Hyperdimension Neptunia

Subject 13: Mars

Prologue


A/N: Hello readers, some of you who have been reading 'The Rising Darkness' would probably be saying "Why are you doing another story at the same time?", well, this story was created over a month back when I wasn't feeling too confident about 'The Rising Darkness' but since that seems to be going alright at the moment – plus I'm giving it some time until I gather some more ideas for the next few chapters – so I decided to share this fanfic with everyone. This doesn't have any ties with my other work since it is set in another Hyperdimension.

My characters are my own and I do not own rights to any character that has been created by the minds in Idea Factory and Complie Heart. Sorry in advance for people who don't take well to blood and gore, I intend for this story to contain them.


Gamindustri, a land filled with magic, monsters and girls that transform into busty ladies in skin-tight swimsuits whilst holding dangerous and sharp futuristic weapons, well some of them are not very busty when they transform, but never tell them that to their faces – these are the goddesses. There are eight goddesses and out of them there are four main goddesses who rule over the nations of Gamindustri. These are:

Planeptune, the Land of Purple Progress, ruled by Purple Heart or Neptune,

Lastation, the Land of Black Regality, ruled by Black Heart or Noire,

Leanbox, the Land of Green Pastures, ruled by Green Heart or Vert,

Lowee, the Land of White Serenity, ruled by White Heart or Blanc.

These nation, along with their goddesses, stand side-by-side in peace to protect the land from any danger that dare to show itself. Events seem peaceful enough, but there is always something lurking in the dark places of the world, there is always something waiting to show itself and strike a deadly blow against the goddesses, there is always something that these villains seek above all else: power. Whether it is rogue organisations or a mad god or goddess there is always something that threatens the peace of Gamindustri.

In this case there was something that was brewing that could very well topple the very foundations of society. What if there was something that could defeat the goddesses? What if there was something that could even make the villains quake in fear? What if a god emerged from horrible and painful experimentation to wreck havoc upon the world?


"Are you sure it will work this time?" asked a buttoned up white coated scientist, apart from the white lab coat he also had light brown pants, white shoes and short orange hair. He was talking to an older man who had white hair with a very shirt ponytail at the back of his head, brown eyes and a small white beard, he wore a white lab coat that wasn't buttoned up which showed his dark blue collared shirt with a pocket over the right breast, black pants with a leather belt and dark brown boots. He looked rather old yet he also looked quite fit, far fitter than he should be at his age.

"Maybe, I cannot be a hundred percent sure you know," replied the oldish man. "We've done the same thing over and over again for the last few months and all we get are bad results."

"When you mean bad results do you mean when the subjects inexplicably explode, die of blood loss or have several organs destroyed before death or do you mean that we are using up our last supply of these strange crystals on the various subjects that we have?"

"Both of them I suppose. Speaking of those crystals we're starting to run out again."

"Already? Sir, you do realise how rare those things are, right? It took us ages to find even one around Lastation, not to mention it took nearly two weeks for one of the teams to find one in Planeptune."

"Of course I know how rare those bloody things are, but we need more if this experiment is to succeed. Send Team 3 to Lowee while Team 4 heads for Leanbox, tell them they have a week to find any more of those crystals and if they fail to find even one then they'll have no rations for three days."

The scientist nodded before leaving the room. The room was made of concrete walls and a concrete floor, the room was fairly large and there were several desks with people working on computers and machines, these were all spread out across the entire room. There was a large screen panel in front of the oldish man that had various different screens from across the facility, it showed all of the different locations in the facility from the lunch area to the living room and even the hallways outside everyone's bedrooms, but several screens showed a more darker scene to life in the facility. These screens showed a small group of people in concrete cells with steel bars where the windows and doors should be, the cells were not fairly large but were big enough to contain a bed, small desk and an area which was blocked off from camera view that had a small concrete wall surrounding what appeared to be a very small bathroom. There were twenty cells in total and only five were occupied, the first eleven appeared to have been occupied but the small splatters of blood in cells four, five, eight and eleven gave an impression of what happened.

Cells twelve to sixteen were occupied by young to old teenagers, all of them were wearing the same outfit: orange overalls and black boots. They all looked miserable but the young man in cell thirteen looked more than miserable, in fact he looked incredibly pissed off and repeatedly glared at the security camera that was installed near his cell. From his viewing room the oldish man, who incidentally was in charge of the whole experiment, looked at the young angry man through his security camera and sighed, the young man was the one who caused the most resistance against the scientists and the guards who patrolled the entire facility, this had caused some… personal one-on-one time between the two of them, a few guards and a set of equipment that would look at home in Iris Heart's torture chamber. After the young man – who was mockingly called 'Subject 13' – spent day after day in a torture room being tortured by whips, electric rods and other sorts of sharp, pointy and deadly objects that caused utter pain, he had become even more violent towards the guards and scientists that happened to pass by the cells.

Subject 13 carried the scars all across his body and areas of his arms and legs, but it just wasn't physical scars that he carried, it was also mental scars as the young man could no longer remember where he had been born, his home, family or even his name. Subject 13 had light brown hair that was short and covered parts of his ears, forehead and back neck, his eyes were blue and was huddling up on the wall that set up the barrier between cell thirteen and twelve. His hands were clenched and he was snarling at the security camera, as if he knew that the oldish man was looking at him through it and was uttering a challenge

As the oldish man looked away from the screen a woman entered the room, she was wearing what every single scientist wore in the facility: a while lab coat and whatever clothes they had underneath. This woman's lab coat was buttoned up and thus no one could get a good look at what she was wearing but they could see her long black hair and her lab safety shoes. She approached the oldish man and stood next to him as he turned around to get a look at her.

"Ah, I've been waiting for you to turn up," said the oldish man. "Is everything ready for the next two experiments?"

"Yes, Maximilian, everything is ready, but are you sure that it will work this time?" responded the woman.

The oldish man, apparently named Maximilian, shrugged in response. "I cannot tell if it will work, but people always learn from their mistakes, those who fail to do so are complete idiots and don't deserve a place in this world. We'll just have to wait and see if it will work then. Get the guards to escort Subject 12 down to the science lab, then have them wait on standby for Subject 13."

The woman nodded and left the room, the automatic glass sliding door closed behind her as she left, Maximilian returned to looking at the screens and his gaze fell upon the screen that looked at Subject 13 and Subject 12, the two of them looked as if they were trying to converse in conversation from either side of the concrete wall.


"You alright over there?" Subject 12 asked Subject 13.

"Don't worry about me, keep your worries for yourself," replied Subject 13. "You may be next for experimentation."

"I know that, but you always stand up for everyone who remains and you always get tortured because of it, we have a right to be concerned for you."

"And your concerns warm my heart, but none of us should get too close to each other as I doubt any of us are going to get out of this alive."

"I know, but we should at least have some sort of happiness before the end, don't you agree?"

"I suppose you are right, it's better to die with happiness in your heart than to have bitterness and anger embedded instead. Hey, do you remember your name, age, home and family?"

"Sort of, my name is Jake, I'm around fifteen and my home is somewhere in Leanbox, my family… well, I don't actually have a family, I'm an orphan. In fact, the girl who was in cell eleven was also an orphan, and apparently so was everyone else. I find it suspicious that they were all orphans, and there is a chance that the others who remain alive are also orphans. Anyway, what about who?"

"Thanks to all those days, if not months, of torture I cannot remember my name, my age, where I am from or even my family, I just can't remember anything at all. If only I had my hands around that old man's neck I would get some answers out of him, my first question would be why we're being experimented on."

"The goddesses have truly abandoned us." Jake sounded depressed as he said that, his hope was waning quickly.

"You take your believe in them too seriously, they wouldn't be able to help anyway as it's been months since we were captured and imprisoned here, besides, aren't goddesses supposed to be divine beings who live far away from us humans?"

"Just because you don't believe in the goddesses that doesn't mean that you can just say that to us, we need to believe in something for what strands of hope we have."

"Well not me, I put my faith in no one, and I plan to keep it that way. Anyway, I don't even know who the goddesses are."

Before Jake could respond to the comment the sounds of heavy boots were heard coming down the hallway, then came the sounds of keys and a group of four heavily dressed guards, all of them wearing grey padded armour and helmets that would have been useful in combat, they also carried guns that ranged from the usual rifle to a sub-machine gun and one even had a sniper rifle with a leather strap that could be strapped to the person's back, one also carried a large claymore with him, one of the guards fumbled around with a bunch of different keys and earned the constant groans of his comrades.

"Come on, get on with it," groaned one of the guards.

"You'd have trouble with these damn keys if they all looked the same!" responded the guard with the keys. "Aha! Found it."

"About bloody time."

"Oh shut it you tramp!"

After the door was opened the guards pulled out Jake from the cell and before they began to march him towards the science lab Subject 13 managed to get a good look at him for the first, and possibly, last time. He had blonde hair that covered his back neck and the sides of his head, his entire forehead was covered in a spiky manner. Jake looked at Subject 13 and smiled at him.

"Good luck, in this world or the next," he said before he was escorted ruthlessly down the hallway towards the lab.

Subject 13 looked at the young boy as he quickly disappeared down the hallway, fortunately for the remaining 'subjects' the walls were sounds proof as the lab wasn't far away, and everyone who was sent there from the cells never came back, those who did were dying and the oldish man, Maximilian, was 'kind' enough to allow them to go back to their cells to die near the others. Those who died in their cells would die from blood loss, those who never returned was left to imagination, but Subject 13 could guess that they died horribly.

"Lets hope that Jake dies quickly if whatever they're trying to accomplish fails," mumbled Subject 13 to himself.


Jake was strapped to a steel table, everything around him looked frightening as there were various tools that looked like it belonged in a butcher's shop hanging around all over the place, there was a large table on his left that was occupied by various different tubes filled with a red liquid, there wasn't much in it but it looked deadly, then as he continued to look around he saw that the test tubes were connected by a single tube with a thin metal needle-like nozzle at the end, the tube hanged down the side of the table. There were little signs of blood around the lab and if he hadn't been strapped down to a table then he would have believed to have been in a science lab from a university that was run by a retired butcher, but unfortunately for the poor Leanboxic citizen that wasn't the case, and he knew it.

The steel door opened and two figures entered, it was the oldish man, Maximilian, and his female assistant, the one with the black hair. Maximilian walked over to Jake whilst putting on rubber gloves, he looked down at the boy and smirked at him.

"Are you ready?" asked Maximilian.

"Are you?" responded Jake.

"That's a better response than what some of the others had come up with before they… departed. And as a matter of fact I am ready for this, I hope that this time I am successful in this experiment."

"And if not?"

"Then you're dead."

"Thought so. Go on then, do it."

"Eager. Good."

Maximilian then walked over to the table with the test tubes and picked up the tube with the needle-like nozzle, made sure it was connected to the test tubes and walked over to Jake. With precise stabbing skills he stabbed the needle-like nozzle into Jake heart, causing the young boy to cry out in pain as tear began to flow from his eyes and blood ran down from the puncture wound, a machine was turned on and the red fluid began to flow down the tubes and into the boy's heart, once it had been absorbed into his heart Jake let out a blood-curling scream and began to shake uncontrollably, not long afterwards blood began to flow quickly out of his mouth and his veins bulged, this continued for several minutes until Jake felt his heart explode and what seemed like gallons of blood poured out of his mouth, nose and a rupture in his chest. He died painfully.

"Bugger," was all Maximilian could say as he stared at the mess before him. "Well, at least it wasn't as bad as Subject 5's death, he had his head explode."

His assistant had trouble trying to not throw up at the comment or the sight before her, death was something that she wasn't used to but her boss, Maximilian, seemed as if it was a normal occurrence for him. He pulled out a radio from his pocket and began to make arrangements for a clean lab, the last of the crystals to be brought over and for the dead body of Jake to be thrown into the incinerator. He then looked over at a guard and grinned at him.

"Time for Subject 13."


Subject 13 was now strapped to the same table Jake was previously strapped down onto, except it was now clean and there was no sign of the Leanboxic citizen at all, the brown haired boy was quick to realise that his acquaintance was long dead. He looked up to see Maximilian holding a knife and what appeared to be a small red crystal with jagged points on it, it glowed in his left hand as he put it away in one of his lab coat's pockets, he then approached the young lad with the knife in his right hand and prepared to cut into his exposed chest.

"So, where are you going to cut into?" asked Subject 13 calmly. "I guess that you're gonna put that crystal somewhere in my body, but what about that red liquid over there in those test tubes? You going to use that as well aren't you?"

"You're good, it's a pity that you might die because of this," responded Maximilian.

"Well if I live through this ordeal then I swear I'll never stop hunting you until you lie dead before me."

"Yes, yes I hear those threats from you all the time and I still wait for you to find a way to break out of your cell to even attempt such a feat. Now stay still, this is going to hurt… a lot, and there is no anaesthetic."

Suddenly the old man began to cut deep into the left side of Subject 13's chest where his heart would be, the yelling of pain did nothing to deter Maximilian from his goal, finally Maximilian cut through the flesh and bones to see the heart, to which he then cut into and grabbed the red crystal from his pocket, the crystal was placed inside the heart as Subject 13 screamed in agony as he began to slowly die from blood loss. Next, Maximilian turned to the red liquid after he had placed the crystal inside the young man's heart, the liquid was just a liquidised form of the red crystal but the oldish man had never used both the solid and liquid crystal forms together at the same time, better now than never he thought as he jabbed the nozzle into the boy's bloodstream.

The pain that Subject 13 was experiencing was deathly, his time in the torture chamber was nothing compared to what he was experiencing now, he felt as if he was dying, in fact he was dying but he already knew that. But as the red liquid and the red crystal connected he felt a sudden renewal throughout his body, as if he had been reborn anew, but he then blacked out, leaving Maximilian and is assistant rather puzzled at the new turn of events. The oldish man looked down at the young man and saw that the deep cut from the knife was starting to heal quickly as a red mist appeared from the deep and life threatening wound, sealing it completely and the only sign that there was a cut there was a scar. The assistant walked over to a set of machines and check Subject 13's life support: his heartbeat had returned to a normal state and he appeared to be alright.

"We did, we actually did it," muttered Maximilian. "He survived and now he is a god… a god, yes, we've created a god!"

"So what now?" asked the assistant. "What do we do next from here?"

"We take what we learned here today and imply it to the rest of the subjects, by the end of next month we will have an army of gods and goddesses to do our bidding."

"And how do you plan to accomplish that?"

"Erase their memory, then they'll believe anything we tell them. I'm heading back to the main control room, get in contact for the guards to pick this fellow up and get him back to the cells."

The assistant nodded, but as soon as her boss had left the room and closed the steel door behind him she noticed that the young man's eyelids were twitching, driven with curiosity she approached him and looked down at the man, but she wasn't prepared for what was to happen next. Suddenly Subject 13 woke up and opened his eyes quickly for the assistant to see that they had turned blood red and his body began to glow blood red, his straps snapped and his hand grabbed the unfortunate woman by the throat, he stood up and glared straight into her eyes, making her flinch in terror as she tried to breathe.

"Please … spare me … I beg you!" she pleaded.

"And why would I do that?" came the reply. "Everyone working for that man will die by my hand, and you just happen to be the closest one at the moment, so sorry… NOT!"

With utter force he snapped the woman's neck and her head fell back, her tongue falling out of her mouth and her eyes rolled back into her skull. Subject 13 threw the corpse away into a set of machines and opened the steel door, he found himself in a hallway that had two directions: left and right, but as he looked up he noticed a security camera looking at him, with a smug grin he stuck the middle finger of his right hand up at the camera before turning left down the hallway and made his way to uncharted territory.

It wasn't long until the red alert siren was activated across the entire facility and every single guard tuned into their radios to listen to their new orders; "Hunt down Subject 13 and knock him out". It proved harder than they had imagined as a group of unfortunate guards ran into Subject 13 and attempted to reason with him, to no avail as the angry prisoner forced them into hand-to-hand combat and won by grabbing onto their necks and used his new power to burn their heads, turning them into ash headed corpses. One of the guards carried two steel war axes, with a grin the young man took hold of them and continued to walk down the corridor until he arrived outside the armoury, With a smirk he entered to find all sorts of weapons laying around, the armoury was a large concrete room filled with racks full of weapons that could be found throughout Gamindustri, it ranged from spears, swords, automatic rifles and various different types of machine guns, but one weapon took the keen glance of his eye: it was a sniper rifle with a long scope and a leather strap to it, in fact it was the same one that one of the guards had before. Various ammo magazines for the sniper rifle laid around the gun and Subject 13 was quick to grab the rifle, strap it to his back and grab an ammo belt and strap it from his left shoulder to his right waist, he was no prepared to face whatever the facility had in store for him.

"Now, it's time to die, Maximilian!" yelled Subject 13 as he raced out of the armoury and swung his axes at the guards and scientists who were foolish to fight him in close combat, but they had their orders that he was not to be killed.


As Subject 13 carved a bloody path throughout the facility Maximilian stood in the control room and watched the carnage develop across the entire place, he sighed in disbelief as he knew what would have to happen next. He had a plan in place in case something like this happened.

I still want him to live though, he's a good prototype for any future experiment that is to occur, so I guess there is only one way out of this as far I can see. I'll have to call him before I activate my plan.

Maximilian took out a phone from one of his pockets and dialled one of the numbers on the phone, after waiting for a minute the person he was calling picked up and a flamboyant voice could be heard from the other end.

"Why hello there, Maxi, it's been a while hasn't it? Is that the screams of the dying I can hear? Gosh, what are you doing over there if I may ask?" asked the strange voice.

"Just an experiment gone rogue. I finally managed to succeed and now the bastard is slaughtering his way through everyone to find me at any cost," replied Maximilian. "Listen, since the Mars Project seems doomed I want to ask a favour from you: hack into every system in Gamindustri and delete anything that mentions the files I'm going to send you, including any references towards the Mars Project."

"Very well then, just send the files and I'll get to it."

The call ended and Maximilian was quick to get to a computer and send the files that he wanted deleted from any source in Gamindustri, once the files had been sent he noticed that his 'hacker friend' immediately began to delete any evidence of missing people, of the Mars Project and anything regarding them at all.

Now came the next step in his plan: blow the facility up. It was a drastic option but since he didn't care about the people who were working for him he had decided that it was the best course of action, and right now he wouldn't care if Subject 13 was killed in the explosion.

"I'm going for a moment, in fact if everyone wants to live I suggest that you evacuate the facility before it blows up," announced Maximilian as he walked out of the room calmly. The message sank into everybody's minds and they rushed to get out of the facility, leaving most of it empty save for the few remaining guards trying to hold off the rogue experiment.


"Just die already!" yelled Subject 13 as he fired his sniper rifle at one of the few remaining guards left behind to hold him off. The bullet flew through the guard's brain, splattering it on the wall.

Subject 13 then ducked behind a corner as bullets were fired at him, he saw the bullet holes embedded in the walls along the hallway and he sighed in relief that he wasn't hit. As he prepared to fire another round he heard the guards run off, then there was a loud ticking noise which was then followed by a large explosion that was set off from various points in the facility, causing the walls to fall apart and the roof to give way, a piece of a wall collapsed on Subject 13 and rendered him unconscious.

When the dust had finally settled and everything had calmed down Subject 13 regained consciousness, he felt the collapsed wall still on top of him and with a loud groan he pushed the broken wall off him and stood up as best he could to see what was around him: everything had turned to rubble. The foundations of the facility were still there including some walls and parts of buildings, but as he began to walk towards the cell block he saw that the area that once contained the remaining surviving human subjects was utterly ruined, hardly a trace was left, except for ruined concrete, steel bars and was looked like charred human remains huddled together. Subject 13 stared at the human remains and knew what they had once been: the surviving inmates who hadn't been experimented on.

That old man … that old bastard … HE'S GONNA DIE FOR THIS!"

With a loud growl he looked up at the darkening sky and made a vow which he intended to keep, no matter how long it would take him to do so. "I swear I'll find you, old man, I swear I'll find you and kill you! Just you wait… I'll tear you into pieces!"

He looked back at the corpses of his fellow inmates and felt a tear escape his left eye, he wiped it away with his dusty sleeve and sighed. "I'll honour everyone of you who died here in this facility for some damn experiment, I'll honour you all by giving myself a name that will make me remember you: Mars, that will be my name."


A/N: And that ends the prologue, the ending was kinda rushed but I wanted to end it at some point. Yes, there are some similarities between Brian the Shadow Walker and Subject 13 aka Mars when it comes to looks and even a small similarity in power, it is quite different but just think of them as alternate versions of each other if you want to. Don't worry, I'm still continuing 'The Rising Darkness', this was something that I wanted to share essentially. If you want more then leave a review and I'll see what I can dish up next time.