Story: Aquafication

 

 On the scale of life forms, the virus exists at one end while the Goddess exists at the other. Just above Gods. Because Goddesses were pure pristine beings, while Gods would stick it in anything with a feminine figure. Aqua was skipping happily through the street, grateful to her superior immune system for thoroughly eradicating that stupid virus. Ah! She felt alive! Ah! What a wonderful world it was that she was -

"Achooooo!"

Okay, maybe she wasn't one hundred percent recovered yet, but it was just a matter of time! Any second now she'd -

"Achoo! Achoo! Achooooo!"

Spray droplets everywhere like a machine gun from Kazuma's world. Blegh, whatever. It wasn't a problem. Really, it wasn't! Whatever virus she was carrying, it would surely be much weaker after being subjected to her Goddess immune system. As such, she could skip and frolic all day long, all throughout the city, taking in the sights and breathing all that fresh air -

Oh, that's right, fresh air in the middle of a city at this level of technology meant you were likely breathing a lot of unsanitary things. Never mind! She could go window shopping. The time honoured tradition that it was. Tralala, she was skipping and frolicking through the streets, taking careful note of the clearly inferior fashion sense the mortals all seemed to be sporting.

"Hrm? Lots of blue highlights going around..." Aqua mused. Then shrugged and continued on her merry way. Aha, a fruit stall! She trailed her fingers along the apples, trying to figure out which of them was the nicest and juiciest. Then she sneezed into her hand, pulled out some gold coins from her pocket with the same hand, and dropped them into the shopkeeper's hands.

And you wonder how things like this spread so quickly. Terribly sorry if this triggers anyone's 2020 vibes, let's just try to have some fun, ignore the unsettling parallels...

Anyway, while eating her apple Aqua noticed a pair of bickering young women, both of whom had mostly light blue hair with little streaks of yellow or brown in them. Huh, sort of the opposite of what she'd noticed earlier. It was a fine colour to have in their hair.

"How dare you accuse me of trying to con you, hrmph!" one of them said. "I'll have you know that this is a foolproof get rich scheme!"

"Pyramid scheme, more like it," the other said. "You should join my support group! We're reasonably priced, and all you have to do is sit there for an hour acknowledging how great I am!"

Pft, that old pair of scams? Aqua rolled her eyes and decided to leave the pair of idiots to it. Then again they couldn't be too stupid, they did have the intelligence to have excellent decision making in hairstyles. Still, something was nagging away at the back of her mind. Something she should be paying attention to. Something really obvious.

"Kyahaaha!" a street performer with bright blue hair laughed. "Yes, yes, aren't I amazing? Look at this party trick! Wooo!"

Aqua watched as the street performer used a very basic version of the water party trick that she'd been steadily levelling up. Hrmph! At most level one, what is she -

"What's she boasting about for showing off a level one trick?" one blue haired man asked.

Huh, that was weird. Probably nothing to it... though watching this performance was making Aqua feel really certain there was something important she should be paying attention to. She yawned. She sneezed, then wiped her hand on a passerby's back.

"Ah! That's it!" she yelled. "How could I be so oblivious?!"

From this point, Aqua ran off at a dead heat. She zigged and zagged through the streets like a drunken clown with a peg leg, lacking any kind of grace or fluidity in her movement. Though if you asked her she'd describe herself as flowing through the crowds like a river. In no time at all she reached her destination and pushed her way inside.

"Listen up!" she yelled. "Today... Is the half price sale for ale at this here tavern, and I will not be leaving... sober!"

Huh, that was weird. The half price sale for ale wasn't usually this popular, was it? All she saw was a sea of blue hair, from various busy women wearing rather short skirts, and shirtless men who were surprisingly ripped.

"One more for me, thanksh!" one patron yelled.

"Oopsh, I sheem to have purified my friendsh ale, turned it to water."

Huh. Huh! That was really strange. Really very strange. This blue haired thing was becoming a real fad, wasn't it? Well then, that could only mean... It could only mean that her greatness as a Goddess was finally being recognised in this dump of a city! Hrmph! Aqua put her hand on her hip and coughed for attention. She got it - then everyone went back to squabbling for beer.

"Hey!" she clapped. "Do you know who you are ignoring?! I'm Aqua! The one, the only, the original!"

Blank stares of total disinterest were shot back at her. Then the mass purchasing of cheap booze continued. Oh, of course. It only makes perfect sense. If there was an Aqua craze going on, then it's only natural that they'd be used to fakers pretending to be the real deal. Scummy people like that exist everywhere, after all.

"Oh, is that Aqua?" asked a strangely familiar man with blue hair. "Do you remember me? We worked in construction together a while back. Are you still hanging out with that Kazuma NEET?"

"Kazuma... NEET?" Aqua repeated.

Ladies and gentlemen, this was the thing that got her to realise what was actually going on. Yes, really. After everything else that she'd seen, that made her come to the correct conclusion.

"Oh no, somehow a virus has tasted my divinity, and is spreading me around the city!" Aqua cried. "That's terrible! That's awful! If everyone is as wonderful as me, it will diminish how special I am!"

Or it could cause a bunch of clumsy idiots who are too full of themselves to realise they were propelling the world towards disaster. Some readers of this thread had described this as being like a specific bimbofication variant, but an actual bimbo outbreak might have been less harmful than this. While Aqua isn't that stupid, she's just smart enough to be thoroughly incompetent, and wouldn't get distracted by sex nearly as easily as a bimbo would be.

In any event, she rushed out of the tavern biting onto her thumb. Everywhere she looked she saw it. Blue, blue, watery blue. She jumped, she shrieked, she begged "how could this have happened?!" and then sneezed and coughed on at least ten random passersby who had somehow not acquired any blue in their hair at all.

"Truly, this disease must be insidious for it to spread so far so quickly," Aqua said, using the back of a man's coat to dab at her nose while he looked over some fruit in a stall. Yes, it is a mystery how it spread so far. "Hrmph! I must find a way to contain it before that stupid God of Plagues shows up to ruin everything! Ugh, he comes from that really annoying trinity of Gods, too.The last time we met he was talking about coming up with a disease that turned cute girls into catgirls, so gross!"

"At least I'm not as gross as the Goddess coughing and sputtering everywhere."

Grk! The man in front of Aqua slowly turned around, and... yep, it was him. The God of Plagues. Oh no, she really hated this joker, this clown, he always made a complete fool out of her with his intense sarcasm and dirty tricks! How appropriate for a God of Plagues!

"Aqua, I'm here to help," the God of Plagues said. Look at him. Standing there all tall and pale, like he hadn't been outside in months - yet still as handsome as Gods tended to be in spite of that. "It's quite obvious that you are not to blame for this, the chain of events spiralled out of control long before you were capable of being aware of it."

Guuuuhhh! This false care, this phony consideration! It wasn't real, and she hated it! This was just another horny God trying to get her dress on his floor, and she wasn't having it! She knew how it was, it was all a long con. He'd spend a few millennia trying to impress her, and then once she spread her legs, boom! The new Godling is your problem, not his! She'd seen it happen before, she'd see it happen again, she wasn't going to let it happen to her. No sir, no ma'am!

"I bet you set this up, didn't you?!" Aqua accused. Aha, yes of course! "Yes, yes, you want me to get into bed with you, so you set me up with this stupid ah-ah-ahhhhchoooo! Stupid plague!"

"Really now Aqua, is that any way for a Goddess to behave?" Cue a charming smile. Of course, of course. "When you scowl like that, it makes your pretty forehead wrinkle -"

"The only thing wrinkled is your brain!" Aqua accused yet again. "A hare brained scheme like this... Sort this mess out yourself! It's you responsibility, not mine!"

There! Harrumph! That was him talked to! Now, the best thing for her to do would be to return home, curl up into her bed of straw and try her best to stay out of the way so he didn't have another chance to flirt with her yet again. No, she wasn't passing the buck! No, she wasn't being lazy!

And no, she hadn't quite realised this plan wouldn't work because the stable they'd been sleeping in had burned down.