The hot summer sun shone down on the streets of Barcelona. Children played in the streets, merchants tended to their shops, and that one trumpet player strutted his stuff on the less admirable corner of Sexto y Noveno. All endearing sights to the average bystanders, but such pleasantries were beyond the concerns of the stern, nondescript young man, wearing a coat far too heavy for the current weather, as he made his way through the Old District. The better years of his life in this town were behind him, and unless this meeting went without a hitch, he would have no future to look forward to.

He checked again through the directions he had received from his informant. They were pretty hard to read, considering they were written on a dirty napkin, but the final direction definitely said to meet in the alley next to the mural of the dancing lizards. He turned down the alley, his grip on his briefcase tightening in case something went wrong. At the end, another nondescript figure with a technicolor scarf awaited him, but to each other, they were all too familiar to be merely 'nondescript.'

"Angelo?" The one with the briefcase called out first.

Hearing his name, the one with the scarf let out a hearty chuckle.

"Well, I certainly wasn't expecting you to be making this delivery, Roy! 'S so good to see you, chico. Qué pasa?" Angelo reached out to pat his old friend on the shoulder, only to be shrugged off by the brooding Roy.

"You know exactly qué pasa, my next year's tuition is due in three weeks, and unless I make ends meet, I'll have to drop out."

"Ah, that's right. I remember you making a huge deal about getting accepted to the university. What is it you've been studying there? Suppose it doesn't really matter, you're boned in this town without a degree, less you want to go into our line of trade full time…"

Roy could only strengthen his glare at Angelo's proposition. Just being there right then felt all kinds of wrong, but he knew he wasn't in any position to decline such easy money. He held up the briefcase and unceremoniously plopped it into Angelo's arms.

"I can see you wanna get this over with. I don't blame ya, you were always a good kid, better than me, at least. Let's see what we got here." Angelo pried the case open, eager to look upon his bounty, only to feel his eager face slip away to deadpan. "What are these?" He turned the case towards Roy so that he could see.

"It's… they're peppers…" Roy said in confusion. He hadn't actually been told what he was delivering, only that it was a 'spice trade.'

"No, they're peppers from Seville," Angelo clarified in an increasingly abrasive tone, "I had been told these were going to be peppers from San Salvador! Nobody wants to season their food with domestic peppers, they want exotic flavors! You'd better take these worthless-ass peppers back to the jack who gave them to you!" his voiced escalated to about seventy-nine decibels as he tried to shove the case back into Roy's hands.

"Now hang on a minute!" Roy objected, denying the passage of the case, "I was only told to bring you the case, nothing else. Now, you'd better have my money for me, 'cause I'm not doing any more of your bullshit." Just then, Roy felt himself pinned to the wall by what he thought was his old friend.

"Like I said, chico, you're a good kid…" Angelo hissed menacingly into Roy's ear as he pulled out a switchblade, "but I'm not…"

Roy didn't hesitate to sucker punch Angelo straight to the other side of the alley. Deciding enough was enough, he bolted back out into the street. Angelo followed close behind him, but they didn't make it fifty feet down the street before they both stopped in shock and awe at the horde off in the distance.

Bulls. Dozens of them, all headed their way.

"Aww, dangit! Why'd the Running of the Bulls event have to start now, of all times? This festival doesn't even happen in Barcelona!"

Neptune's cries of frustration echoed through her lounge as she maneuvered Roy away from the savage bull stampede. She had been playing Knights of Barcelona all morning, and certainly wasn't going to reload a save from an hour ago just because of a poorly timed event. A few well-timed parkour maneuvers, and…

"Phew… I'm safe now!"

Feeling herself lulling into a sense of security, Neptune immediately perked up at the realization of how loud she had been shouting. She saved her game as fast as she could, then did a quick check of all the room's perimeters. The doors were locked tight, the window blinds were down, the closet was open and empty…

"Just try to relax, Nep," she thought to herself, "there's nothing wrong with enjoying these kinda games. One day, I'll just be talking with one of my buddies, and I'll say-"

"Neptune, may I come in?" Histoire's voice rang from outside the room.

"Snappy snap…" Neptune muttered under her breath, cursed by the worst timing imaginable. "J-just a sec, Histy!" she yelled out to her Oracle in the midst of her rush to turn the game off.

"Unfortunately, I cannot wait a single second more. I left my favorite bookmark in there, and you know how I feel when I try to fly around without it."

Neptune couldn't help but snicker at Histoire's little problem; she suddenly felt just a little less ashamed of her own secret. "I dunno, Histy. You've been waiting several more seconds already, but you still seem pretty okayish!"

"Well, Neptune," Histoire's normally serene voice began to grow a bit more volatile, "if that is how you intend to speak to me, then I shall only give you three seconds more before I use my master key on this door."

"Snappy snap again…" Neptune muttered. Able to open any locked door in the Neptower, that dreaded key had ended many of her veggin' sessions before, and now it was about to expose her to the world (or at least Histy). She really needed to focus now; both the TV and the Nepstation Plus were turned off, now all that was left to do was eject the game disc and-

Wait, that wouldn't do. Leaving the disc in the console was certainly a risky move, but it would take far too long to dig up her stash of those games, put it back in its box, and hide the stash again. Histy would almost certainly catch her in the act, especially considering how many precious milliseconds she had wasted analyzing her plan of action, leaving the disc was probably the better of the two options. She cut her losses and made a dash for her desk.

As if right on cue, the door opened, and Histoire hovered into the room. She made her way to Neptune's desk to pick up her bookmark, when she noticed that Neptune was poorly pretending to be engrossed in paperwork.

"Neptune, what exactly are you trying to do?" Histoire asked in disbelief.

"Huh? Oh, you know, just trying to knock some of this paperwork out of the way so you don't nag me about it later, hehe…" Neptune halfheartedly attempted to explain herself, but Histoire certainly wasn't buying it.

"Alright, what are you trying to avoid?"

"What'dya mean?"

"Just listen to yourself right now. You would never do your paperwork of your own volition unless there was something else you were trying to avoid."

"Y'know, Histy," Neptune began in a mock-offended tone, "sometimes I get the feeling you don't think I do my work good…"

At that point, Histoire could do nothing but stare unamused at the CPU as she continued to dig herself deeper. Neptune, feeling the tension growing thick enough to eat off of, tried to quickly improvise an excuse to get out of the Basilicom.

"Oh c'mon, Histy, you know how these intro chapters go! I'm goofing off, you get mad at me for not doing my work, then you send me off on a basic quest so I can build my level and shares back up, because I guess the writers think it's funny for me to have to start at square one every time a new story begins. We've done this whole routine, like, five or six times now, so I figured I might as well cut to the chase. What's this? A quest to go bust up some dogoos in Virtua Forest? Don't mind if I don't! Er, y'know what I mean, I'll be back in an hour!"

And with that, Neptune ran out to the balcony in the adjacent room and flew off into the horizon, leaving Histoire to clean up the mess her CPU had left behind.

"Of course, she forgets to clean up after herself," Histoire began to rant to herself as she picked up the snack wrappers littered on the floor. "One step at a time, I suppose… though I still do not believe that she truly wanted to go out on that quest," she began to think some more about how unnerved Neptune had been acting. Normally at that time of day, Neptune would be engrossed in one of her video games. That thought reminded Histoire, she would need to go over to the Nepstation Plus, assuming that Neptune once again forgot to-

"Huh?" Histoire couldn't believe what she had seen: the disc slot on the Nepstation Plus was shut tight. Neptune was never one to forget to put her games away in their boxes, but she would always forget to close the lid on the disc slot. Histoire had reprimanded her for that many times before, always explaining how it exposed the disc reader to dust; Histoire still wasn't sure why Neptune had bothered designing the console that way if she wasn't going to use it correctly. Nevertheless, Histoire's curiosity had been piqued at this sudden change in behavior, and she couldn't help but investigate. She opened up the slot to find…

"Knights of Barcelona? I do not recall ever seeing Neptune play this game, or that she even owned it." Histoire wondered what this mysterious game was. She had considered searching through her tome's database on Planeptune games to learn more about it, but she didn't feel like waiting three hours to find any results when she could simply turn the game on and see for herself. She booted up the Nepstation Plus, and launched the game on the menu screen.

Histoire nearly lost her levitation when she saw the game start up. Those graphics, that interface, that control scheme! She needed to find the box to this game immediately. She dug all through Neptune's game shelf searching for any boxes with the game's title on them, but to no avail. She scanned all over the floor looking for any stray game boxes, but also to no avail. Banging in frustration on the bookshelf, located conveniently next to the game shelf, she noticed a number of books had fallen off the bottom shelf. They must have been sitting very loosely on the shelf to have fallen off so easily. Histoire went down to examine the scene of the fallen books, when she noticed an unlabeled cardboard box sitting at the back of that bottom shelf.

"Of course, the one place nobody would check for games…" Histoire was somewhat impressed that Neptune had chosen a clever hiding place for a game box, but now was a bit too urgent to dwell on that thought. She opened the box, and indeed found the case for Knights of Barcelona… along with a dozen other game cases. Terminal Six, Parade Simulator… this was much worse than Histoire had anticipated. Feeling the stress pile up from this revelation, she did the only thing she could think to do: talk to someone else about it.

Nepgear had been in her workshop all morning, drawing out the schematics for her latest invention concept: an automatic guard rail for bookshelves, one that could catch books if it sensed they were falling off their shelves. She was just finishing up the last measurements for her first prototype, when Histoire came flying frantically into the room.

"Ne… Nep… gear…" Histoire panted, completely out breath despite flying requiring very little energy on her part.

"W-what's wrong, Histoire?! Did something terrible happen?" Nepgear hurriedly got up from her bench, unable to help but show concern at the first sign of her Oracle's distress.

"No… well, maybe… it is about Neptune…"

Hearing her sister's name only multiplied Nepgear's concern. "Oh no, oh no… what's happened to her?!"

"Nothing has happened to her, per se, but…" Histoire tried to find a way to put it lightly, but she grew tired of holding back and simply let the truth out:

"She is a fan of real world games!"

Hearing Histoire's revelation, Nepgear was immediately relieved that Neptune wasn't in any danger, but at the same time…

"Um… I already knew that, Histoire…"

Histoire couldn't believe what she was hearing. Not only was Neptune into real world games, but somehow Nepgear was in on it?! She could barely form a coherent sentence as she tried to process what was going on.

"What? When? How?" she finally managed to sputter out.

"Well…" Nepgear was a bit embarrassed having to explain herself on the spot, "it was a few weeks ago. I had wanted to spend the afternoon playing with Neptune, but she just wanted to play by herself, all alone in that lounge. I was feeling really hurt, since she wouldn't even tell me why she didn't want me in there with her, so I… kinda… hid in the closet when she had gone to use the bathroom. I saw… a lot of weird things she had been playing…" She felt her cheeks flush up as she confessed to her actions. "Oh, I'm really sorry for peeping on her! I never did it again, and I never told anyone else until now!"

"It is alright, Nepgear," Histoire reassured Nepgear, though she was bit surprised to hear Nepgear had been peeping on someone. "That is actually very good of you to have not told anyone about this, and very important, too. Do you know why?"

"Not really. I just figured that if she didn't want me knowing she played those games, she wouldn't want other people to know either."

"It is far more serious than that," Histoire began to explain, "Real world games are one of the biggest social taboos in all of Gamindustri. Not one person who has partaken of this subgenre has avoided the social desolation that comes with them. Workers have lost their jobs, lovers have lost their loves… If word got out that Neptune played these sort of games, her reputation as a CPU would be tarnished forever."

"Goodness, I wouldn't want that to happen to her…" Nepgear started to see the severity of Neptune's secret interest. She couldn't imagine Neptune losing her social status and becoming a recluse, though then she would be able to spend a lot more time with her… "No," Nepgear thought, "I mustn't think such selfish thoughts…"

"Then for Neptune's sake, we must make it our responsibility to ensure that nobody else ever finds out!"