~~~Candidates~~~
"Hey, Nepgear..."
"Hmm?"
"Can't sleep either?"
"Yeah."
Sleep refused to grace the Candidates with its presence tonight, leaving them to stare up into the ceiling or the bottom of the top bunk. They were stuck between being too sleepy to get up yet too awake to rest. Only the ticking and tocking of the clock on Nepgear's desk could be heard in the room as neither Candidate could think of any relevant conversation topics.
A new conversation topic did manage to pop up by crashing through the bedroom window and ruining several pieces of furniture, however. "Oh goodie! It's here!" Neptune remarked as she jumped off the top bunk to inspect her order. Inside the small crater that was once a corner of the bedroom was a plain wooden barrel with a Leanbox insignia plastered on top; a small bag lay beside it contained a barrel stand and tap. "We're gonna have a fun night with this baby, that's for sure."
With lightning-fast hands, Neptune set up the barrel on top of a table, ready to let out that sweet nectar. Before Nepgear could register what was happening, she found herself in front of the tap, clutching an empty mug, while Neptune was already halfway through a pint. "Goodness... I don't know if we should have this much sugar before bed..." Nepgear said as she thought about whether or not to have some herself.
"Come on, Nepgear, live a little!" Neptune suggested as she wrapped an arm around the Candidate, her face slightly flushed from the sugary brew. "A little sugar before bed won't kill ya."
"One little pint wouldn't hurt, I guess," Nepgear said, filling her mug with Root beer.
"-and then she called a conference in Lowee just to ban spray bottles!" Nepgear said, slamming her mug on the table. The Candidate was on her fifth mug, and was guzzling down her sixth after telling her story.
"Wow, your sister must be a real *hic* handful," Neptune said, sitting next to her. Her root beer count was double Nepgear's, and caused the Candidate to have occasional hiccups.
"You don't know the half of it." As Nepgear finished that sentence, she took a big gulp out of her mug.
"I don't even see my sister *hic* half the time," Neptune said, airing her own grievances, "she's almost always off on *hic* quests or doing paperwork, and always says 'you're still too young, little sis' whenever I *hic* offer help!" The Candidate took a rather long sip of her drink to calm down.
"To terrible older sisters!" Nepgear shouted, raising her mug in the air.
"To terrible older sisters!" Neptune reciprocated, clinking her own mug with the other Candidate's. They then emptied out the rest of their mugs into their mouths.
"Neptune, Nepgear, go to bed! Some of us are trying to sleep!" Histoire yelled as she vaporized the Candidates' bedroom door. Before the oracle could get another word in, a tube was shoved into her mouth and root beer was poured straight into her stomach. Neptune backed off a little as the oracle coughed and gagged from getting something shoved into her throat. Before she could respond with more rage, a sudden giddiness overtook her. "Is there any more where that came from?" Histoire asked, writing a fairy-sized mug into history for her use.
"-so then she seals herself away and makes everyone forget about her!" Histoire exclaimed. The normally calm and collected oracle had loosened up after seven fairy-sized mugs of root beer, plus the pint shoved down her throat by Neptune.
"I didn't... didn't even know you had a sister, Histoire," Nepgear commented, the amount of root beers she had were starting to take its toll.
"She was Planeptune's CPU before Nepgear and Neptune, Nepgear. She was the closest thing I had to a sister," Histoire added, downing half her mug.
The three laughed and laughed as they told more stories about their big sisters, but as the night went on, their laughter turned to muted sobs as the stories became more and more about what they miss doing with their sisters.
"She used to *hic* read me bedtime stories every night..."
"We used to go to the park everyday and get ice cream..."
"She would always ask about my day while we were stargazing..."
The more they drank, the more nostalgic their stories became.
"When I gave her her *hic* N-Gear after fixing it, I forgot to tell her how tentacles would trap unauthorized users inside a pocket dimension."
"She was so happy I made her a sword that had the same style as her HDD. I knew she never used it because the thing broke really easy."
"I made a hat from the extra materials I used to make her HDD processors, and her face lit up so brightly when she saw we had matching headgear."
When they ran out of stories, the three simply sat at the table and drank, hoping the other two would not notice their sadness.
Until...
"I miss my sister!" The three cried out in unison, their quiet sobbing turning into full-blown bawling as the three cried their eyes out. A puddle from all their tears formed under the table, getting the Candidates' shoes wet
"Girls, wait!" Neptune said as she stopped crying. Histoire and Nepgear managed to calm themselves down to sniveling so they could listen to her. "We don't need *hic* our sisters," she stood up on her chair, "we're better than them, we've done lots of great *hic* things without their help, haven't we?"
"Histy," she continued, "you've helped Planeptune *hic* become the great nation it is today, without her help!"
"Nepgear," she added, "you led a team into the Gamindustri *hic* Graveyard to save her and other CPUs!"
"Hear! Hear!" Nepgear cheered, slamming her mug on the table.
"Hear! Hear!" Histoire did the same.
Neptune sat back down.
"To ourselves!" she raised her mug.
"To ourselves!" the other two clinked their mugs with hers.
They then swallowed their drinks. Histoire keeled over, having reached her limit. Neptune fetched out a marker from her desk, and chuckled mischievously between hiccups.
"Neptune, that's..." was all Nepgear could remember saying as she started to black out herself.
Author's Notes:
I've been really craving this thing called feedback lately. Every time I see the number of reviews go up on this story, I get this really giddy feeling like someone stuck a funnel in my throat and forced root beer into my stomach. I also rewrote this chapter three times, and didn't feel liked rewriting it again so I decided to publish it.