Neptune touched down onto the ground outside the forest, being the very last to arrive of the CPUs. She approached the entrance, deactivating her HDD in the process as the other 3 impatiently waited.

"Whew, that was sooo tiring. I wish I could have just stayed home, but Histy was all like "You can't just sit around all day. Go do some work for your nation and stop being lazy _".

None of them reacted. It would have been surprising if she had shown up on time, after all. Still, Noire was the first to say anything.

"Do you have any idea how long we have been waiting for you here?"

Nep took a moment to think this over, considering the time when she got the message.

"I'm gonna take a lucky guess and say 5 minutes. Am I right? Am I?"

"Add a couple zeros to that number and you might be close" Blanc emotionlessly replied, putting a small notebook onto the ground.

"We can make it 5 if I can convince our writer to let me off. Will you do it, author? Will you?"

"Nep, can you tone it back a little? We're not even 200 words in and you're already trying to break the fourth wall. Just accept what he gives you." Noire asked of her with a sigh.

"Fiiine. So I'm a couple hours late. What's the rush anyways?"

"Did you read anything?" Vert asked, pulling up her phone to get the details. "Apparently, a monster in this forest is causing a lot of problems for the children of all our nations. What kinds of problems it causes isn't specified, but that doesn't really matter. What does matter is that we take it down before it causes more problems."

"That's weird. I haven't heard anything about these incidents in Planeptune."

"Probably because you never leave your room and look at your own nation. You should stop playing with your friends online and do it sometime. You learn a lot." Noire responded with a hint of pride in her observation.

"At least I HAVE friends to play with." Neptune replied smugly.

"Sh-shut up. I have lots of friends. They're just...never available. That's all. Nothing more."

"When you two are done bickering with each other, we have a monster to take down. No rush." Blanc exasperatedly stated.

"Fine" Noire responded, drawing her blade. "We can finish this later, but for now, she's right."

Nep didn't get a chance to respond as the other 3 made their way into the forest, Nep in tow.

Nep slashed away at another small dogoo as she progressed through the forest, the path to the end seemingly endless.

"Ugh, when do we get to see the big guy here? I'm getting tired of slashing dogoos." Nep asked, exhausted. "Maybe the end here will be an unknown enemy, spouting things like "the end of the world is upon us, and there's nothing you can do to stop it", before taking us all down with no effort. Wouldn't that be something incredible?"

"I don't know about you, but I'd rather return back to my nation alive." Blanc stated without looking up at her. "Besides, I think you're making this seem much bigger than it is. I'm sure it's just a stray mob that shouldn't be here, like most of the requests we get."

"Blanc is right, Neptune, but something about this really is odd." Vert added.

"What do you mean?" Neptune replied with a tilt of her head.

"Well, all the complaints to the guild about this monster have come from kids, which leads me to believe it's specifically targeting them over adults. This is odd for a number of reasons, one being that it's unlikely that in all these cases, they're all children. In addition, this isn't one or two reports, but Leanbox has had almost 20 complaints over the past few months."

"Lastation had over 30. I thought of checking it out myself, but the children seemed unharmed. However, none of them could seem to explain what had happened either."

"So it IS an evil wizard after all, or maybe Arfoire up to some convoluted plan to end the world." Neptune blindly responded as she slashed at another dogoo.

"If it's that woman again, all the better. We could take her down faster than any other monster we come across." Noire responded with a smile over her face. "What she wants with kids is still weird, though, and why they're coming back unharmed is weirder."

"I think we'll find out sooner rather than later. I think I see a clearing." Blanc stated, rushing forward towards it.

"Hey, see? Big boss flag right there. Not a doubt." Neptune replied, drawing her sword for the fight ahead. "Will probably give us a ton of EXP as well."

"Neptune, will you...oh, forget it." Noire responded, rushing forward as well.

"Hey, wait up. I want in on this beatdown too, you know." Vert stated as she entered the clearing.

Their faces quickly went monotone as they saw their so-called boss in the center. It was a dogoo. Same blue color as the rest, same expression, same shape. Vert approached it to get a better look, the little creature unresponsive.

"I mean...It's slightly bigger than the rest of them...I think."

"This is the monster which has been causing our nation's so many issues? You can't be serious." Noire asked, her expression unchanging as she put away her sword. "And I was looking forward to something worth killing too."

"Come on, let's go already. I'm pretty sure this was just a prank against us set up and waste our time, and when I find them…" Blanc stated, looking like she was ready to put a hammer into anyone she saw.

"If I tell Histy that it was just a prank, she'll never believe me. I think we should kill it just to say that we killed it."

'Screw that. It isn't worth the effort. Besides, for all we know, this could have just been your doing in order to look like you're working." Blanc replied, now full on pissed off.

"It does sound like something Neptune would do, but this is too elaborate even for her." Noire stated.

"See? If I were to skip out on work, I wouldn't take it this far. Maybe I would fake 9 or 10 complaints from Planeptune, but not this much."

"That wasn't exactly a compliment" Noire responded while trying to comprehend what she said.

"I'm not going to stand here and listen to you two argue. You can take care of this without me". As Blanc turned to leave, Vert looked to the dogoo. Something about it had changed, more specifically, it's expression, almost like the face of someone who's already won.

Then it began expanding, slowly growing larger and larger, quickly surpassing their own size, absorbing Neptune and Noire into its body..

"Um, Blanc?"

"Look, Thunder tits, you're not convincing me to kill some harmless dogoo, and that's final." Blanc stated without turning around.

"Turn around, Blanc. Trust me."

"Why should I? All I've done is trust and it's gotten me nowhere."

There was a brief pause as Blanc continued forward.

"All right, then. I apologize."

"For what? Blanc asked with confusion, still looking forward.

"Nothing. I'm just sorry for the fact that your brain there is about as small as that excuse of a chest you've got."

Not even a moment later, Blanc was in HDD mode, full fury, before noticing that she was staring down an expanding dogoo, Vert having disappeared. Blanc attempted to run before being consumed by the growing mass.

"What the hell is this?" Blanc thought to herself, the dogoo having stopped expanding. She could feel what was about to happen, and it wasn't going to be pretty. Everyone else could feel it too, all of them shutting their eyes and mouths.

Finally, the dogoo burst, sending it's slime in all directions. The 4 CPUs were left in a pool on the ground, trying to wipe the slime off themselves.

"Ugh, that was disgusting. I never want to touch something like that again." Nep disgustedly stated before stopping herself. "Anyone else feeling...different?"

Noire got up, wiping the slime off her face. "Now that you mention it, I do feel different. It's odd."

"I feel almost lighter, like a big weight has been taken off my chest." Vert added.

"It's hard to stand, and everything seems so much bigger." Blanc stated. "Nep, was your voice always that high?"

"What do you mean?" Nep asked, quickly surprised at her own voice. "You're right. It does sound higher, but…" Nep didn't finish.

"Neptune, what is it?" Vert asked, slowly beginning to look around and understand.

"Well, I think the mystery of all the kids has been solved" Vert stated, looking around at all the childlike bodies around her.

"You can't be serious." Blanc stated with a voice that was a mix of annoyance, anger, and bewilderment as she looked at her body. " I had to have aged back at least 10 years. I can't run Lowee like this."

"So, that dogoo gel turned back our ages." Noire inquired. "I seem to remember an illegal anti-aging serum going around Lastation a few years back, but didn't think much of it."

"I had it going around as a cream that granted immortality if you put it on, but nobody bought it." Blanc added. "I thought it was a scam, so I read the ingredients to find dogoo jelly on it. In any case, I think our best bet would be to wait it out, but why couldn't anyone explain this to us? We could have prepared for this easily and struck it down from a distance, or simply told people to avoid it."

Neptune chimed in.

"I'm sure there is some scientific or magical reason why that's the case, like how their minds were somehow reversed as well to a point where they couldn't explain it clearly while we had the OP protection abilities of HDD to prevent that mental reversal, but for now, let's just attribute it to our incredible plot armour and go with that."

The air was silent with that.

"So...what do we do now?" Noire asked. She brought up a good point.

Blanc walked towards the clearing, stumbling in her new body.

"Where are you going" Asked Vert.

"Lowee. Where else? Not like I can activate HDD and fly there, can I?"

Very noticed that she was right as she attempted to activate her HDD, quickly disappointed.

"Well, that's annoying."

Neptune followed Blanc towards the entrance.

"Nepgear is probably going to be really worried about me, and I'll have a lot of explaining to do."

Noire followed suit.

"I can't leave Uni doing all the work, so I've got to get back quickly."

With a sigh, Vert followed all of them.

"This should an interesting few years, shouldn't it? I'm looking forward to what comes."

I know I said this would be a series of one-shots, but the alternative would be to put all this at the beginning of every chapter, so I just decided to spare you the annoyance of reading the same things over and over again, so I think that just making it a prologue to them all was just a better idea. My point is this: The actual one-shots will start in the next chapter, but I hope you enjoyed this anyways.

The updates may be a little slow, but I hope you can bear through them.

So, until next time, I'm out.