Chapter 3: Full Awakening

A week has passed since Neptune departed Planeptune, and now the nation was fending for itself still trying to battle the declining shares. Naturally, when shares have been declining all across Gamindustri, the figureheads of all nations came together to figure out what was going wrong. Obviously, with one CPU and one Candidate missing as well as some Makers and all of the Gold Third, there was no time for secrets, so all four nations were in open forum. Appropriately, there had been a formal apology from Leanbox to Planeptune for a certain issue, and of course while Histoire could say more to a certain Leanbox oracle, she refrained from doing so during this time of deliberation.

As for Neptune...

Walking right out of the Golden Summit of Planeptune was the covered figure of Neptune, who had just finished scouting around the area. When she relocated to Lastation last week, she had taken up a scouting job there because she knew Noire to be meticulous with security. Furthermore, Neptune had swapped out her usual attire with dark blue coloured hoodie, black and indigo coloured stockings, along with a pair of dark gray shoes. Much of this was done to blend into Lastation as a scout and also to hide her commonly known face as Purple Heart. Pulling the hood over her head, Neptune began to walk back to Lastation in order to report her findings.

"(Not going to explore the dungeon first before reporting back?)" Kurome asked, seeing as how Neptune would usually explore the places she scout before reporting anything to Lastation.

"(Normally I would, but with the recent announcement that everybody is working together, we need to adapt a bit. Once word gets out that there's a dungeon right underneath Planeptune's Golden Summit, I am sure that everybody will be going there soon. Rather, since there was a hidden place in this Golden Summit, I think it would be best to explore the other Summits. Maybe they all have a hidden dungeon in them as well. Also we won't run into anybody problematic and if there is a job to explore those in the future, it will save us some time,)" Neptune explained, being very careful on how and where she operated while being a scout for Lastation.

"(How elaborate, this is so unlike you when you were the CPU. Still, you are not content with merely living this kind of life are you?)"

"(Of course not, I am still thinking what to do. Even with my abilities back, my conditioning still is not where it used to be. Whether I want to use that again or just keep my swords is another question too. After all, Uranus is gone now, so I have freedom to do whatever I wish without her holding control over me,)" Neptune said, while arriving just outside of Lastation.

Once she was in the city, she went straight to the guild to report her finding of the hidden access way to access a dungeon from the Golden Summit in Planeptune. Afterward, Neptune made a quick stop to her temporary residence just on the edge of Lastation near the eastern entrance.

Opening the door, the ordinary room with bed, desk, window, washroom, closet, radio, television, and lamp was all tidied up in an orderly fashion. As expected for Lastation personnel keeping the Inn clean. The room also had a wooden interior, and while there was some colours of white on the bedsheets and curtains by the window, most of the furnishings were decorated with Lastation's shade of black. Even though the room was far removed from the luxury that Neptune used to live in, it did not matter to her, as simplicity suited her best especially under the current circumstances. Neptune had mainly used the room to watch or listen to the current events in Gamindustri, as most of the time she went out as a scout to see the events or sneak into Lastation's basilicom to eavesdrop. Since Neptune worked as a scout here, she was also paid fairly well and thus has enough money for all her accommodations.

Of course, beyond the few sheets of paper that Neptune had drawn out diagrammes of her scouting tasks, she kept nothing very valuable in her room. Only her old set of clothes needed to be carefully locked up in the closet, but otherwise Neptune used everything to her advantage to minimise the need of keeping possessions within a room. Her greatest asset was memory though, as things that she read, see, or hear Kurome would be able to access the memories with clarity at anytime.

After mixing a few Nep Bulls and packing up the essentials, Neptune left her room and started her walk towards Lowee. She had to get an early start to walking as she could no longer abuse her HDD form to fly there, and that she also had her original weapon carefully tied and wrapped behind her back, which weighed quite a bit. Neptune had already completed her task at work for Lastation today, so she was free to do as she pleased.

Without incident, Neptune managed to walk into Lowee territory and headed straight towards the Golden Summit there. She had figured that this one was further away enough from the others, and besides her being dressed in darker colours contrasting with the colourful grass and sky environment around her, she was able to easily travel through and effortlessly dispose of any monsters that got in her way. Arriving at the Golden Summit, Neptune forced her way in and went straight to work.

Searching each of the four corners of the first floor, Neptune found the same fault in one of the corners and uncovered a teleportation tile. Using the secret entrance, Neptune arrived at a secret dungeon just like the one she discovered earlier in Planeptune: Dark, rusty, and damp walls with barely any light along with steel bar gates and even some chains hanging from the ceiling. There was also a heavy miasma rising up from the floor, which seemed to be harmless.

"(Just as I thought, there is a dungeon here too. So there are probably four in total with all the Golden Summits,)" Neptune thought, while observing the gate in front of her with a blue keyhole in the door attached.

"(And I would imagine there would be some kind of security in place too. Make sure you don't get yourself killed,)" Kurome replied, knowing that while Neptune is capable, she is by no means invincible.

"(Yeah, speaking of security, let's see what they got...)" Neptune said in response while pulling out a pair of infrared goggles and looking through them, she saw a few lasers on the ground just in front of the gate. Putting the goggles aside, Neptune looked to the left and saw what appeared to be a staff member of Lowee's basilicom by the clothing. However, the person had turned around and spotted Neptune.

"Hey, unauthorised visitors aren't allowed in here!" Yelled the staff member, charging at Neptune with a gun.

Neptune swung her sword on reflex and not only disarmed the guard, but also charged forward to cut away at the knees to disable movement. Neptune quickly reached down and pilfered the guard for a blue key. Neptune unlocked the gate with the blue key hole and moved forward while avoiding the laser she saw earlier. Still, it was of no real use because the guard knocked down earlier had crawled to the nearest wall and pulled the alarm, alerting the entire dungeon of an intruder.

"(Honestly Nepsy, you're being too soft. You could have just killed the poor fool and saved us from all this trouble,)" Kurome remarked, seeing as skilled as Neptune was, she had no killing intent with her attacks.

"(There's no need to kill people without purpose. Besides, it would be trouble if too many of Blanc's staff members just died all of a sudden.)"

"(Still trying to hold onto those ideals? I don't think that these guys are affiliated with White Heart you know,)" Kurome remarked while four more guards poured in from two connecting passages of the hallway.

"(Now that you mention it, it is strange. These dungeons have not been reported anywhere, but the people here are all dressed in the same uniform as the people in Lowee...)" Neptune thought as she quickly avoided the few attacks from the guards and made quick slashes across the upper body of all of them to bring them down. Afterward, she proceeded to pilfer the pocket of one of the guards to pick up a yellow key, but one of the them that was struck down had gotten back up and charged at Neptune.

Before the attack could connect, a dark purple aura enveloped Neptune and her hair and eyes changed to a darker shade of purple, then quickly evading the attack, she countered with a downward slash, completely killing the guard this time before her hair and eyes returned to their normal colours.

"(That was too close. You have to remember, without your powers as a CPU you are not as durable as before, so kill the bastards before they kill us!)" Kurome warned, as Neptune was left stunned at the sudden lose of control.

"(I guess there's really no choice...)" Neptune replied, knowing that what Kurome was saying is true. It was only thanks to Kurome having a small portion of power to temporarily take over that prevented serious injury just now, even though Neptune was still worried that the would-be destroyer of Gamindustri would completely take over her. After all, since existing and surviving within her mind, Kurome had slowly grown with her influence and even been able to take control for a longer period of time.

Before Neptune would unlock the gate in front of her, she ventured into the left corridor and saw several small rooms that looked like prison cells. Taking a quick look, there were indeed people inside the rooms, all locked up. Some of the people locked up in the right corridor were shivering and others seemed to be preoccupied fiddling with something inside their cells. Regardless of what the people were doing, they were all dressed in sackcloth and also seemed to be malnourished along with hazy red eyes. This prison seemed to hold all sorts of different people, ranging from basilicom staff, elderly, young, and even small animals.

"(Well, somebody sure is doing something interesting here. I think it is best to keep them locked up for now,)" Kurome advised, knowing that Neptune would just try to free the prisoners in this situation.

"(Hmm, there is something really strange about them, but... all right, we'll leave them for now...)" Neptune said while refraining from using the yellow key to unlock the prison doors on either corridor and just unlocked the gate in the middle and went down the stairs.

Once down on the lower floor, Neptune saw the same layout as before with the gates and guards. Except this time, instead of just guards in the uniform of Lowee basilicom, there were security Bits as well as armed guards from Lowee at this location. Naturally, in order to get the brown key for the gate up ahead, Neptune would have to engage into battle with the guards, and this time she made quick work of them and did not spare their lives with her sword.

"Something is really not right here, basilicom staff on the first floor and now even Lowee's army in this place. There must be something larger at work here..." Neptune remarked, noticing the tight security of the place as well as the type of people deployed here.

"(Seems like this is related to the shares dropping. I should have done something like this when I had the chance,)" Kurome said, seeing the subtle ways in which shares were being eroded away.

"(Shut it,)" Neptune retorted, having just enough of Kurome for one day.

Proceeding through the front gate, Neptune continued deeper into the dungeon and both corridors on either side lead to the same thing with many prisoners living in terrible conditions. With the presence of Lowee's armed forces, it almost looked like a rebellion was taking place. Nevertheless, Neptune engaged into one more battle with some guards and Bits, and after a short struggle with the larger group she reached the last gate with a black key hole. Unfortunately, none of the slain guards had a black key, so Neptune could only peer through the gate and observe there was a teleportation circle. While Neptune was taking a look through the gate though, some dark figure had sneaked up from behind and was about to attack with a long object, but Neptune instinctively reacted and parried the blow with her sword.

"Damn, almost worked," said the mysterious figure, backing off a little bit.

"Who are you?" Neptune asked, not quite recognising her silent assailant.

"Hah, you don't need to know anything when I am going to kill ya!" was the arrogant reply from the other party as it charged forward at Neptune again.

Quickly moving to the side, Neptune then caught a good look at the person: A gray hoodie with mouse ears, green hair, red eyes, and a meanacing iron pipe for a weapon. Wasting no time, Neptune went on the counter offensive and swung her sword, but her attack was blocked by the iron pipe before being pushed back.

"(Now that's a face I had not seen in a long time!)" Neptune thought, remembering the infamous Linda.

"(Hm, she was a member of that ASIC organisation wasn't she? All these years and she still lives. Quite impressive for a rat... but wait, something isn't quite right,)" Kurome noted, sensing something quite different from the Linda here compared to the person that appeared within Neptune's memories.

Neptune and Linda clashed with their weapons, but neither was prevailing over another as they were evenly matched. Of course, such a deadlock merely annoyed the former Underling as she was about to reveal her true self.

"Hm, not bad. Looks like you're not just some random weakling. But as warden of this Human Ranch, I will have to make sure you don't make it out alive," Linda said as she glowed with light and pulsed with waves of mist that looked similar to the miasma the dungeon emitted.

As Neptune and Linda continued to fight and cross their weapons, the force from Linda now was far greater and pushed Neptune back and into the ground. Just as Neptune got up, Linda already charged forward and followed up with another attack before Neptune could react and took a direct hit.

"Augh!" Neptune coughed as she backed up into the wall but quickly pivoted out of the way as the Underling did not stop the barrage of attack. What Neptune noticed though was that the attacks were far greater in strength than any normal human could possibly muster.

"(Just as I thought. She's using share power somehow,)" Kurome said, noticing the difference in strength.

"(What!? So the missing shares were being stolen and then somehow used? This just keeps getting better...)" Neptune thought before taking another hard hit from the iron pipe on her side.

"Hahaha, how do you like that? I am unstoppable!" Linda bragged, before chanting her explosion spell, which instantly came bursting out right at Neptune.

Neptune braced herself for impact and was barely standing after the fire attack, but Linda continued her relentless assault with the iron pipe. With her movements slowed from fatigue and taking multiple hits, Neptune could only parry half the incoming attacks and was repeatedly struck until she was backed into the wall and fell down.

"(This is bad. You are basically a normal human fighting against a CPU's power. I suggest you withdraw before we both die,)" Kurome warned, seeing Neptune in a clearly bad shape. Neptune did not move though, and Linda only moved closer and was ready to deliver the final crushing hit.

Just as the iron pipe was coming down, Neptune gritted her teeth and impulsively swung her sword upwards, blocking the hit but broke her sword in the process. Linda backed off in alert after the quick retaliation, while preparing for another assault as Neptune slowly got to her feet.

"(So this is how it feels like to be against a CPU's power with nothing but myself... All this time I took those powers for granted and even now I still have all these regrets over what I could have or should have done. What a joke, Histy was right when she said as I was a failure as a CPU, however...!)" Neptune thought as she was barely standing still.

"Not bad of a struggle, maybe I will let you live so you can be converted into power for myself... if you beg for it on your knees that is," Linda bragged again, completely smug while being drunk on her own power. At once she charged forward again and swung her iron pipe with all her strength, but Neptune grabbed the pipe with her bare hand.

"I remember clearly now... The whole reason why I developed my talent, it was not only to keep Nepgear safe, but also to survive in this harsh world, especially under Uranus," Neptune breathed, coming to a personal revelation.

"Huh? What the hell on you going on about? Just die!" Linda said as she pry her pipe loose from Neptune and readied to strike again.

Neptune quickly dropped her broken sword and reached behind to her back and gripped her original weapon. Pulling back, all ropes and the cloth ripped apart and Neptune revealed a giant dark blue mechanical bow with a black handle. At the same time, Neptune's hood had flown backwards, revealing her face to which Linda also recognised.

"What the, it's you!?"

"I am done with hesitating. I will do whatever it takes to survive, just like before!" Neptune proclaimed as she quickly released a volley of energy arrows that made Linda go on the defensive as three arrows sunk into her skin.

"Dammit!" The Underling screamed while bleeding out.

Meanwhile, Neptune's eyes had changed, focusing and being sharpened she took a stance while focusing on Linda with a small needle in hand from her bow's hidden compartment. After carefully planning her route, Neptune charged at high speed right through the unsuspecting Linda with a definitive strike.

"What the hel- *cough*" Linda sputtered as a little blood poured out from her mouth.

"You are dead already," Neptune stated.

"What? I-" Linda managed to say before her face and all her skin turned purple from the fast-acting poison and her body shriveling up and quickly decomposing into a pile of powder.

Neptune could almost feel a smile from Kurome in her mind as she relayed her thoughts, "(Haha, that was beautiful Nepsy. Looks like Uranus really raised you well, there was nobody who ever came close to your killer instinct as Planeptune's most feared assassin.)"

"(Yes, and Uranus put me through hell to sharpen my killing techniques. Yet, even she underestimated me... and that's why I killed her too.)"