Disclaimer: I own nothing about Neptunia or Kamen Rider. I only own my original character.

First Level – She's Still Dreaming

There was a certain irony when it came to Daichi's name.

His given name was supposed to mean large intellect but that didn't really materialize in the way that his parents hoped for. Instead of excelling at academic studies, he had excelled in sports instead, being very active in physical activities. At first, his parents didn't mind since he had the potential to become a superstar athlete. After all, top players in the NPB earned multi million Yen salaries, good to support aging parents and a family.

But instead, he turned his energy towards suit acting and studying on how to be a good stunt performer. There was something that had simply fascinated him with the ways that the people behind those suits used body language to help breathe life into their characters. It was especially evident in that one Kamen Rider Den-O and Decade movie where all the Imagins including Sieg were sharing Ryotaro's body for Den-O's Super Climax Form. In a sense, he did regret not watching more toku shows when he had the chance but sports club activities and cram school often ate up his time as a student. All he could catch were the occasional toku movies that aired on TV once in a while.

Obviously, his relationship with his mother soured on that decision since suit actor salaries were nowhere near as high compared to a player in the NPB. His father was a bit more neutral on the choice and at the least congratulated Daichi on pursuing his own dream despite the lack of financial security. From the day he graduated high school, he worked several part time jobs to support himself as he went through the lengthy process of becoming a member of Japan Action Enterprises.

Now at the age of 20, he got a big break and became the suit actor understudy for Mr. Kamen Rider himself, Mr. Takaiwa. That meant learning a lot of the unique poses and postures that the main protagonist would use in the latest Kamen Rider show, Kamen Rider Drive. In the event that Seiji would not be able to make it in, then Daichi can step in and fill in the role temporarily. After all, toku shooting schedules could be pretty jam packed, especially when filming for the main TV show can overlap with filming for a movie, a music video, promo material or a DVD special.

For today, since Takaiwa is off filming scenes for the upcoming summer movie, Daichi would be doing some transformation poses for the upcoming Drive Hyper Battle DVD. A lot of this was going to be repetitive since it just involved him inserting a new Shift Car into the Brace and then holding a position for a few seconds and with the number of Shift Cars currently running, it would obviously take time to go through the collection.

"We'll be resuming in five!"

Daichi heard the producer's assistant yell that out and started heading back to the set now that he finished getting rehydrated again. He stopped in front of a mirror to make sure that his suit was in order. His top was covered in red armour that greatly resembled a car. The centre of the upper torso armour had a tire with a red line on it placed in the middle, which gave him more of a racer feature. He wore a black bodysuit with white lines that ran down his arms and legs, wore red boots, silver knee pads, red gauntlets, and silver wrist bands. The brace occupied the left band and there was a red line over it unlike the right which showed more of the silver. The shoulders were protected by pointed pads and he wore red chest armour that had a black line across it.

His helmet greatly resembled that of a car, as it was colored red with two white lines that left a thin blue line that was hardly noticeable. The eyes were that of a car's headlights and he had a silver "R" on the forehead. The top of his head had a rear wing giving him more of that race car feature, complete with a silver mouthpiece. Attached to his waist was the main Rider belt for the season, officially known as the Drive Driver and Mr. Belt, and a holder for three shift cars: Midnight Shadow, Funky Spike and Max Flare.

'Alright, everything is all set…?' Daichi looked closely at the mirror and spotted that his orange Shift Car was no longer in place on his waist. 'I dropped one? Ah, geez…!'

He didn't have much time before shooting resumed and if he recalled correctly, the next Shift Car pose would be with Max Flare. That made it really important that he find the little vehicle and soon!

'Stay calm… where was I last at? Washroom break and then to the water cooler…' His eyes then located the small orange car lying on the ground close to the leg of a chair. 'There we go!'

Just as he bent down to pick it up, he spotted something odd. Rather than the standard flame logo on the toy hood, the logo looked like an orange spiral. It reminded him of an old game console owned by an older cousin of his in Odaiba. 'What was that console's name again?'

"H…e…"

Daichi nearly dropped the prop when he heard that faint whisper that sounded like a girl's voice. 'What was that? Where did it come from?'

"H…e…l…"

He looked down at the small toy in his hands. If he was hearing things correctly, the whisper was coming from the Shift Car.

"H…e…l…p…"

It was the last thing he heard before his entire vision got swallowed up by light.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself lying down in the middle of a big pile of stone debris. As soon as he got up, he took a quick glance of his surroundings which showed that instead of being in a studio, he was in some apocalyptic wasteland with a dark sky that had flashes of lightning dancing in the clouds, destroyed buildings all around and the noises of ravens cawing in the distance. 'Did the set change this much? And why am I changed?'

Daichi clearly remembered wearing the Drive suit before the strange incident happened. Now he was back in his street clothes consisting of a basic dark t-shirt and jeans. For some odd reason, his left wrist still wore the Shift Brace while the Drive Driver was stuck on his waist.

He didn't have time to think about it much further as he suddenly found himself face to face with some unknown mechanical creature that popped up around the corner. It was largely in a humanoid shape built out of a grey metallic alloy while some of the upper decorations and the main monoeye were red in colour. It was also pretty big, probably around twice the size of an average human. Without hesitating, he quickly began running to get away from that thing and as he expected, the machine began to pursue. 'What's going on?!'

He must have run for about two minutes until he heard a female voice in the distance shout to him. "You over there! Duck!"

Moving on instinct, he dived to the ground while a girl leapt above him and landed a powerful kick in the machine's main red optic. She followed this up with several punches, accentuating each one with a loud kiai, before landing one last blow through a finishing move by a megaphone to turn the enemy into scrap to Daichi's amazement. 'Holy crap… how did she do that?!'

As soon as she recovered from the quick skirmish, she turned around to address him. "Hey, you there!"

"M-me?" This time, he managed to get a better look at her. His saviour turned out to be a fair-skinned girl with red-orange eyes and long, sanguine hair worn in pigtails located near the bottom of her head, held by hair that has been knotted. It has a few black clasps and a pink gradience nearing the bottom. Her outfit was rather skimpy for this type of environment. She had a very small black tube top under an opened white jacket with a bright orange, black, and white tie which had a strange looking spiral logo near the end that reminded him of the spiral he saw on the Shift Car earlier. She also had a pair of pleated shorts worn with a pair of thin black suspenders and open to reveal her orange underwear. Her arms were covered with orange and black sleeves with a pair of black fingerless gloves at the end. Finally, she had matching socks, black shoes and a pair of black leg warmers with buttons on them. Her right hand carried a megaphone with her and attached to her left wrist was some sort of small device, presumably a wrist communicator of sorts by the way it looked.

"Are you okay? Any injuries?" asked his rescuer.

"I am definitely not okay! What's going on here?!"

The girl ignored him to quickly inspect him. "Good, you seem fine. You're on your feet after all."

"That doesn't answer my question!" protested Daichi.

"Do yourself a favour and find a place to stay safe! Then you can worry about how the world is coming to an end! I'm gonna search for more survivors!" The young stuntman didn't get a chance to ask more questions as the girl ran off. He stood there alone for a moment and began muttering under his breath.

"Please tell me I'm dreaming. That I just passed out from the heat during the shoot!"

"This is no dream."

Daichi looked down at the object around his waist. Just by the way the 'face' looked alive and the fact that the device was definitely the source of that smooth talking voice that spoke to him in English led to the conclusion that he was no longer wearing a TV show prop. "No way…"

"Yes way. A pleasure to meet you, Daichi," said the smooth and deep voice of Mr. Belt.

"How did you become real? That shouldn't be possible!"

"Considering that you just saw that young lady perform superhuman feats in front of your eyes, shouldn't you be able to consider the possibility that I might come to life in this world? But enough of that. We have other problems to worry about."

"Like how to get back home?" asked Daichi.

"To be honest, the fact that you were brought here likely means that there's a task you must complete before you can return back to your world," concluded the device. "Perhaps you are to assist that girl in saving this world?"

"Come to think of it, I recall hearing a female whispering for help when I picked up that thing up," recalled the young man. "But still, this is ridiculous! I'm a stuntman, not a superhero!"

"You don't need to be a superhero to do what's right," countered Mr. Belt.

"There's a difference between doing the right thing and getting involved in a battle with superhuman participants," remarked Daichi in a flat tone.

"Then you will need to get the proper tools to join those battles," said the belt without missing a beat.

"Wait, what?"

Before Mr. Belt could explain further, he heard that girl's shouting again. This time, it was mixed in with the noises of a fight. Without wasting time, he moved over there as fast as he could towards the sounds of the battle and eventually spotted his rescuer locked in combat with another girl wielding a wooden katana. The other girl had short lilac hair with bangs that reach down to her collar bone and purple eyes. A pair of white hair-clips in the shape of D-pads was in her hair and around her neck is a choker that has a light blue D-pad symbol on it. Her top consisted of a mostly white hoodie dress that has a light purple hood, strings that look like controller plugs, and two huge purple and white pockets with purple D-Pad symbols on them. The sleeves have two light blue strips going all the way down while the front of the hoodie only contains one. The ends of the sleeves and the bottom of the hoodie have dark and light purple stripes. The zipper emblem and the back of the hoodie have a purple letter "N". As for her legs, they were covered with light blue and white striped thigh high socks with frills at the tops and her shoes are purple and blue.

"Che…! You're strong… the name's Tennouboshi Uzume! Who the hell are you?!" At least now Daichi had a name that went with his rescuer.

"Neptune! I'm Neptune!"

"Nepucchi… that's a freaking hard name to pronounce!"

"I get that all the time!" Neptune moved back and avoided another attack from Uzume's megaphone.

"Despite your appearance, you aren't bad! After my last warmup, you'll be a good target!"

"Why won't you listen?! Even though we were suddenly dragged into this mystery world…!" exclaimed Neptune.

"Unfortunately for you…" Uzume leaned back to launch another kick at the girl. "I ain't so easily convinced! You're not deceiving me with that human form!"

Neptune merely blocked the attack and tried to lock the other girl down. "I told you that I'm not an enemy! Listen to me! If you don't, then even I, the friendliest person in Gamindustri, will get angry!"

"Game…?" Uzume broke off and reset her stance. "I can't make sense of this! Prepare yourself!"

And that was when Daichi quickly ran in front of the two combatants at the same time as another lilac haired girl did the same, this time sporting longer locks than Neptune. Speaking as one, they both shouted.

"STOP!"

"Eh?" Uzume's eyes darted towards the male. "You again?"

"Please stop this, both of you!" exclaimed the long haired lilac girl. Her appearance was similar to Neptune's with long purple hair and a single D-pad hair clip in it. Her eyes were also violet eyes. She wore a white, button up sailor uniform with purple designs and a yellow ribbon being held together by the N-emblem. Her legs were covered by thigh high socks with pink and white stripes and medium sized boots that match her uniform in color scheme.

Neptune spotted Daichi and grinned. "Hey, we have a featureless male insert character here! Just like in Noire's side game!"

"Onee-chan, what are you talking about? He's not featureless!" scolded the other purple haired girl. "He has his black hair done in a buzz cut! It's not exactly something you see every day!"

"That's true, Nepgear. And he has a little bit of facial hair on his chin. A neat little goatee there!" She paused for a moment as she recognized something. "Neppu! We just gave a description of the original character to the readers! The author is probably going 'Just as keikaku!' right now!"

'… what?' Daichi had no idea what was going on while Nepgear turned towards the red haired girl.

"Um… Uzume-san, right? Just as my sister said, we have no intention of fighting with you. To be honest, we were hoping you can help us so can you please listen first?"

"That's right, that's right!" added Neptune. "We are extremely troubled right now!"

"Onee-chan, what competition are you trying to start now?!"

"S-sorry…" Neptune merely laughed nervously.

Nepgear then noticed the young man's presence. "And you are…?"

"Uh, I'm Yagami Daichi."

"Now I see. We actually got our first quest shortly after landing in this world once we did our obligatory tutorial battle. And that's to deliver this little item to the first male character we see that's not an NPC," chirped Nepgear before stopping in front of Daichi and placing a small item, a Shift Car mostly black in colour with purple headlights and white circuit lines drawn on the hood, into his hand. "That means you, Daichi-san."

Mr. Belt took on a look of surprise. "That Shift Car…!"

And with that exchange done, a small bottle suddenly appeared in front of Nepgear and landed in her hand. She then spun around and struck a pose. "Item GETTO!"

"Whatcha get?" asked Neptune.

"It's just a Detoxin. Still, you never know when it can be handy…" Nepgear placed it away in her inventory just as they heard beeping getting louder followed by three of those same machines encountered by Daichi entering the area.

Uzume snorted once. "Still being targeted? Che… you three, I'm going to deal with this first!"

"Good call! We'll wipe them out quickly and get back to figuring this mess out!" Neptune readied her own weapon while Nepgear pulled out a beam saber.

But just as the trio of girls leapt into action, the lead enemy shifted position slightly before shooting out a red energy field that caused everything in the area to slow down, much to Uzume's shock. "W-what?!"

'What's with this Matrix feeling?!' thought Neptune as she flailed around slowly.

"This feeling… it can't be!" Mr. Belt's face took on a look of horror. "Slowdown!"

"Wait, what?! They're facing one of those Roidmudes?!" asked Daichi, feeling extremely uneasy about the situation. Because of the black Shift Car in his possession, he was unaffected.

"It may not necessarily be a Roidmude. The enemy could simply have Core Driviars in their possession! In any case, you need to transform with Proto Drive's Shift Car so you can help fight!"

"I told you that I'm a stuntman and not a superhero!" Despite his complaining, his right hand moved towards the ignition switch of his belt. "But I don't leave my debts unpaid! And I owe Uzume-san there big for saving me earlier! Let's do this!"

START YOUR ENGINE!

After turning on the switch, the standby music began playing from the belt while he moved the Shift Car from his left hand to his right. He flicked the end of the Shift Car to shift it to Lever Mode and inserted it into the Shift Brace, just like all the times he had practiced doing those actions in the suit. Except this time, he was transforming for real. "Henshin!"

One pump of the lever later, pieces of armour materialized into reality and formed over his body. Once again, he was in the Drive suit but instead of having a tire on his chest and red upper torso armour, he had black armour showing bits of circuitry with no tire. This form was the one used by Kamen Rider Proto Drive and technically boasted weaker base statistics compared to the normal Drive. But for now, this would be sufficient.

DRIVE! TYPE… SPEED!

'I… actually transformed?!' He stared at his new form while the speedy jazzy music finished playing.

"Hurry and summon our comrades to help the girls out!"

"Comrades…?" Upon hearing his belt's words, he stretched out his left arm in front of him by instinct. This caused three miniature roads to appear behind him and direct themselves at the girls, dropping off a Shift Car for each of them and negating the Slowdown effect.

"Wah! I'm back to normal?" Nepgear felt an object in her hand and saw a purple item shaped similar to the item she passed on to Daichi.

"Ladies, the Shift Car will protect you from the effects of the Slowdown," explained Mr. Belt. "Make sure that it stays on your body so you can move normally within the field."

"Is that so?" Uzume held up an orange Shift Car and grinned. "Thanks!"

"Oi! Why is mine spiky and green? It reminds me of a durian which is all stinky!" complained Neptune from the side, holding up her Shift Car.

"Maybe it's because you can be all stinky sometimes! Just like when you put me through all that stuff in Plutia's dimension!" snapped Nepgear. Sure she may have forgiven her sister to some extent but don't think she would let her forget any time soon.

"Ahaha… sorry?"

"Girls, stay focused," said Daichi as he took a position to engage the enemy. "And as for you oversized tin cans, you might want to fasten your seatbelts."

The optics on his helmet lit up in response to the young man readying himself for a fight.

"I'm about to take you for a ride."

LEVEL 1 COMPLETE. PROGRESS SAVED.

Wow, I seriously suck. I mean, I have other Rider stories that I could be and should be working on and yet my muse decides to steer me in another direction and assemble this together. Seriously, argh.

I hope I got the feel for Neptune and Nepgear right. I have yet to actually play an entry for this series and I don't know if I really want to invest the time for it right now. Maybe later though since it seems quirky enough.

As Daichi levels up, he will gain access to his normal Type Speed form and other Types as well as unlock more Shift Cars and weapons. It will be a gradual process so there is no need to worry about him getting Type Deadheat or Formula quickly.

As for who would be filling in other roles from Drive, who knows? I don't have too many ideas for them at this point since this is only in the very early stages and this isn't going to be a particularly high priority story for me.