"NEPPU!"

Neptune shot up from her bed and had started to hyperventilate. The woman frantically looked around, wondering where she was and how she had gotten there. It took her a bit, but once she realized that she was actually in her room, she had started to calm down.

"I-I-I-I thought I… I saw her. I saw Gia…" Neptune was stuttering, and even though she sort of knew she was having a nightmare, the lilac-haired woman couldn't stop taking short breaths. "W-W-Why? Why is this h-h-happening to me? I didn't do anything wrong, right? So why do these things keep happening?! What did I do to deserve this?!"

… Neptune had already known that no matter how loud she shouted, or how much noise she had made, there would be no one to give her any kind of response. Neptune grabbed her pillow and had begun to hug it since it was the only thing that came close to giving her any sort of comfort in the world she lived in.

Neptune was eventually able to stop her panic attack from developing any further and sat up on her bed in silence. The girl was thinking about the nightmare she had just had and was having trouble believing that it was all in her head. "Those bruises I had… The whole nation being flooded underwater… Me reaching out Gia…" Neptune had looked very distressed and only squeezed her pillow more. "It all seemed so real…"

The moved her blankets off of her and inspected her body. To her dismay, her body was completely unscathed, there were no signs of damage anywhere. This had only made the girl more upset and frustrated. "I don't know how much longer I'll be able to go… This place is breaking me down faster than I'm able to complete a game of BETRIS."

The girl thought about her joke for a bit and started to chuckle, even if it wasn't that funny. Neptune knew that even though she had matured a lot, her ability to make references in the form of jokes was something that would always be apart of her.

"I should probably go do something and get my mind off of things…If that's even possible." Neptune had gotten out of bed her bed and prepared to start her day. As she was about to step out of her room, she noticed something weird. "... Wait a second…"

Neptune gently opened the door, but instead of being blinded by a bright light, she was greeted by the exact opposite. The entire hallway was shrouded in darkness, the only light that was present had come from the lamp in Neptune's room, and something that came from the main room.

"Looks like I woke up a bit too early." The woman deducted. "Meh, it's not like it matters. If anything, I got more time to do stuff today!" With that in mind, Neptune continued to get ready to start her day.

Once the girl had finished showering and putting on her clothes, she walked into the main room of her house. Neptune looked around for a bit, but she couldn't seem to identify the source of the light. The girl had then realized that the light that was in the room, wasn't actually coming from inside the room, but from outside of her house.

Neptune poked her head out of her window and saw that the moon was shining brightly, albeit a little too bright. The lilac-haired girl hadn't noticed however and had thought that it looked extra pretty. Neptune never really stayed up too late, even though there wasn't really any reason for her to turn in so early. Because of this, Neptune usually never sees how the nation looks during the late hours of the night.

"Ooh, pretty!" In any case, Neptune was glad that she was able to see the moon so clearly and bask in its glory…For about two seconds that is."Okay, onto more important stuff."

The girl closed her window, even though there wasn't much of a point considering half of her house was missing and the half that wasn't could collapse at any moment. The lilac-haired girl was about to reach for her cabinet to open it, but stopped. "... Nah, I think I'll skip breakfast today." She pulled her hand away from the cabinet and instead reached for her notepad that was in her drawer, as well as something to write with.

"Now, what should I do today…?" The girl took a walk around the room, thinking about what to add to her list. "Aside from the usual stuff, I think I can add a few more things onto the pile since it's early and all."

Neptune thought about it for some time, yet she still couldn't come up with anything. The girl started to flip through the pages of her notepad, seeing if she could use any of the optional tasks she had given herself and add it to the pile. In the end, Neptune had only found one thing, but she didn't really think it would be a good use of her time.

"Look for people." The girl read what she had written out loud. Once again, she thought that it would simply just be a waste of her time and energy, although time wasn't really that important, she knew that her energy was. The girl was really debating whether she should keep this on her list or not. "*sigh* I don't really see the point in doing this anymore, but fine." In the end, Neptune had given in and decided to leave it on her list."

Once Neptune had done everything she had needed to do, she grabbed her bag, slipped on her shoes, and left her house. Even though half of the house was missing, Neptune had still decided to go through the door.

The young woman went to the back of her house to check on the contraption that she used to check whether it would rain or not. Once she had was that it was empty, the girl continued on to her next task.

As Neptune had gone around and did what she needed to do, the moon had begun to disappear and the sun had begun to rise over the horizon. Neptune never really noticed the sun though since she was too preoccupied with what was on her list to do list.

"Phew, that takes care of most of the difficult stuff I've been really lazy to do!" Neptune wiped her forehead and marked off one of the last few things that were on the list. "Seriously, I'm the last person alive and I still decide to procrastinate! I guess these old habits of mine will never die, huh?"

Neptune soon noticed that there were only two things left on her list, and as soon as she was about to read what they were. "YOWCH!" Something that had looked to have fallen from the sky hit the woman on the head and landed in her hands. "Ah, geez! What the Nep was that?!"

Neptune looked around, trying to see if she could identify what had hit her on the head. The girl didn't realize that the very item that had done the deed was sitting in her palms as she had done so. Finally, Neptune had looked at her hands and gasped. "W-W-What the heck?

Sitting in the palm of Neptune's hands was what appeared to be a shiny red apple. The young woman stared at the fruit in awe and looked around once again and then at the apple, just to make sure that she wasn't seeing things. To her surprise, she wasn't and the apple had continued to sit in her palms.

"H-Holy cow…" Neptune was having trouble finding words. It had been such a long time since she had seen fruit, but to be more specific fresh fruit. Most of the food items she had found when scavenging were unfortunately spoiled. "Where did this thing even come from."

Neptune once again looked around, but not because she believed the apple was going to disappear, but because she was a bit skeptical. Even if it was Neptune, she was smart of enough to know that fruit falling from the sky as the apple did wasn't normal in the slightest.

"But more importantly…" Neptune now had a big goofy smile on her face as she turned back to apple. "How come I haven't devoured you whole yet?!"

It's been at least 5 hours since Neptune woke up, and she had decided to skip breakfast. It was only natural that the girl was hungry, and even if she wasn't going to have a full course meal, she could at least have something small to hold her over for a little while longer. Neptune rose the apple up to her mouth and took a bite out of it. It was the first time in a long while she had eaten something that was not only sweet but a physical substance that she could hold in her hand.

"Mmh~!" Neptune had savored that bite and imprinted its memory into her mind and taste buds (somehow). "This is so good~! Hey, wait a second…" It seemed as if Neptune just had an epiphany. "Apples have seeds, so if I take the seeds out of this apple, then… *gasps* Holy moly, I might never have to eat anything that comes out of a can ever again!"

While Neptune was celebrating, she didn't realize that the apple had started to disintegrate into pixels. "Alright, time to finish this baby off and harvest all the-" As Neptune had turned back to the apple, the last pixel had disappeared and her hands were empty. Neptune stared at the palm of her hand for what seemed like minutes. The girl seemed more upset than surprised.

"HEY! WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA!" Neptune shouted up into the sky. "WHY CAN'T I EVER HAVE NICE THINGS IN LIFE?! AAAAAAAAA-"

It took her some time, but Neptune had eventually calmed down. The young woman took a few deep breaths to make sure that any unnecessary was out of her system. After that, she had started to think a little more rationally. "Wait… Where did the Apple go?!" Neptune looked around, she was seeing if she had somehow dropped the apple on the ground while she was talking to herself. "It's not around here, and it's not like there are any holes that it could've fallen into or places it could have rolled behind!"

Just to be sure, Neptune checked the entire area to see if the apple was still around. Once she confirmed that the apple wasn't in the area, her mind had started to formulate several kinds of outcomes. None of these added up, unfortunately… at least, that wasn't until she had seen her notepad on the ground. At that moment, something had sparked in her head, something that made her freeze.

"...Hello?! Is anybody there?!" Without any sort of indication, Neptune had taken off in a random direction. "If anyone's there, just holler back at me, okay?!" The woman had left her notepad on the ground, and on it were only two tasks left that she had yet to complete. One of them had read, "Work on tunnel" and the other, "Search for people (might skip this one after all)"

Neptune ran around the entire nation shouting things out as loud as she could. While the girl had begun to do this, the sky had started to change color. It changed into a dark purple color, despite it still being daytime and nowhere close to the evening hours. Neptune hadn't realized since she was too busy calling out to any potential survivors that were in the nation.

"Come on, say something!" Fatigue was beginning to catch up to Neptune and she had stopped to take a breather. The girl looked around and noticed that she was in a slightly unfamiliar part of the nation. Neptune knew Planeptune like the back of her pillow, the only reason why this part of the nation was unfamiliar to her was simply because she hadn't traveled to that part a lot. "Marco…?"

There was no response. Neptune stood there idly and looked down at her feet. "I knew it was too good to be true…" Neptune muttered before she stared up at the sky and sighed. "Why would anyone else be here? That's just silly… and if there was someone else here, they definitely wouldn't show themselves to me… A monster."

Something had begun to change inside the young woman, although she didn't really feel it. Even if Neptune had felt the change, she wouldn't really know how to describe it. This change in the girl was none other than her-

"Wait... What's up with the sky?" Neptune had finally noticed that the sky had changed from clear blue color to a sinister purple instead. At the same time, the change in the woman had come to a stop. "The last time the sky turned this dark was when that-"

"*THUD*"

Neptune stopped talking and continued to stare up into the sky, only this time, she had a bit of a shocked expression on her face. The girl continued like this for about a minute or so before had eventually fallen onto her knees. The top half of her body had followed after moments after and Neptune passed out.

".̶̛̟̬̝͇̟̣͒̈́͒̅̓͝ͅ.̶̡̛̮̺̼͔͇̈́̀̍̈̚ͅ.̸̡̨̱̳̘̀̅́̈́̚̚͜ͅŎ̵̥̥͖̰̹̞̝̀̇̒̀͐̾ǘ̷͖̗̖͍̤͍̍͛̀̕͜͝r̵̰̞̙̼̘͕̮̈́̈́̋̓͛̌͝ ̷̢̣̫̙̼̼̒̅̿͛̇̒͋͜f̵͇̯̟̣̬̼͂͋̋̀͒̕͜͝u̷̧̜̘͓̟͎̪̍͆́̈́̓̓̓t̶̢͉͇͇̙͕͈̆̃̀͋̿̂͠ŭ̶̗̺̱͈̳̞͉͛͋͌̆̌ȑ̸͕̖̳͖̣̹̔͑͛̿̈́é̴̗̯͍̬̖̹̆̑́͘͝ͅ ̷̢͈̞̻̱̳͚̐̈́̌́̆̆͗b̷͇̼͉͔̦̀̑͊́́͝ͅe̵͉̣̫͍̟͓͑̓͑̈́̊͠͝ġ̵̡͙͙̗̗̭͕̈̓̈́̚̚î̵̬̼͉̤̟̙̿̈́͗͊̎͘n̴̨̺̭̩͓̮͇̒̀̄̒̂͆̕ş̷̛͉͔͔̟̮̮́̓̄̅͒̒ ̴̣̫̰͉̗̬͉͐̌̋͗͗͂̅h̴̪̞͇̖͕͓̣̔̽̇̈́̊͝e̶͚̲̹͚̲͎̮͋̈̈͌̄̄͛r̶̰̦͔̰̰̥̎̓̌̃̅͗͠ͅȩ̷̲̫̱̰̩͓̉̈̑͛̉̾͝.̷̡̧̛̛̤̻̭͔͕̈́̒͌͆͠.̵͈̩̭̲̖̜̈̽́̂̀̈ͅ.̸̧̥͍͙̖͍̠̍̄͗̌̉͂̍"