. "There's a human here!"

Everyone stopped in their tracks suddenly. I started sweating profusely because I knew it was my job to take care of any human that threatened my mice colleagues.

But it turned out that alarm was about… Aqua sleeping in the closet while hugging a bottle of alcohol. She was totally smashed so I told the others to not mind her.

When mice took everything the deemed movable I asked each one of them to leave a 'souvenir' wherever they liked. Supposedly mice modus operandi said that the least times you do it while harvesting food the better because there's less chance for being found out. But upon my request, the inn was soon filled with many 'souvenirs'.

One of them even tried leaving one on Aqua but I asked him politely to not do that. With their business in the inn finished mice started flowing out of the window until only Aniki and I were left out.

"I owe you again, Aniki."

"No, we only gained and lost nothing. I owe you. If you ever need any help then you know where to find me."

So cool. Aniki is so cool!

We said our goodbyes and he left to the drain pipe. I waited for a little bit, closed the window and then headed back to my room.

In the morning I was woken up by innkeeper's shouts followed closely by Aqua's.

(A/N: Achievement unlocked: Piper of (Hamelin)Axel.)

(A/N # 2: I just watched Konosuba's movie - Legend of Crimson. It's totally breathtaking! For those not lucky enough to live in the US or Japan, youtube search will help if you want to watch it! But do it fast, before it disappears! And remember to also support it when it officially releases!)