Story: Tainted Gestalt

Okay, so this one is a little bit funny and cute, and I really hope you like it even though it doesn't progress the plot too much really.


There is one quality that must never be underestimated no matter the circumstance and no matter the situation. Ataru Moroboshi was hideously, supernaturally unlucky. The evidence was there for all to see. The very fate of the world relied upon him, meaning everyone was going to watch him fail and fail completely miserably. He would be the victim of derision and bile from all he met, and all he did not. Over the coming weeks he would be blamed for failure, when none could succeed. His fortune would fall to the lowest point possible.

But the trick to having ill fortune was that it could not truly be ill fortune all the time. Otherwise a person might adjust to it, expect the worst and it would all wash right off their back. No, real bad luck had to involve a certain magic ingredient. Hope. Without hope, there can be no despair. Indeed, it could be said that the darkest despair was found when hope was raised and dashed in a way that one could not possibly see coming.

All of which is a roundabout way to say that it began to rain. Not that Ataru noticed, but you can bet your life that everyone else did. It is kind of difficult to ignore when the centre of the world’s attention, with all the cameras and spectators and all the people at home watching, suddenly transforms from a boy into a busty girl. Jaws slackened around the world, a certain pair of parents fainted dead away, scientists either threw up their hands or rubbed them with anticipation, and Lum -

“Wh-what in the world?” she mumbled to herself. “Since when could a human -”

“You didn’t ask!” Ataru roared, leaping through the air with her eye gleaming a peculiar gleam. <b>”Your ass is mine!</b>”

Ataru could not have picked a worse time to try to emulate what he knew of Western culture. Unnoticed by him, the command burrowed its way deep inside Lum’s brain and settled right on in to make a nice home for itself. By the time it was done and she was thinking clearly again, the busty girl - wearing a sleeveles shirt that was quickly pressing itself up against her chest due to the rain - had her pinned to the ground and was grabbing hold of her horn with great enthusiasm.

“I did it!” Ataru yelled. “Hahaha! Got you! I saved the world!”

The humans erupted with surprise and relief. They all surrounded him in a great big circle, applauding and cheering him on. “Congratulations!” they all yelled, cheering on their triumphant hero. Unnoticed within Ataru’s head was a connection to a young boy that felt a kind of reverse deja vu - The feeling that he’d just gone through something he would one day go through again.

Unnoticed by all of them was Lum, who was blushing and staring at this girl with increased fascination. Her ass belonged to this girl. This was an unshakable fact within her mind. Well. Why not? She was curious about the transformation. It was obviously not an innate human thing, probably a mutation of some sort? Her mind began to calculate quickly. She yearned to study this strange phenomenon. It would look good as a thesis. Live among the humans for a while, examine their culture from within. And, of course, while she was there she would be near to the boy/girl that owned her ass. So, with that in mind…

“Darling!” she cooed. “I accept your proposal!”

“Huh? What’s that?” one of the nearby humans remarked. “A proposal? Mister - Ahem, Miss Moroboshi, did you just propose marriage to Lum the Invader?”

“What?” Ataru stammered. “Miss Moroboshi? What are you? Ack! I didn’t even notice! When did it start raining?! Wait, what was that about a propo-”

Lum quickly shut her new fiance up by grabbing at one of the barely concealed, rather large breasts. It was easy to disguise it as a display of affection, but she wouldn’t have this ruined quite so easily. It wouldn’t be too difficult to arrange the details. She could easily move in with him, and begin her examination then. She nuzzled against the soft wet body, found it easy to enjoy the fascinating sensations and decided that while she was at it, she might as well have a bit of fun as well.

Once again, ill fortune had found a way to raise Ataru’s spirits only to dash them in spectacular manner. Now, he was the centre of public attention for two other reasons he’d rather have nothing to do with. Or perhaps that should be <i>she</i> for the time being? Either way it didn’t matter because now Ataru was going to have to suffer in all new, completely different fascinating ways.

<hr>
Kyon couldn’t sleep a wink. Could anyone blame him? Oh, he’d been able to nod off for a couple of hours, but his dreams kept on waking him up. Or rather it was probably the dreams the others were having. Was there even a difference anymore? Probably not. Kyon wasn’t even in his own body right then. Instead he had borrowed Keitaro’s. He would have asked permission, but Keitaro was somehow able to sleep in the middle of it all. So here he was. Wandering around and trying to clear his head. Nothing else intended, just borrowing the body for a little wander.

The situation itself was, let us be blunt, completely insane. A fever dream. Describe it to anyone else and they would believe you were mad. They might even be right. Maybe he was mad. But his thoughts kept going back to what that jerk prince had pointed out. Each of the others were starting something off. Shinji, piloting that giant robot. Lelouch, beginning a long dreamt of plan of revenge and rebellion. Ranma, an unwanted engagement. Usagi, a life as a superhero. Tsukune, arriving at a school for monsters. Ataru, playing a game where the whole world was the stakes - Oh, would you look there, he’d even won! And Keitaro, the person whose body he was currently occupying, beginning his life as the male (sometimes female) manager of an all-girls dorm.

What about him? What about his life?

The only thing he’d started recently was, like Tsukune, a school year. The difference was that Tsukune’s school was absolutely not normal by any stretch of the imagination. Wheras in his case…

Absolutely mundane. With one exception, one singular exception everyone around him was absolutely normal. Normal interests, normal desires, mundane thoughts and mundane abilities. Nothing of note had happened to him that day, at least, outside of the whole multiversal gestalt incident. The others all had something <i>outside</i> this happen, but for Kyon… He had a date, and that was about it. The most mundane out of the others was Keitaro, and let’s be honest here: How likely is it that a young man would be made the manager for a girls’ dorm when he’s barely any older than the eldest of them? It smacked of romantic contrivance. Most of them had a hint of that lying underneath somewhere.

Which didn't exactly bode well for his upcoming date with Haruhi, now did it? Oh yes. The weird girl sitting behind him, certain that he was - Pretty much what he was. An example of the kind of weirdness she was looking for. Still, what did it say about his life compared to the others that the weirdest most interesting thing he'd had to deal with was something like that? And how would he be able to convince her that he was, in fact, completely normal when he was, in fact, completely not? Was he bound towards a romantic future with that weird girl? Was she going to drag him off into surreal adventure? If his life really was a story in the process of being interrupted, like the others looked like from a distance, then what sort of strange shape was his story <i>supposed</I> to have taken?

“What do you think you’re doing?” asked a young woman’s voice. Kyon turned around, and nearly fell over. Yes. He could easily admit that Haruhi was rather magnificently proportioned, but this other girl rather blew her out of the water. Kyon concentrated and summoned the name from Keitaro’s unconscious, slumbering mind. Naru Narusegawa. Wearing a pair of teddy bear print pyjamas, which she seemed to be deliberately adjusting to try to show off as much of her cleavage as possible.

Kyon swallowed nervously. The girl had eyes that showed irritation, but her heaving bosom was also showing. The weird part was, she didn’t seem to care all that much about it, either. Almost as though she was doing it deliberately, but why would any girl do this… Unless maybe she actually liked Keitaro? If so! Fine work, that man! Why, drawing the attention of a beauty like this was a positively astounding accomplishment! Particularly for someone who seemed so shy and withdrawn and uncertain of himself.

“I was just, uh, clearing my head,” Kyon willed Keitaro’s body to say. “I was having trouble sleeping, or at least I thought I was until the stunning redhead stepped out of her pyjama trousers and spanked herself. Suddenly, I was left uncertain about what was real anymore.”

“Hmph!” Naru said, continuing in her persistance to find a variety of erotic poses designed to flaunt her body as much as possible. “Just as I thought! At the first chance you have, you show your true colours! Pervert!” she declared, making absolutely no move at all to cover herself up. If anything, the sole fragment of clothing still left on her body was beginning to slide teasingly off her shoulders. Dammit, Kyon, stop staring at her like an idiot, you’re only proving her point! “Pretending to be a girl, when you’re really a guy with a freaky curse! Honestly, what was Granny thinking letting you be our manager!”

He didn’t know what ‘Granny’ was thinking, but he did know one thing. He absolutely should stop thinking about how smooth her skin looked. How perfectly formed and perky and bouncy her breasts were. How easy it would be for him to reach out and stroke that leg. How breathtakingly sexy this girl would look in a ponytail…

Instead, Kyon dug deep and thrust a towel at her to cover her distracting body up. She refused it, tossed it aside and continued flaunting as if nothing was even wrong. Well. So much for that. Kyon nervously swallowed, dug deep once again and ran back towards where he had found Keitaro’s body in the first place. Well, to be a bit more accurate he did that about three minutes later once he’d built up the reserves of his psyche a little bit better.

When he opened his eyes again, he was back in his own room staring up at the ceiling and listening in as Ataru received congratulations over his victory in the tag race. Somehow, Kyon felt that he should probably be a little bit more careful in future.

<hr>
Needless to say, something very odd was happening. Needless to say because, hell, have you been paying attention to this so far? Odd things happening are a dime a dozen. Were this series of events a wide open field and odd events a sliver of trash left carelessly within, then it would surely be the case that this was a metaphorical city dump. Odd didn’t quite cover most of it. A gestalt formed from eight minds living eight very different lives in very different worlds. How could that be anything approaching normal or sane?

Except that there was one odd trait that none of them had picked up on. Not yet, at least. Kyon was, in his way, the closest to notice it just now but was rather, shall we say, distracted from it by the oddity itself.

It all tied into one singular quality that none of them had picked up on quite yet. Their minds were bound together by a cube of tremendous power, but that very same cube was, metaphorically speaking, a complete and total pervert. With a little assistance from Ataru, it had been a trivial matter to manipulate them into erotic-like situations. The Geass and the Jusenkyo curse were also helpful factors. But it was not - and again it is necessary to anthropomorphise the cube a little - quite satisfied with just that much. So it began a more direct assault upon their libido, under the pretense that some of Ataru was bleeding through. Well. Perhaps that <i>was</i> happening, but the cube was certainly facilitating it. This is why - for example - Kyon had such difficulty tearing his eyes away from Naru, and why the other members of the gestalt were having the wildest, most sexualised dreams any of them had ever had. As for the other two that were awake, Ataru was practically unaffected by this while Shinji was watching Misato’s swaying rear end with rather more interest than he might normally have. Which, on account of Misato practically oozing sex appeal, was an amount of interest that bordered on obsession.

Each of these eight would be affected quite differently. Some of them were already at least a little bit perverted, while others were absolutely not. But the cube was - again, not quite literally - patient in its dealings and would wear them down little by little, pushing them with obviousness and subtlety into perverted situations, until, one by one, they embraced their new outlook with wide open arms.

1. Shinji moves in with Misato. Some water spills on him.
2. Lelouch wakes up next, and thinks carefully about the new situation he’s in.
3. What sort of dreams are the others having?
4. Ataru deals with the fallout of the tag race.
5. Something else