Story: Universal Hentai Balance

And now for a strange idea that occured to me from nowhere. First update on the concept, and there are plenty of directions it could potentially go.
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The universe is a mysterious place full of wonders and terrors, dreams and nightmares. Aliens! Ghosts! Wicked spirits! These things and more all exist within the universe of Urusei Yatsura! And all of it, every single little bit of it has it in for Ataru Moroboshi whether it realises this truth or not. Pity the poor pervert. Well. Perhaps you could. Assuming one could get past the fact that an analysis by the entire universe has decreed that he is the absolute most perverted sentient being alive on any world known to support any form of life. One could determine the speed of light as the universal constant, upon which various laws of physics seem to depend.

But Ataru’s perverted nature was another. The avatar of hentai. He that exemplifies perverted traits. Nowhere in the universe was one more single minded than he. Ataru’s lower head ruled his actions, ruled his reason the majority of the time and only ever stopped if something directly harmful to his very well-being came into play. After all, it’s hard to hunt for nookie or acquire a harem when one is laid up in hospital or too hungry to move.

This seems like it would be a bad thing. It isn’t. It really, really isn’t. Because there’s a trick to this setting that nobody had noticed yet, but they would soon. Oh, how they would notice soon! Certain things are required to be at a certain level, and since they were a little low on perversion the universe created Ataru to compensate. By the time he had grown up, had himself a family and eventually - tragically and inevitably - died the universe would have made up for it with new forms of life ready to take the slack. So long as nothing happened within the next ten years or so to impede things, there should be absolutely no consequences at all and the universe won’t have to pick up Ataru’s considerable slack by compensating with ridiculously extreme and urgent measures.

“Oh, that’s it!” Ataru yelled at the alien love-of-his-life-not-that-he’d-even-say-it-except-on-his-deathbed. “Why you gotta shock me all the time?!”

“Darling! You were checking out that girl!” Lum yelled back.

“Which girl?”

“The one in the short white skirt crossing the bridge.”

“Actually, I was checking out the girl jogging past the bridge in a shirt slightly too small for -”

Another bolt of lightning flew through his body, leaving him twitching nervously for a few minutes. “Hey, come on now! Stop that!”

“Stop checking out other women! Then I’ll stop shocking you!”

“Hmph! You don’t just shock me when I go flirting, you know!” Ataru slouched indignantly. It was true enough. She shocked him for just about every little thing!

“I do not!” Lum floated right in front of his face, lightning arcing off her back. Not exactly helping your case here! Ah! But then something happened. Something strange and terrible. Something that honestly scared him even more than when she went all thunder goddess on him.

Lum was smiling. Not the genuine kinda adorable smile that he’d never admit made his heart jump ahead in time a little bit. No. This was the “I have a plan” smile. The kind that should send any rational person fleeing to the nearest cellar in terror.

“What if we made a bet, darling?” Lum said. “If I electrocute you before I catch you flirting with or checking out other girls, you win. If you flirt with girls or check them out before I electrocute you, I win.”

“What sorta stakes are we talking about?” Ataru asked, feeling rather certain that he’d probably win this bet in a manner of minutes. Ha! He had way more self-restraint than Lum could ever dream of!

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And so it began. Nobody even noticed at first. Nobody saw the universal constant shift just slightly, and nobody saw the end results coming until it was very nearly too damn late to even do anything about it at all. With Ataru deliberately avoiding any sense of female flesh that he could possibly find, many thought he was simply sick. Or that Lum had finally broken him in. They didn’t understand the enormity of it. They didn’t quite comprehend the consequences. Maybe if they had they would have acted sooner. But they didn’t. Nobody could have dreamed of it.

The first affected were - obviously - those he spent the most time with. Lum, Shinobu, the rest of his class. They were closest to the effect, and so they were first to fall under the influence. What sort of influence? Well, perhaps the first discernable example would suffice. In the changing room before gym about two days into the bet, Shinobu’s eyes would linger upon the other girls around her just a little longer than she’d intended. There was a strange beauty about them, she would think. Funny that she never noticed before. Never thought about it before. But, over the course of about a week it became more and more prevalent in her thoughts.

For the moment it was largely influencing her actions, with minor influence upon her thoughts. But… That would change very soon. It would change for many people as well over the course of the week. A field of perversion was growing from that tear, the universe was trying to restore things to balance, and in so doing accidentally tipped the scales too far in the favour of perversion. The only hope for the entire universe was for Ataru Moroboshi to return to his perverted ways before the effect spread too far to be contained.

One would think this would be the most simple save-the-universe tale ever told. One would be quite mistaken.