Disclaimer: I don't own Hyperdimension Neptunia, it belongs to Idea Factory, Compile Heart, Sega and whomever else works on it.
Anonydeath sighed as he watched Jupiter having dinner with the cute little CPU Candidates and White Heart. "Sheesh, you need to act a little less nervous, cutie-pie." It was obvious to anyone watching that Jupiter was incredibly nervous, while she tried to pass it off as being nervous around a CPU, Anonydeath knew it couldn't last for too much longer. "Well, guess I better give you an out, huh?"
(-)
"Lady Blanc!" A voice yelled as a maid ran into the dining area. "I'm terribly sorry for intruding on your meal, but there's an emergency at one of the local amusement parks."
"What is it, Financier?" Blanc asked, glad that the tension in the room was being broken up by something. She had no idea why Jupiter was so nervous around her, or why she was sitting so far away. Quite frankly, it was annoying Blanc something fierce, but at least the girl wasn't rude.
"The automatons have suddenly gone berserk, milady." The maid bowed, causing everyone to stand up. "On top of that a dozen bits have appeared. So far no injuries have been reported but..."
"That's fine, I'll take care of it." A flash of white light engulfed her and Blanc's body was covered in a white body outfit, her brown hair had turned blue and her eyes had gone red. "Alright, I'm heading..." She stopped as Rom, Ram and Uni were all engulfed in white light as well. "You three..."
"You aren't leaving us out of this!" Ram, in a similar outfit to Blanc's, her hair now pink, grinned at her big sister. "Besides, there might be people hurt and you could use some help."
"Uh huh. We're helping!" Rom, in a near-identical outfit to Ram's, though her hair was blue, nodded enthusiastically.
"And we're allies, aren't we?" Uni asked, her body covered in a skin-tight black body suit, her black hair had become white and her pigtails had spiraled into a rough drill shape, her eyes had gone green and, as Jupiter noted, her breasts, which were already pretty small, had shrunk.
"Should I..." Jupiter jumped as White Heart glared at her.
"If yer gunna be that scared, just stay here, besides, I'd rather work with people I know than someone who looks like she wants to run off constantly!" White Heart snapped and ran off with Rom and Ram following after her.
"Sorry, it won't take us long." Uni gave Jupiter an apologetic look and ran off after them.
After the others were gone, Jupiter let out a long sigh. "I...I'm not a coward..." She moaned and slumped down in her chair. "Sis is going to be disappointed in me."
"Excuse me." Financier spoke up, causing Jupiter to look up at her. "I couldn't help but notice how nervous you were the whole time that Lady Blanc was here."
"Um, that is..."
Financier held up a hand. "It's quite alright, I can understand being nervous when seeing a CPU for the first time, I know I was, but your level of nervousness isn't normal and Lady Blanc is, despite what rumors will tell you, quite empathetic." Jupiter sighed and Financier gave Jupiter a small smile. "You're from Planeptune, aren't you? Please! Calm down!" She held up her hands as Jupiter looked at her with white, blank eyes and trembled. "Whatever you say will be kept between the two of us."
"How did you know?"
"I didn't." Financier smiled at Jupiter's dumbfounded expression. "I took a stab in the dark, because the only thing that made sense for how nervous you are is that you're from the isolated nation."
Jupiter sighed and sat down. "You think White Heart knows?"
"She probably has some suspicions." Financier admitted and walked over to the girl. "I can imagine that the view of the CPUs outside of Lady Lilac Heart is pretty negative in Planeptune, huh?"
Jupiter sighed and nodded. "Yeah, sis, err, that is, my sister took me to a memorial park once, beautiful place, a bit away from the Basilicom and business area, it's a memorial for Purple Heart."
"The previous CPU that died in the war..." Financier sighed softly, she didn't know all the details surrounding Purple Heart's death, she suspected only a few people did. "I take it that the people..."
"They know that their beloved CPU died fighting in the war." Jupiter cut Financier off. "Very few people know all the details." Not even Jupiter knew all the details, Histoire only gave her the general outline of what happened while Nepgear refused to say anything more.
"Suddenly your nervousness makes a lot of sense." Financier nodded to her. "I know it might not change your mind anytime soon, but..." She gave Jupiter a small smile. "Lady White Heart, that is, Lady Blanc, deeply regrets what she did during the war."
Jupiter looked at her sharply. "Really? I find it hard to believe."
"I can imagine that you would." Financier shook her head. "Whether you do or don't isn't important. But... And if Lady Blanc hears about this, you didn't hear it from me, I've been a maid for the CPU and her sisters for close to ten years now, and I can tell you, Lady Blanc gets horrible nightmares. I've had to help her calm down more than once, she once told me that she dreamed about Lady Purple Heart asking her to die for what she did." The brown-haired maid turned and walked towards the door. "Do with that information what you will, but know that Lady Blanc would like nothing more than to apologize to your CPU over what happened."
Jupiter said nothing as she was left alone in her thoughts.
(-)
"That maid is sharp, it would be a shame if something happened to her." Anonydeath sing-songed. "Very tempting..." He sighed, knowing that Nepgear wouldn't approve. "Besides, if I did hack into it, all I would do it make the blender, the chopper and the microwave try to kill her." He had to admit, that would be kind of funny in one of those silly, campy children horror movies where toys came to life and tried to kill their owners sort of way. Looking at the amusement park security cameras, he scoffed as he saw the automatons getting blown up. "Well maybe honey's cute little sister can relax now?"
(-)
After quickly getting to the amusement park, White Heart grimaced as she saw the people panicking. 'Going to be a pain in the ass to deal with after this.' She turned to the CPU Candidates. "You three, make sure to help get people out of here unharmed, I'm going to deal with the out-of-control automatons." The three nodded and flew down, calling to the panicking civilians.
Hovering just over an oncoming group of people who were running from a scary-looking penguin that was breathing fire, Uni yelled at them before blasting the penguin in the head, which thankfully seemed to calm the crowd down. "Listen everyone!" Uni was grateful that most of them were calm enough to look up at her. "Head this way!" She turned and blasted the far wall. "Double file, make sure that everyone gets through."
Above them, Rom held her staff down as energy built up at the tip before she fired an arcing stream of energy that went from one automation to another, blowing holes through them with ease.
Ram was on the ground, hovering just over it as she fired ice crystal blasts at some animal-shaped animatronics. "Bleah! For some reason I don't like those foxes and hedgehogs."
Rom nodded as she blasted another automation. "How are..." She looked down to see Uni helping a young child through the hole in the wall that she blasted and returned the young child to its mother. Rom couldn't tell if the child was a boy or a girl from this angle, but she was glad that people were being taken care of.
Hearing an explosion in the distance, she looked at it and saw a merry go round fly into the air with lots of robots on it before a spinning ax cut through it and caused them to explode messily. "I hope Blanc's okay."
"Don't worry." Ram called up to her. "Big sis can't lose to these things!"
Rom nodded, but she still worried.
(-)
White Heart snarled as she smashed another duck robot, this time with her bare fists as she was waiting for her ax to return after throwing it after that merry go round. "I knew that we shouldn't have hired those five guys from Freddy's to make the automatons here." Shaking her hand as it was throbbing a little bit, she held her hand up and caught her ax as it returned.
"Hey! Look out!" A familiar voice was heard from behind her. White Heart turned to see a humanoid fox robot in the air descending on her with two large knives in each of its hands. White Heart narrowed her eyes and smirked at the robot as someone came dive-bombing the robot from behind. "C-KICK!" The person's leg was practically on fire as they went through the robot's body, causing it to explode while the person in question hit the ground and slid to a stop next to White Heart. "Hey, Blanny, it's been too long."
White Heart snarled at the person in question. "Dammit, C-Sha, you know that you're not supposed to call me that when I'm in this form."
C-Sha, a buxom woman with long brown hair, a blue vest and brown leggings smiled at Blanc. "My bad, Blanny." She giggled and turned as a buster formed on her right arm before firing an energy blast at a bear automation, blasting a hole through the center of it. "I was going to come see you in the morning when I heard the screams over here, so I decided to help evacuate people."
White Heart smiled at that. "Thanks, C-Sha. Shall we thrash these shitheads?"
Grinning, the busty woman nodded. "It'll be great to partner up again."
"Well then, I better not hold back, huh?" White Heart smirked as she held out her hand as several small orbs formed in front of it. "Gefahrlichtern!" Tossing them up, she spun around a couple of times to build up speed before slamming her ax into the orbs. "C-Sha!" She yelled as the orbs flew into the air above the rest of the automations.
"On it!" C-Sha nodded as the end of her blaster was glowing with built-up power. "C-Buster STREAM!" She cried out and fired upwards at the orbs. The energy attack hit the balls and split and bounced off of the balls, bombarding the ground with energy and destroying the last of the robots.
"There wasn't that many, and they weren't that tough, you didn't need to help." White Heart scoffed and turned away, her face slightly red. "But thanks."
C-Sha took a quick look around and saw that there was no one around before she jumped at White Heart and hugged her from behind. "Aww, Blanny, your shyness is so cute!"
"H-Hey!" White Heart glared and squirmed as she tried to get free. "Just because we're partners doesn't mean you can act like this when I'm in public you know!"
C-Sha giggled and let go of the hug. "Oh Blanny, I know that. I'll let you deal with the media, okay?" She was amused as White Heart twitched in annoyance.
"Fine, whatever." White Heart sighed. "By the way, were you..."
"Like I said, I was helping to get people out of here when I saw you show up." C-Sha answered her, getting a nod from White Heart.
"Thanks, I owe you." White Heart's face turned red as C-Sha put her hand on White Heart's head and ruffled her hair. "H-HEY!"
"We're partners, Blanny, you don't owe me anything, okay?" C-Sha's eyes lit up as she saw Rom, Ram and Uni heading their way. "Hey! Rommy! Rammy! Uni!"
"C-Sha!" Rom and Ram squealed in delight and both dove at her, hugging her as they transformed back to normal, Uni transformed back as she landed a few feet away.
White Heart rolled her eyes, though she had a small smile on her face. "Well, whatever, get going, okay? I'll handle the press. Oh, Rom, Ram, I won't be home for some time, I'll have to investigate why the machines all went crazy." She hovered to the front of the park where she knew the press was already gathering.
C-Sha nodded and led the trio of girls out of the park.
As she walked out, Uni sighed softly. "What a waste."
"C-Sha?" Rom looked up at the older woman, who smiled at her. "Are you going to stick around this time?"
"Hmm?" C-Sha looked at the short-haired girl in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"You keep disappearing for months and we don't get to see you!" Ram pouted, knowing that C-Sha had lots of field work to do, but it sucked not seeing her. "Plus sis is always happier when you're around."
C-Sha smiled at them. "Well, I'll see what I can do. I'll need to go talk to my bosses about getting some time off then if Blanny misses me that much."
Behind them, Uni fought to keep her jealousy down. While there were some people Noire could talk to outside of the CPUs, she didn't have many, and none were as close to her as C-Sha was to Blanc. 'And I don't have any friends my age.' She sighed softly.
Uni blinked as Jupiter's face flashed through her mind. "...Well, maybe I have one now." She said softly, a smile coming to her face.
"Sorry, Rommy, Rammy, I can't go back to the Basilicom with you." C-Sha nodded at their disappointed looks. "Don't worry, I'll see about sticking around longer this time."
Both CPU Candidates cheered and hugged C-Sha happily.
After walking back to the Basilicom and talking about how things had been going, C-Sha nodded to Financier and watched as the three girls walked into the building. "So, C-Sha..." Financier gave her a small smile. "Are you going to disappear again?"
"I think I want to stick around for more than a few days this time." C-Sha answered her. "But I need to talk to my boss first."
"You know if you worked for the Basilicom that you wouldn't have to talk to your boss." Financier answered, getting a shake from C-Sha.
"That's true, and I know that Blanny, Rommy and Rammy would all be thrilled if I did that, but I like to do things the proper way, it leaves less bad taste in everyone's mouth."
The maid smiled and nodded at her. "Of course." She waved as C-Sha said goodbye and left. "I'm sure that Lady Blanc will be a lot happier if you stick around this time, C-Sha." She whispered to herself and went inside.
(-)
A little bit later...
"So it went well?" Jupiter asked, getting a nod from Ram as she, Rom and Uni walked into the room.
"Yeah, we totally went in and smashed them all up."
"It wasn't too hard." Uni added as she stretched her arms over her head. "But there were quite a bit of them. Anyway, Blanc said she was going to deal with the media and she'll stick around after that to investigate the wreckage and see what caused them to go out of control.
"Want to play some games, Miss Jupiter?" Rom asked, smiling shyly.
"Sure." Jupiter grinned. Hopefully she could relax a bit more since White Heart wasn't at the Basilicom. "What do you got?"
"Come on!" Ram dragged her to their bedroom. "We got some awesome party and racing games." Uni and Rom followed after, both smiling happily.
Watching them from not far away, Finanicer smiled gently. "Even if the CPUs make you nervous, Jupiter, I hope that you can be friends with their sisters." She said softly.
(-)
Hours later...
Blanc sighed as she walked through the Basilicom. The investigation had turned up some very interesting information and she knew that forensics would need at least a day or three to finish their analysis of the automatons. Having to calm the crowds down and keep people from getting too upset hadn't been too fun. Making statements to reporters about what happened and reassuring everyone that the Basilicom would get to the bottom of everything was just mind-numbingly boring.
Blanc was about to head to her office when she saw the door to the twins room was open and the light was on. "They should be in bed already." Walking over to the tall doors, she opened them and blinked in surprise.
Uni, Jupiter, Rom and Ram were all sleeping against each other on the couch, with Uni's head on Jupiter's head while the purple haired girl had her head resting on Uni's shoulder while Ram was sleeping across both of their laps while Rom was curled up at the end of the couch. "...Cute..." She whispered softly and pulled out a camera from her inventory and took a few pictures. After doing that, she went over to the bed and pulled out a blanket and covered the four girls up, causing them to sigh softly before she walked over to the door and turned off the light.
"They're going to be sore in the morning." Blanc said to herself, but decided she couldn't be mad. After all, she got some really cute pictures out of it.
(-)
"Excuse me?" Noire asked as she looked at the communication terminal with Blanc and Vert on it. "Your amusement park was hacked into?"
"Yes." Blanc nodded at the Lastation CPU. "I wanted to warn you and Vert to check for anything unusual."
"Do we have any idea who did it?" Vert asked, getting a shake of Blanc's head. "That makes it harder to pinpoint. Was there any..."
"Forensics said it will take some time to figure everything out." Blanc replied. "However, I wanted to warn you just in case. Also, Noire, I'll be sending the data of the hack over to you."
Noire nodded as she saw a pop up in her email. "I'll take a look at it. Blanc, how's Uni doing?"
"She's fine." Blanc gave them a small smile and pulled out a memory stick. "In fact, I have a little something special for the two of you." After inserting it and getting the files off the memory stick, she sent both Vert and Noire a copy of the pictures she took.
"Oh my, how cute." Vert gushed over the image. "Oh? Who's that fourth girl? I don't recognize her."
"Her name's Jupiter. Apparently she's someone that Uni met and is traveling with." Blanc answered. "She got really nervous around me for some reason and was asking about the Console Wars of all things."
"That's interesting." Noire said softly as she looked at the girl. 'She looks familiar, but why?'
"This is so precious. Thank you, Blanc. I'm surprised you gave this up so easily." Vert gushed over the communication line, causing Blanc to roll her eyes.
"I must be tired if I sent it to you." Blanc sniped back at her. "Anyway, just have your people check stuff out, you don't want your citizens getting attacked."
"Speaking of which," Vert spoke up, a serious look on her face, "was anyone hurt?"
"Just pride, some of them peed their pants when the machines attacked, but otherwise everyone's fine." Blanc answered. "Well, I'm going to head to bed."
"Very well, I have things I need to finish up on myself." Vert smiled and turned off the communication device.
After the two signed off, Noire pulled up the image of the four girls resting together. "Sure is cute." But there was something about Jupiter that was pricking the back of her mind. 'Why does she look so familiar to me?' The answer was there, at the tip of her tongue, but she couldn't figure out why she couldn't figure it out.
"Oh well, I think I'm going to try on some outfits." Noire smiled softly. Cosplay always helped her relax before she went to bed if she wasn't gaming.
(-)
"Mmmm!" Anonydeath watched in delight as Noire stripped out of her clothes, leaving her naked. "I know that Goddesses are created the way they are, but she really does have a heavenly body." He shook his head as his cameras got a really good angle as she bent over. "There are people who would pay good money just to be able to see a glimpse of her bare butt, never-mind the full money shot that I'm getting!"
There was a clearing of a throat and Anonydeath turned to see Nepgear standing at the door, an annoyed look on her face. "I know that you have a crush on Noire, but it's still annoying to see you gush all over her."
"Are you jealous, honey?" Anonydeath asked in amazement.
Nepgear scoffed at that. "I don't care if you want to bend her over your desk and stuff her full of tentacles or whatever you want to do with her, I just hate the fact that you're looking at her while I'm here."
"Oh honey, you are jealous. But don't worry, while I do enjoy watching little Noire and commenting on her perfect derriere, I promise that I won't do anything with her since you're a much better match for me than she is."
"Please, we both know that it wouldn't work out between us." Nepgear rolled her eyes and resisted the urge to tell him that her butt was much better than Noire's butt was. "That's not why I'm here. I happened to catch a very interesting news broadcast out of Lowee. Something about automatons going out of control and attacking the people. Now why would that happen?"
"I have no idea what you..." Anonydeath trailed off as the temperature in the room dropped several degrees. "Honey, all I will say is that I made sure that those things didn't harm anyone and I had a very good reason to do what I did."
"I don't care for Blanc, but I refuse to let innocent people get hurt." Nepgear narrowed her eyes at him. "And you probably ruined a few people's day with that stunt."
"Again, honey, I had a good reason. I needed Blanc distracted for awhile. Little Noire's cute little sister was in Lowee as well, so I was just making sure that everyone was distracted."
"Fine." Nepgear said and turned to leave. "But if you do that again, Anonydeath, I won't be happy."
After Nepgear left, Anonydeath sighed and slumped. "I'm glad she didn't press on why I did that. She would have stormed Lowee demanding her sister back."
Looking back at the screens, he sighed as he saw Noire dancing around in cosplay. For some reason, he didn't feel like watching her anymore that day.
Not the longest chapter, I admit. I had to go back and add scenes because this chapter was only slightly longer than the interlude chapter was. Future chapters will get longer, I promise.
If you guys want to know, I can write up an interlude for when Blanc teamed up with and/or met C-Sha, lemme know. But that won't appear until later, of course.