For new readers
Welcome! :D
This is my first work, so it may not be the best thing you've ever read, but I would really appreciate any sort of feedback from you.
The following story takes place during the events of Neptunia VII, but by no means follows the exact events as in the game. It basically follows the timeline of VII, but the narrated events will be different. Now, I do wanna point out that it's only during the first "arc" of the game—the story following the next arc will be up once I'm done with this.
I kept the Prologue pretty short since I didn't want to drag it out for too long, but I do hope it lives up to any expectation you may have. Should you have any questions, ask away in the comments—I'll try to respond to most of them.
Oh, and I also want to point out that English is not my first language, and I'm not even from a country where that language is popular. So if you happen to notice any grammar or spelling errors, then you have my apologies.
Anyway, I've stalled you for more than enough. Hope you enjoy! :P

For old readers

Chapter rewrite!
Phew, honestly glad I got to polishing and basically remaking this, since the original prologue was severely lacking and was not accurate with the game itself at all. All I can say's that I sincerely hope you enjoy this update as much as I prefer it over the original. Let's get this bre- Wait, wrong place..
Let's get this prologue remake! Yeah, I guess that sounds right.


A pair of olive eyes slowly fluttered open, only to be warmly greeted with the blazing sun that peeked its way inside the hotel bedroom. The wearer of those young irises grunted, still half-asleep as he obscured his vision from the dazzling light glancing through the blinds, using his left elbow as support and catching a glimpse of the reflection in a sliding mirror door, that found itself to the left side of the man's bed. Snoozy young adult, hideous brown bedhead, fairly thick eyebrows and a well-built upper body covered in an insanely compound, red-colored outfit.

At least, that's what an average person would pay attention to, had they seen Emril Von Liris at the moment.

"Lovely weather outside…" Emril murmured under his breath, lazily dragging his legs across the bed and letting them hang above the eucalyptus hardwood floor. As slothfully, he pushed himself up, sitting down on his bed like one would rest on a park bench. Wrists crossed and forearms resting on his thighs, right next to the man's kneecaps, the drowsy Von Liris kept his gaze at the mirror. Catching a glimpse of two of his hair locks intertwining with one another and forming something akin to a DNA spiral, he cracked an indolent smile, which soon disappeared. "If I wasn't greeted with blinding sunshine in my face, though, that'd be absolutely perfect…"

Taking a few moments out of his lazy morning, the male figure simply gawked at his reflection as he kept trying to make sense of the dream he saw this night. A sigh resonated in the room.

'That felt.. Way too real.' Emril thought, while scratching his bearded chin. Truthfully, his words were anything but far-fetched; staring at his empty palm, an almost curious look decorated his marked face. To be fair, though, the man was never the sort to jump to conclusions, so worrying others would have to step aside. If there was anyone to even worry, for that matter.

The way his dream began, however, was peculiar: there was a barren field, with a tree that's been long withered of all life, accompanied with a painful silence. The dreamer would find himself in the middle of nowhere, unable to look at anything farther than ten meters away: everything there was a massive blur. From time to time, he would hear voices, the tones and timbres of which he'd never heard prior, not to mention the feeling of cold often biting into his body with each distant callout. But, for the longest time, that was it: nothing would happen, nothing would move. It was like air around Emril was frozen.

But then someone emerged. The adult had never wished for something to be a lie more than then.

A lone figure would appear in the distance, standing on about the same length away from him as the tree, like a starving wolf waiting for the right moment to pounce on its prey. The silhouette's eyes were a flipswitch to the man, mercilessly immobilizing him the moment their gazes met. Staring at this mystical, menacing person felt like confronting the Grim Reaper himself, only instead of a dark cape and a scythe, there was long, berry blue hair tied into braids, paired with pale skin and that dreadful,

dreadful grin...

Von Liris blinked rapidly, arching his back and letting out a slightly suppressed groan. Surely, there were more important things to attend to, he would have to ponder about his bad dream while doing something productive. That's simply the kind of person Emril was.

Timidly nodding to himself, the awakened man reached for a black rubber band and purple brush, which he thought would find themselves on the bedside table. But, as his eyes jumped around the desk, he quickly realized that, for some reason, they were missing. And the cupboard top itself looked way dissimilar to what Em had seen yesterday.

A line formed in between his eyebrows, the confused adult darted his head up to scan the rest of the room. As it turned out, not only the bedside drawer suddenly decided to change while he was asleep...

The entire room was different.

"What the-..?" Emril's voice got stuck in his throat as he pulled open one of the drawers, a decently sized purple hairbrush rolled from inside the cabinet. Quickly, as if having remembered he had a plane departing in few hours, the panicked man started grooming himself, pacing around the room and eventually taking another glance at the sliding mirror door, already catching a glimpse of his eyes swirling into a daffodil yellow tint - a color of confusion, lack of trust and comfort.

He didn't care what he thought about before going to sleep, but staying dressed was one thing Von Liris was ready to thank himself for: waking up naked in a completely different place sounded like a bad idea, after all. While Emril is busy combing himself, let us sort out the attire he's wearing. His red gambeson was covered with buckles, two pairs of shoulder pads, and three grey pieces of cloth neatly hanging off his waist, a few small belts keeping the cloth in place. The man's forearms wore armored gloves, the hose on his lower body was plated with grey armor, and sharp-edged boots on his feet: they were so sharp, a simple football kick would leave a clean stab wound. Not only that, there was also a grey, pentagram shaped necklace on the young traveler's neck, showing its starry shape on his chest and holding on thanks to two little chains, which were wrapped around his neck.

Had Von Liris not been panicking at the moment, he'd make a cheeky comment regarding how everyone stared at his amulet and thought he was a sorcerer - and they wouldn't be too far from the truth. A faint cyan glow illuminated his right wrist, moments later the light gave being to a black rubber band. Without hesitation, Emril began gathering his brown hair in a hand, turning towards the window in the bedroom and deciding to peek through the glass opening. What he saw was a vibrant green field, with a mountain range coated in snow far, far away and a familiar castle standing proudly on the hill…

...Was what the man wished he could say at the moment. To his confusion and dismay, there was no green plain, no mountains overlooking the room he had woken up in—none of that. Instead, there was a city. A city, painted white and purple, with buildings tall enough to scrape the cloudless sky above, like a knife cutting through a sheet of paper. The trampled pathways were replaced with dark grey asphalt, and the daunting mountains simply vanished, like they never existed. However, there was something else.

And by the gods, it was the most intimidating piece of architecture Emril Von Liris has ever laid his eyes on. There was a tower to his right—a needle-shaped edifice that dwarfed any other building, standing proudly and almost arrogantly, like the many generations of people who had raised it were trying to reach the heavens, or to show the gods how determined and smart they were.

"Can you explain this one, Yvmus…?" The man muttered out, a provoking tone of voice escaping his lips. As unreligious as Emril has always been and would always be, there really wasn't anyone else he could rely on at the moment, except for a fictional deity with an absurdly long white beard who always sat on clouds and served as a God character to people. Well, to people in his world, at least.

Von Liris' hideous bedhead now combed and tied into a ponytail, he finally tore his gaze away from the window and quickly paced towards the hotel room's exit, determined to figure out how a quick nap in a tavern room threw him into what looked like a futuristic metropolis. In a matter of seconds, Emril reached the entrance door, not only readying himself to quickly open the door and leave, but also hoping no broken nose or black eye greeted him on the other side. He just had to push it open, and everything would be fine.. Hopefully. Maybe the door would be locked, and the man would have to crawl through the window, but that was pretty unlikely..

Ready to push himself against the door, the adamant traveler firmly grabbed the handle—instead of swooshing open, the wooden portal didn't budge, making Emril's shoulder smack furiously against it. Taking a few quiet seconds of standing still, as if trying to catch up on what just happened, a single thought popped into his head.

'Yep, window it is, then.'

Much like when approaching the locked door, Von Liris tenaciously made his way back to the former sightseeing spot, cracking a smile mid-distance and waving his head in disbelief. There were many things Emril had done before, but crawling out of the window to leave a hotel was most certainly

not one of them. Tripping over and falling face-first onto the pavement, even if it meant entertaining everyone around him, was nowhere near his bucket list, and neither was trying to escape a bizarre new world with a shattered nose.

Running a mental checklist on his way to the newfound exit, the man automatically put his right hand up, as if holding onto a shoulder bag strap. The reaction to that was a familiar faint glimmer of light, going up and around Emril's shoulder to then drift down his back, running quick like a deep river. The two ends of this cyan glow line stopped on the same level, and soon the container part was complete; the glow faded, leaving behind a regular grey-colored shoulder bag, its strap displaying a brown tint. A little nod of confirmation followed—Emril was fully prepared now.

Approaching the window almost too quickly and nearly ramming the glass panel, Von Liris grabbed the white window handle and twisted it, its end pointing to the right in an almost perfect ninety-degree angle from the aperture frame. With a reassuring click, the little door that prevented things from falling down into the Planeptune streets came open, a soft breeze brushed Emril's face. Forced to narrow his eyes because of the awfully bright building in front of him, which was also reflecting the sunlight, the man steadily crawled onto the windowsill, ensuring himself by firmly holding onto the frame.

He cautiously moved his head forward, peeking down into the lively streets from what seemed to be the second floor of the building Emril woke up in. The fall wasn't big, but it wasn't small either: landing without a roll would cost a broken leg, maybe two. Even if he had the ability to make things appear from thin air—like with the rubber hand in his hair, or the bag over his shoulder—or some other magical quirks, at the end of the day, he was still just a normal guy, only with two weird hieroglyphs on his face and a funny eye color that kept changing itself. A broken bone would still be a pain to deal with.

In any case, thoughts about violent traumatism and fractures would have to wait. There had to be someplace Emril could land without falling on anyone, but there was also a problem with locating that spot: most of the street was standing room only. Still squatting down on the snow white windowsill, he tried not to think about how ridiculous he must've looked at the moment, as well as mentally expressed his gratitude for no citizens staring his way.

"Wait for it.." Determinedly glaring down the lively street, the man let go of the right side of the window frame, as if preparing himself. The first few eventful minutes of his morning made Von Liris completely forget that he didn't really need to think through the leap: there was an ace up his sleeve, and boy, was it a flashy one. "Can you all like, move away and make a decent landing spot for me, people..? Thanks..."

A little gap was all it took. Emril's hand lit up like a bulb once again as he lunged himself through the window and outside, his eyes quickly jumping to the landing spot. With a throw of his right arm, any trace of the man figure turned into a bright cyan echo, later taking shape of a straight line heading towards the asphalt. The afterimage would halt right before making contact with the ground as Von Liris' silhouette morphed back in, with the man rolling on the ground before smoothly rising on his feet. A few glances around reassured him that there was no panic or confusion after Emril's "blink", except for a few confused people turning a solid three-sixty, trying to figure out what the weird noise was, or where it came from.

Fixing his outfit slightly, the traveler found himself in a maze, trying to sort out where to go. His wondering would come to a halt as his gaze fixated on the same daunting needle-shaped tower in the distance. 'I could probably try asking for help there,' he thought, his uncertain steps bleeding into a more quick and confident stride, the pace Von Liris has grown accustomed to by now. "Let's just hope this rabbit hole isn't a deep one." The man muttered to himself, slowly blending in with the rest of the crowd as he disappeared towards the terrifying edifice.

But, truthfully, Emril had no idea what he was dragging himself into.

He wasn't aware of the chain of events that would follow his appearance in Gamindustri, he didn't know the people he would meet, people he'd save from danger, the conflicts he'd face and the bottomless pits he'd willingly nosedive into. He had no clue what was coming at him.

Not a single clue.