~~~CPUs~~~

Nepgear woke up. She had a really weird dream, being sucked into a portal while she was doing routine maintenance on her beam saber. Currently, she was in the sheets of her bottom bunk inside her and Neptune's room. She must have slept late again after staying up all night to finish some paperwork. A model CPU, and a model sister, should always finish paperwork that was planned for that day. She redressed herself with fresh clothes, and checked the time using her N-Gear. It was two in the afternoon. It was two in the afternoon! This was terrible! She had planned to spend time with Neptune today, but now she had to catch up on the piles of paperwork that came with running a nation.

"Shirking her CPU duties again! I really need to break this habit of hers," Histoire shouted, annoyance dripping from her voice. Nepgear assumed Histoire was getting ready to lecture her down the hallway as she left her room. Histoire hated it when Nepgear stayed up all night doing office work, and would always tell her about the importance of time management. Hoping to preemptively end the lecture before it started, she hurried to the living room the sound of frustration was coming from in order to apologize.

"Histoire, I-"

"Neptune, this is not the time to play games! Your shares are steadily declining, and you haven't touched any of the documents I left on your desk for three months! You have a country to run!" Nepgear was greeted with the sight of Histoire hovering between Neptune's face and the television screen, Histoire shouting so hard she was red in the face and steam was pouring out of her ears.

"Histoire, I'm the CPU of Planeptune, not Neptune. Don't be so hard on her, she's just a CPU Candidate after all," Nepgear interjected as she enter the room.

"Yeah, Histy, I'm just a CPU Can- wait, what?!" As much as Neptune loved to invent excuses for not working, she would never relinquish her pride in saying she was not the CPU of Planeptune. "Hold up, Nep Jr., doing more work than me doesn't mean you can just waltz on in here and take my title from me! Now I see why you called me 'little sis' earlier; you were trying to usurp your dearest big sister. How cruel!" Neptune vocally waxed melodramatic in an attempt to lighten the mood, but she only received an angry look from Histoire and a confused look from Nepgear.

"Little sis, I am older than you. You're centuries younger than I am," Nepgear replied.

As Histoire observed the dialogue between the sisters, her look of anger transitioned into a look of confusion. Why was Nepgear saying things that did not make sense? She raised Neptune, then helped raise Nepgear, so she knew who was older. Unless… "Nepgear, what were you doing the last time you were in your lab?" she asked.

"I was doing routine maintenance on my beam saber, why?" Nepgear replied.

"Did anything weird happen while you were doing this?"

"Well… " Nepgear thought for a moment. "It may have been just a dream, but a vortex appeared out of nowhere and sucked me in," Nepgear blushed slightly, embarrassed to recount to Histoire what she thought was a dream.

Histoire turned to Neptune, ready to ask for her side of the story, until she noticed the normally lively CPU deep in thought. "Histoire," Neptune said, "this Nepgear isn't our Nepgear."

It was Nepgear's turn to look confused. What did they mean, "isn't our Nepgear?" There was only one Nepgear, and that was her. "Don't be silly sis, of course I'm your Nepgear. There's only one of me, after all," Nepgear said.

"What Neptune is trying to say," Histoire said,"is that you're a Nepgear from another dimension." With Histoire's words, Nepgear's mind finally pieced it all together. Why the Basilicom was decorated differently, why Neptune took offense to being called a CPU Candidate, and why Histoire berated Neptune instead of her. It all made sense.

"W… Wha… What the goodness?!"

~~~Candidates~~~

"Neptune, I'm fine! Honest!" Nepgear said in between forced spoonfuls of creme caramel pudding being shoved into her mouth. Nepgear agreed on playing doctor with Neptune after the incident in the lab; She spent little time with Neptune as of late, having spent most of her free time on her experiment. Neptune must be lonely, her only sister being occupied inside her lab all day.

"Don't worry Nepgear. Dr. Nep has only one more spoon of pudding for ya. Here comes the airplane!" Neptune said. After having scraped up the last of the pudding from her plate into her spoon, Neptune made whooshing noises with her mouth accompanied with moving the spoon through the air. Nepgear could not help but chuckle at Neptune's childish antics, which Neptune capitalized on by shoving the final spoon of pudding into her sister's mouth.

Nepgear enjoyed the tender loving care she received from Neptune, as she was usually the one spoon-feeding pudding to Neptune. She would not have minded this, if not for the fact she was stuffed into a strait jacket by Neptune. "Sis, is this strait jacket really necessary to play doctor?" she asked.

"Of course it is, Nepgear. You've been calling me 'big sis' all day, and you never have time to spend with me because you're always working! It's not fair!" Neptune replied.

"I call you 'big sis' because you are my big sister, and I work all the time because you never do," Nepgear retorted. Neptune froze up; Nepgear's words had struck a chord in her, making Nepgear feel guilty about what she just said. However, before she could apologize to Neptune, she heard the ringing of Histoire as she entered the sisters' bedroom.

"Ababababababa-"

"Histy! What's wrong?" Neptune said, ignoring her sister's words for now and focusing on the issue at hand.

"Histoire is receiving a call from another dimension. Let's wait for her to pick up," Nepgear answered while she struggled to break free from her strait jacket.

Author's Notes:

Ababababa abababababababa abababa