Chapter 263 – Cuddles, Commitments, And A Couch

"So... this is the universe I was from?"

"Multiverse, but yes."

"And this place is like a space full of multiverses?"

"Exactly."

"I knew there was something above my bosses, but I never considered how it looked."

"Yep. This is what the top of the deity food chain looks like. Do you need a break or are you ready for more?"

"Just a moment. My head is starting to hurt from all this new information."

"Take your time, hon. I know it's a lot for you to take in. John can help you with the headache if you need."

John tuned the two women out and leaned back on the couch, content to just sit back and look out over the void filled with multiverses. John had intended to explain things to Aqua once she stopped shaking, but the moment after he introduced her to Xiaolin, his goddess lover took the waffling goddess under her care like a tiger minding one of her cubs. She dressed her in a blue-and-white dress similar to the one she wore back in the parallel world, though this one had a small diamond cutout on the chest that exposed a small amount of her cleavage, and the hem was lower, covering her thighs almost down to her knees.

John approved of the changes; he didn't want to force his opinions on her, but he was always concerned that the clueless goddess would moon everyone around them when she moved. She was a bit of an enigma; boisterous and loud, but innocent and seemingly completely unaware that people would consider her an object of desire. 

She probably thinks they are worshiping her... I guess they kind of are, but I don't think that was the way she wanted to be worshipped. 

He activated Card while he sat there, curious if it worked now. To his surprise, it did.

[Name - Aqua]

[Race - Demigod (Human/Mermaid Base Races)]

[Class - Arch Priestess]

[Age - 299 999 (20)]

[Birthday - August 1st]

[Aliases - Lady Aqua, Useless Goddess, Plumbing Goddess, Debt Goddess, Goddess of Party Tricks]

[Likes - Alcohol, Water, Aquatic Animals, Plants, Gardening, Swimming, Smut Novels, Warm Hugs, Being Worshiped, Singing]

[Dislikes - Being Called Old, Undead, Devils, Demons, Being Scared, Being Dumb]

[Virgin - Yes]

[Cup Size - D]

[Sexual Preferences - Innocent Romance, Sub Tendencies, Being Led]

[Favourite Positions - No Experience (She didn't even watch when she was omnipresent). Loves Being Carried. Novels She Reads Have Given Her Many Wild Thoughts.]

[Aqua may look dignified, but she is careless, carefree, cocky and boisterous.]

[She is easily influenced by the people around her and will follow their lead.]

[Due to her poor Intelligence stat, Aqua is absent-minded, heedless, impulsive, and slow-witted. She has extreme difficulty remembering anything beyond a few days that she doesn't consider important, and has a hard time 'reading the room' which has caused her problems in the past.]

[Her luck stat is also abysmal, which, combined with her low intelligence, leads to many of her plans failing miserably. This had led her to just shutting herself away in heaven when she isn't needed to reincarnate people and reading trashy romance novels with a bottle of wine.] 

[Her flaws include, but are not limited to, being overly sensitive, manipulative, wasteful, prideful, greedy, and spoiled. When she is focused, she doesn't like these things about herself, but those moments of clarity are fleeting.]

[Despite her many flaws, Aqua is still a very loyal person deep down, even putting her life on the line to defend people she cares about. She wants to be better, but without someone taking her hand and forcing the issue, she will fall back into her hedonistic lifestyle before much changes.]

[Current Thoughts - Xiaolin is nice, but this is too much... I'm never going to remember all of this! Can I just sit down and have a drink? John is drinking, maybe he will take pity on me if I cry- FOCUS YOU DUMB, DUMB! Please, for once in your life, focus.]

He closed the card and picked away at a few of the finger foods on the coffee table, shaking his head at this new information. For the most part, it was confirmation of what he already figured out about her, but there were still a couple of interesting tidbits. He hadn't known how bad her luck stat was for one, and the fact that she was apparently part Mermaid was another. 

I guess that must be her mother... a different Goddess of Water maybe? I'll have to ask her sometime. 

He raised his glass and examined it. He hadn't really noticed the lack of depth perception after he lost his eye, though there were plenty of times when he was sparring with Rumi and Yu that he misjudged an incoming fist or foot. Now that he had it, it felt weird, almost alien, to be able to see normally again. 

Not sure what this True Sight is supposed to be, but storing spells sounds amazing. I just need to figure that part out, and I'll be set. I still don't have the power to use Cure on fifty thousand people, but this would be a good step in the right direction. I wonder what spells Aqua has... Wait... if she can still resurrect people... this will change my plans entirely. 

He thumbed through his party window, but she was no longer part of his party. He hadn't noticed she had left while he was jumping around in Suzy Q, not that it was obvious that there were any changes to his party; he had to dig to find anything in the menus. 

"Are you serious? My life was based on a story from that Earth Prime?" Aqua said loudly, bringing him out of his thoughts.

"In a sense. Stories from the Prime spawn all these other multiverses, where, inside of them, the underlying structure is designed so that the conditions are present for those stories to happen. For instance, your story spans only a short part of the timeline, a couple of years at most. However, you had a long life before the story began. None of that is written about you back in the Prime, but it is something that happened. You might say these multiverses are all flushed-out histories of all the stories ever written. The Akashic Records in 4D format, if you will."

"I thought taking care of a couple of planets was rough... Wait- Are there more of me floating around down there?"

"Yes... Do you want to see a short moment from one of the worlds you are still in?" 

John blinked. He never even thought of that before. Was there another him floating around in the multiverse? 

Without waiting for Aqua to reply, Xiaolin waved her hand, and a wide screen popped into existence. It showed the fields outside of Axel on a nice, sunny day. Aqua and a brown-haired teenager were standing there, looking at a giant toad a short distance away. Suddenly, the Alt-Aqua darted towards the frog, golden power enveloping her fist. She shouted "GOD BLOW!!!" and struck the toad in the chest...it wasn't very effective.

The toad then leaned over, swallowed the top half of her body, and lifted her up high in the air. She was kicking her legs uselessly as her bare ass was exposed to the sky.

"You really are a useless Goddess!" The teenage kid said, then drew his sword and ran towards her. "I'm coming, Aqua!"

The screen went dark.

"Ahh... what was that?" Aqua said, covering her ass even though she hadn't been the one turned upside down.

"That was your fate if you and Kazuma went toad hunting. You and Megumin ended up being the bait so Kazuma could kill the toads. Then you would waste all the money you made drinking at night, blackmailing Kazuma to give you more money... You were always going into debt, getting into more trouble, then going further into debt."

"Was I really... Am I really that bad?"

"Nothing is set in stone, hon. Kazuma also enabled you, so you took advantage of him. I will say, after a few years, you all became good friends. He and Megumin actually started to date at one point, but that was when he finally stopped being a complete NEET."

"Wait, he dated her but not me?"

"You... liked to make fun of him when you caught him masturbating, and you would do it in public. Not to mention, you kept coming up with schemes that put him further and further in debt, so that he would have to work hard to rescue you and bail you all out. For all the good you did, you would also ruin almost everything time and time again because of your schemes. If anything, you were like the bratty younger sister to him, even though you are the oldest one of your party."

"That... sounds like something I'd do to a NEET." Aqua sighed, then turned back to the void. "I need a few moments, please."

Xiaolin placed a hand on her shoulder, then walked over to John and joined him. He wrapped his good arm around her and gave her a quick kiss in greeting. "Thanks for looking after her."

"My pleasure. Deities that were never mortals to begin with have a skewed world view, and it strikes hard when they lose the divinity that made them immortal. She is going to need some serious cuddles later."

"So, she isn't a goddess anymore?"

"No. Technically, she is a Demigod now, but she basically has as much power as you did when you arrived at DEN... well, more, since she isn't physically broken, but don't expect her to be running around casting spells like she still had unlimited mana. She has some knowledge remaining, but most of her spells were done using her divinity."

"Ah, so no resurrection spells?"

"No, though if you have a pool of dirty water, you could toss her in it, and in a few hours it will be perfectly clean. Other than that, she has some basic healing and water magic remaining. She is going to need to put in a significant amount of work to even get close to where she was before."

"That's fine. We will manage. Now, tell me why this pearl was in Alec's pocket? I thought I fished it out of the clam for you as part of our date?"

"Well, you know I'm not supposed to just fix everything for you? What I can do is put things in the gatcha that you might draw... After a bit of thought, I modified the pearl to give you a new eye that would help you on your journey."

"I thought everything was random?"

"Most of it is, but if one of our viewers has something they would like to see, or wants to give you some sort of boost, they pay the price, and we will fudge things a bit. Like right now, Fate wasn't here to see Aqua off; he was actually here to give you an offer in person."

"Really? I wonder what- Wait, what do you use for payment? I remember Alec mentioning something about donations or something on that first day, but I don't know what."

"Power, support, favours. It can be many abstract things. We use that power to turn people into DEN beings, find and research new worlds among the Omni that would be good for the doors, and pull things from one multiverse to another. It's all in support of our entertainment industry here, though a better analogy would be our Bread and Circuses campaign to keep the higher beings from stomping out multiverses in boredom."

"I'm not sure I completely understand how... any of this came about. Humans and other life seem so small compared to the powers you wield. I don't see why you would bother with any of this."

"Because people are the base of all our power. Without their imagination, their ideas, their beliefs, none of this would exist, and the Omni would collapse into the lifestream and destroy it all." She said, nuzzling her face on his chest. "Don't worry about it too much. Now that it is going, it's almost a perpetual motion machine, with only minor inputs from the higher beings to keep everything running smoothly. DEN is just another one of those minor inputs." 

They cuddled and chatted idly on the couch for a bit about his new eyes’ abilities as Aqua stood at the far end of the patio, holding one of the multiverses in her hands. She sighed, then pushed it gently back into the void, and walked over to them.

"John... Wait, are you two... a couple?" She asked, cocking her head cutely to the side.

"We are."

"What about Mica?"

"She is also with me, as are Darkness and Luna. Behind almost every one of those doors, I have women I am close to, or several women. Actually, there are two of them trapped in this Pelican right now, along with a little girl I'm adopting." John said, fishing the Pelican out of his pocket. 

"And they are good with this?"

"Well, most seem to be fine with it. It's a rather abstract thought when time stops for you when I leave a world. I might be gone for months, yet no time passes for them. Some of them will be in for one hell of a shock when I show up missing an arm." He said with a laugh, then gestured to his free side, "Here, come sit down and tell us what's on your mind. Because I highly doubt it's about my love life."

She nodded and sat beside him, leaning forward with her hands clasped together over her knees. "I'm just... scared. For as long as I can remember, I have been up in heaven, overseeing a few worlds and guiding souls to heaven on occasion, though I usually leave that to the Angels. I didn't really do anything; sometimes it would be centuries before the boss even checked in on me, and I can't even remember the last time I saw my mother. My past is blank; I can't even remember being younger. I just kind of existed.

Then this Devil King showed up, backed by some unknown powers, so I started to become a little more active, supporting my junior by sending reincarnators to her world. That was fine for about a century, but suddenly I was teleported down to the surface with you, turned into a mortal, and... well, died. Now, I'm going to be forced to follow you to all these worlds, many of which are at war, and I only have a sliver of my former powers. I'm terrified of that, John. I saw your memories, and some of those were absolute nightmare fuel." She said, then looked up at him with those beautiful aquamarine eyes of hers, tears rolling down her cheeks. "Will... will you protect me? Please?"

"Of course I will." He said, lifting his stubby arm up. She took the invitation and leaned on his right side. "Just think of it as an adventure. A wild, weird, omniversal adventure."

"I'll try." She replied, sniffing away her tears. 

The three of them sat there for a bit in a comfortable silence.

The contestant, the companion, and the camerawoman. Cuddling on a couch, watching as the omniverse floated by.