~~~CPUs~~~
After having her mouth stuffed with pudding, Neptune had returned to her normal self. She was bored out of her mind however, as Nepgear forgot where she had stowed away all of Neptune's games, and the basilicom lockdown would not lift until tomorrow. She stared at the empty plastic cup in her hand. The last cup of pudding inside the basilicom, now empty.
She turned her attention to Nepgear sleeping peacefully in the bottom bunk. Beside her head on the pillow was her N-Gear, the logo on its back blinking softly. She and Nepgear had different taste in single-player games, and a Nepgear from a different dimension would probably be no different, but any game would do for Neptune at that moment. Worming her way over to the bunk beds, Neptune quietly grabbed the N-Gear and climbed up to her bunk.
Once situated in her bed, Neptune flipped the N-Gear over to have the screen face her and pressed the power button on the top. The screen flickered to life, and black tentacles poured out, wrapping themselves around Neptune's arms. "How kinky," Neptune remarked as more tentacles came out to wrap around her legs. "I always thought Nepgear would be into more mechanical- jinkies!" The tentacles suddenly retracted into the device, taking Neptune along with it.
The N-Gear bounced off the top bunk and onto the floor with a resounding thud, waking Nepgear up. "Goodness, it was a great idea to install shock absorbers even if it made it bulkier," Nepgear said, picking the N-Gear up and inspecting it for damages. With no further disturbances, Nepgear placed the N-Gear under her pillow and returned to dreamland.
"oomph!" As Neptune got to her feet she found herself inside a completely blank area. "Hello! Anybody! Nepgear! Histy!" Neptune shouted into the endless white plane. Not even an echo replied to the lost CPU, for there was nothing to reflect the sound.
Dropping her empty cup of pudding to the ground, Neptune picked a direction, and walked. Straight ahead the CPU marched through the empty area, until she spotted something not white off in the distance. Happy to finally discover something in this desolate space, the relieved CPU sprinted toward the object.
Unfortunately, all she found was an empty cup. Frustrated and disappointed, Neptune forcefully threw the empty cup into the distance. As the thrown cup quickly disappeared from view (Neptune had a strong throwing arm), another cup struck the CPU in the back of the head. "Ouch! How rude, throwing a cup at a person," Neptune picked up the cup that hit her, and wound up her throw like a baseball pitcher. "Take this!" she exclaimed as she threw the cup with full strength in the direction it came from. "That'll show them- oof!" Yet another cup struck The back of Neptune's head, this time with enough force to knock the smug CPU to the floor.
"Okay, you asked for it!" Neptune promptly transformed into Purple Heart and sped toward the direction of the culprit, leaving scorch marks on the ground. As she neared her assailant's possible location, she found scorch marks. Whoever threw the cup at her had left in a hurry. Purple Heart followed the trail, pushing her body to go faster and faster in an attempt to catch up.
The CPU accelerated more and more, easily breaking the sound barrier, then going beyond that. The scorched trail she was following began to blur as she approached the speed of light itself. Despite her impaired vision, Purple Heart could see a tiny violet speck in the distance, most likely the cup thrower. A streak of purple trailed behind her as she pushed her body past its limits.
Closer and closer she came to the unknown figure, until she could somewhat make out some features. The attacker had some very familiar braided purple locks, some very familiar processor wings, and a very familiar processor suit. Purple Heart realized that she was tailing herself and tried to stop, but at that point it was too late for the CPU to slow down to avoid a collision, and crashed right into herself.
"Goodness, it was a great idea to install shock absorbers even if it made it bulkier," Nepgear said, picking the N-Gear up and inspecting it for damages. Before she could return to sleeping, a flash of white light engulfed the room, followed by the appearance of Purple Heart with two scorch marks behind her.
"Nepgear, could I borrow your N-Gear to play games?" Purple Heart asked with her smooth, sultry voice.
"Of course, Neptune," Nepgear replied,"but why the HDD?"
"Oh! uh... I needed some courage to ask you," Neptune lied, reverting back to her smaller self.
"Here you go." The drowsy CPU pressed the power button on top and handed her N-Gear to Neptune, and returned to her slumber. The awake CPU hesitated for a moment, ready to chuck the handheld away in case of tentacles, but all that greeted her was the little jingle that meant the N-Gear had finished booting up. Breathing a sigh of relief, Neptune sat down on the window-side couch and browsed Nepgear's installed games.
~~~Candidates~~~
"Neptune, why are we running from Vert's basilicom?" Nepgear asked in between breaths. While Vert's party was certainly... interesting, Nepgear felt like a bad houseguest to leave this early in the evening.
"Don't worry about it, the story arc wasn't going anywhere anyway," Neptune assured Nepgear, looking back at the doubting Candidate to give a calming smile. the smile quickly dissipated as the Candidate, along with everything around her, was bathed in green light. Nepgear stopped in her tracks, and looked behind her.
What was once the basilicom was now a column of heavenly green light. A rush of wind blew past the Candidates, shattering all the windows of the nearby buildings. Nepgear could only watch as the light died down to reveal the crumbling, charred ruins that were once the Leanbox basilicom.
"I may have played with the orbital death laser system... again..." Neptune explained.
A sudden thirst for water pulled Blanc out of the dreamworld and back into the real one. Untangling herself from her twin older sisters' arms, the parched Candidate got up from bed and looked around. Uni was also being double-teamed as she slept, with Noire and Vert snuggling the CPU tightly. The Planeptune sisters were gone from their bed, Nepgear probably dragging her sister back home because she wanted to wake up early for work while also not having to worry about her little sister's whereabouts.
As Blanc opened the door, the hallway she was about to walk into was immediately engulfed in a bright green light, with the accompanying gust of wind blowing her night cap off. Blanc shut the door. "Vert really needs to put more security in her orbital death laser system."
With the Leanbox kitchen most likely being vaporized, Blanc dragged herself over to Rom and woke her up. "Rom, could you make me some water? The basilicom got destroyed again."