Quick Author's Note: Before we start, I've made an original Cover Art for this story.
Okay, so I really need to state the reason why I made this, because this wouldn't have been made if I didn't have this reason. So, if you've read the Author's Notes of the first, extremely long chapter of this story, you'd know that the story was inspired by a piece of fanart I found, which depicted Ultra / Big Neptune with her own version of her counterpart's little sister, Nepgear, this Ultra version of Nepgear being a young kid and being given a piggyback ride by her adult sister. It was very cute, and I kind of wanted more of it, so I started a story about it.
Since I put the story up, I've been using that same fan art as the story's cover art. It made sense, it was the art that inspired the story, and thus had the most important characters, it was very cute, and it just so happened to fit the dimensions most fanfic sites use for their displayed cover arts.
But for a while now, that has begun to dig on me. For one, it is one of my only stories that I did not make cover art for. I'm both a writer and artist online as a hobby, so of course, I've made cover art for every other story I've made. But not this one. I mean, I also haven't made one "Meeting in the Void (DDLC x Undertale)", but that was a short story one-shot, and it was never intended to have cover art, and only use fan art on sites that actually show cover art (by the way, I'm also given that story that same treatment of new cover art, just because).
A second may be that I technically don't have permission to use their art. Now, I don't see this as a big reason. I'm not really stealing it, I'm just using it for the innocent purpose of fanfic cover art. Most fanfic writers do that. Also, I made sure to credit the original artist, unlike most others, and that is the minimum that every artist deserves. But it does bother me that I'm doing that, when I could and maybe should make my own cover art, since I can do that.
So here I am, with my own original cover art for the Smolgear story, just to put my thoughts at ease.
Okay, there is supposed to be an image here, but on Fanfic, I can't place images or links. You can see the image in this point of the text on the other sites I post this story (DeviantArt, Wattpad, and Archive Of Our Own), otherwise, you can the new Cover Art in full on DeviantArt, titled "Ultradimension Neptunia Big Nep and Smolgear" by author Cobalt-Gemini.
Chapter 15: The Great Dogoo Escapade
It was another normal day at Nepgear's school. Kids were at recess, running out, laughing, and playing.
But a certain purplette was off to the sides with her little friends, telling them an incredible story of bravery and adventure.
"...And then little big sis started glowing, and became super tall and pretty! And she beat the mean birdy!" Nepgear told her friends.
"Yay! Little big sis! Little big sis!" the toddlers, Rom and Ram cheered together.
Uni was quiet. She was usually like this, likely embarrassed to speak due to her weird voice, and her friends didn't mind. But she was even quieter than usual, staring down at her apple, which she had as a snack.
And Nepgear noticed. "Are you okay?" the five-year-old asked.
"Uni okay?" Rom echoed.
"I don't wanna tawk about it..." Uni sounded.
Nepgear was young, and didn't know much about how the world works, but she did know that she didn't want her friends to be unhappy.
So she came over, and hugged her friend. "Please don't be sad."
"I'm nawt sad..." Uni replied. But eventually, she just hugged her back.
...Unfortunately, leaving her snack open for grabs.
Ram dived in, and grabbed Uni's apple, dashing away a bit, raising her stolen prize above her head, while shouting, "apple! Apple!"
"Apple! Apple!" Rom jumped in, as the two of them began to hop around each other.
Uni separated from her friend, yelling, "no! Mah appwe! Give it back!"
The black-haired kid began to chase her toddler friends, while Nepgear began to cry out, "stop! We're friends. Please, be friends!"
And as the girls were fighting over the apple, or trying to calm each other down...
...A strange blur of blue goop sprung through the fence, leaving a hole in it, and grabbed the apple out of Ram's hands.
All of the girls stopped being so rambunctious, and slowly turned to the apple's assailant.
Sitting there, having hopped back around to face them, a light blue, tear-drop shaped goop monster, with a dog's muzzle, ears, and tail, its beady eyes staring back at the girls with mischievous glee.
And Uni's apple in its mouth.
"Dogoo?" Nepgear replied curiously. She knew of these creatures through children's books that her mom would read to her, and was fascinated to see one in real life for the first time.
Then the slimy mutt chomped down, and ate the apple in one bite.
Uni immediately broke down crying. "Mah appwe-hul-hul..."
Nepgear immediately hugged Uni again, trying to make her feel better. And then the Dogoo jumped back over the girls, and rushed through the hole in the fence that it made, disappearing into the forest behind it.
"Chase Dogoo!" Ram cried.
"Chase Dogoo!" Rom echoed.
And the twins ran after the creature.
Uni looked up, as did Nepgear, as they were surprised by this turn of events.
But being kids, only one thing made sense.
"Yeah, appwe venge!" Uni cried (not knowing the full word "vengeance"), attempting to cheer herself up at the prospect of avenging her lost treat.
And caught up the moment, Nepgear joined in. "Apple venge!" And the two of them ran into the hole in the fence.
And unfortunately, none of the recess aids noticed this happening as they just missed them.
The innocent Dogoo was now bouncing away. It got itself a nice snack and bounced off. It didn't necessarily want to mess with little kids, so it just left after that.
The little Dogoo, the runt of the litter, had gotten lost, and was feeling hungry. It then smelled an apple nearby, and went for it. And now it was happily bounding along. Nothing could ruin its mood now.
Then the young monster heard the screams of several kids. Confused, it looked back, and found four little girls. He barely had time to recognize the kids as the ones he stole the apple from, when the one with black hair picked a rock, made a show of setting up a pretend "gun", and then shouting, "shooty gun", and throwing the rock at the dog monster.
Being made of goop, the rock just sank into the body of the Dogoo, but it still hurt the poor creature. It whined in pain, and tried to back away.
But the purple-haired girl and the smaller look-a-like girls each picked up the biggest sticks they could find and lift up.
"Swingy stick!" the look-a-likes shouted together as they ran up and began swinging at the dogoo. The monster spun around, and hopped away, finding a hole under a tree. But just as the Dogoo was about to get away...
The purple-haired girl came from above (jumping up about a foot), came down, and smacked the dogoo on the head.
But then the both of them tumbled into the hole.
Nepgear sat up, now in a dark hole, holding her head because it really hurt.
"Nepgeaw...?" Uni called out from outside.
"Hole scary..." Ram sounded.
"Really dark..." Rom agreed.
That's when the crying started. Nepgear was upset from the pain, ...but her friends, being children that didn't know any better, were too scared to go into the hole to help her. For all they knew, Nepgear was now the meal of some unspeakable horror.
Nepgear, similarly, had no idea what to do, and was scared herself.
Then, something jumped into Nepgear's lap. She freaked out at first, especially as it began to lick her, but then calmed down. Whatever it was, it was friendly, not hurting her.
Nepgear rubbed the tears out of her eyes, and tried to focus. As her vision cleared, with the little light she could see with...
She found the little Dogoo in her lap.
"Wh-what?" the little girl exclaimed. "Y-you stole Uni's apple! Why are you sitting on me!?"
The Dogoo just went back to licking Nepgear's face.
Nepgear began to giggle as it felt funny. So, she quickly decided, "okay, you're nice."
She decided to grab onto the tiny goop puppy, her hands getting covered in the goop, and lifted him up in her arms, as she tried climbing out of the hole.
Uni and the twins watched as Nepgear got out of the hole, with the Dogoo in her arms, covering her in slime.
"She got ta Dogoo!" Uni exclaimed.
"Dogoo!" Rom shouted. "Attack!"
"No!" Nepgear shouted. "He's nice!"
"B-but... Mah appwe," Uni responded. "He ate mah appwe!"
"He licked me, and it felt funny!"
"But... but..."
"Please...?"
Nepgear slowly approached her friend, and let the Dogoo lick Uni, who started giggling.
"St-stawp! That tickles!" Uni complained.
The next few minutes were spent with all four girls getting licked by the little Dogoo, and getting covered in slime.
Then the Dogoo, and looked up at Uni, with a look of shame.
"Mistah Dogoo?" Uni asked.
And then the small boy bound off into the forest.
"Wait!" Uni shouted, as she and the other girls ran after it.
They continued to follow the tiny dog slime, until they ran into...
A big tree... An apple tree.
The Dogoo found it after getting separated from its pack, but couldn't reach the hanging fruit. So it ran off to find a different apple. But now it wanted to give these girls the chance to get more apples.
"Apples!" all of the girls shouted, and they began hopping up to try to grab them. ...Unfortunately, they were also too short to grab at the apples.
As the girls were deciding whether to attempt to climb the tree to try to get the delicious fruit, an older voice called out to them.
"Hey, kids did you see a monster around here!?" she shouted, running up to them.
The girls stopped and turned to the new arrival, a woman in a large blue coat.
"Monster?" It wasn't clear to kids that Dogoos were monsters. They thought the Dogoo was just a weird-looking dog.
The new arrival took a look at the girls and noticed two things. One, the little girls were covered in slime. Meaning they must've encountered the monster that was sighted a short while ago, which she now knew what it was.
The second thing... caused her to do a double-take.
"The Dogoo?" she clarified.
"But he's nice," Nepgear complained. "See!?" She turned around...
Only to see the Dogoo escaping into the forest.
"Ah..." she pouted. I guessed it was time for the Dogoo to go home.
The woman needed to take another look. "Excuse me... would your name happen to be... Nepgear?"
The purplette turned back around. "Uh huh. I'm Nepgear, and these are my friends!"
"Rom!" the blue twin exclaimed.
"Ram!" the pink twin added.
"I am Wooni!" Uni responded
"Wooni!" the twins exclaimed, dancing around her.
"No, stop making fun of meh!"
"Okay, kids calm down," the woman replied. "I'm IF, and, uh... Aren't you girls supposed to be in school?"
"But we want appwes!" Uni complained.
IF sighed. Of course. They're just kids. They don't know any better. Doesn't quite explain how they got all the way out here, but they probably couldn't say.
IF turned back the way she came, and called out, "hey, Compa! Come over here!"
Another woman came into view, this one in a sweater and with long, pinkish hair. "Yes, Iffy? Oh?" She noticed the little girls. "Hey, kids, what are you doing out here!"
"Apples!" the twins exclaimed.
IF chuckled. "You want to help me here? They can't exactly reach them... without climbing the tree at least."
"Heh heh, yeah, you might be too young for that. Here, let us pick some for you."
"Yay!" the kids cheered.
Compa smiled at IF. "We should probably get started."
"Right."
As they began to grab apples, and hand them to the kids, who were jumping in joy, and happily munching into their snacks, IF motioned Compa to the purplette.
"That little girl there, says her name is Nepgear," IF told her nurse friend.
"Nepgear?" Then Compa leaned to whisper, "do you think it's the one Plutia told us about?"
"Most likely. But even crazier, the names of the other girls, they're the same as those other Candidates. You know, from Nep's home world."
Compa's eyes went wide. "R-really!?"
"Apparently."
"So, what are they doing here?"
"I don't know. They're covered in slime, so I think they may have had an encounter with a Dogoo... but other than that, I don't know. They seem too young to know exactly what they did," IF explained.
"There's a school nearby. Maybe they got lost?" Compa said worriedly.
"Yeah... let's go see if they know these kids."
Nepgear and her friends had to sit in the office, as IF worked with the principal over the logistics of a possible monster attack. Of course, before the Guild agent brought the children back, the teachers noticed their disappearance. Everyone was freaking out, and their parents and caretakers were called.
So, now they had to wait for them to arrive.
That's when Mercury arrived. "Oh, my baby, you're okay!" She came up, and picked up her little girl, not noticing or caring about the slime she was covered in.
"Mommy!" Nepgear cheered, those she didn't fully understand what was going on.
IF came up, and said, "seems like she and her friends get out of the playground area. We suspect a Dogoo attack. They managed to escape to an apple tree some distance away."
"Dogoo attack? What-" that's when Merci noticed the goop Nepgear was covered in. "Oh. Sweetie, are you okay?"
"Yeah. I met a Dogoo. He was very fun!" Nepgear replied.
That shocked everyone. It was the first time any of the girls talked about what happened.
"What the goodness!? What do you mean?" Merci asked.
"We ate Uni's apple, so chased him. And then he licked us, and got us more apples!" Nepgear explained.
No one believed them.
"I... think maybe she should come back home for the day..." Merci said.
"...That might be for the best," the principal said. "I'm thinking I might have to close the school for the week, until this monster situation is dealt with."
"Right. We're looking into it right now," IF told him. "I keep you posted."
"Well, let's get you home, sweetie. And washed up."
Merci put Nepgear down, but still held her hand, as she guided the little girl out of the office.
Nepgear passed Uni on the way, and the little purplette her friend looking at her and her mom, looking... not very happy. And even Rom and Ram were staring.
"Are you okay?"
Uni simply said, "yeah..."
Then Nepgear was pulled out of the room.
"Friends of yours?" Mercury asked.
"Yeah!" And Nepgear began to tell her mother about all the fun things she did with her friends.
Author's Note: Little Dogoo will return...
Okay, but in all seriousness, sorry it took so long to get a new chapter out for something with so little... substance.
One, I was focused primarily on the new Cover Art for this story. And that took way too long to work on, basically, because of my mouse. Among many reasons for me to not have worked on this very fast, the important one is that my mouse was dying. And it was very frustrating trying to work on this piece when every other left click is not registered. And I only had that mouse for less than a year! My previous mouse, I'm pretty sure, I had longer than my laptop! And the only reason I needed to replace that one was the mouse wheel starting to not work fully. Not even close to as bad as its replacement.
But the bad mouse is replaced now, so hopefully, this one works for much, much longer. But after finally getting to finish the piece... I kind of just wanted to finish the chapter. Not to rush it out, just... didn't want to put the time into fleshing out more ideas.
Which brings us to reason two, while I was saying that I wanted to do something with Littles, as we call them, since I hadn't done anything with them since Chapter 5. But, I didn't exactly have a plan for this chapter. I figured that I could use IF and Compa, but not much else.
Well, I did want to do something with a Dogoo, and thought that this would be a good chance to start that. But I'll get into that later.
Three, this is a chapter solely about kids. Not like this really needed to be some big, epic plot. You've probably read children's books, I'd say this is about what you'd expect, minus pictures.
And four, many of my chapters have been very... very... long as of recent. I guess I felt that I needed... a break, I guess you could say.
So, yes, I wanted to do something with Nepgear, sort of becoming friends with a Dogoo, maybe later as a pet. Something I saw in another fanfic, but felt that it just came out of nowhere, and then was ignored, like it was just a little tidbit in the story. But I thought the idea was interesting, so I wanted to flesh out that idea myself.
And I sort of decided that now would be a good time to implement that as a plot point. I had actually forgotten I wanted to do this, and the original plan was that the Littles would get together, and utterly annihilate this Dogoo, showing them off as little terrors.
I think I'm more happen with this outcome.
Oh, and did you like the kids to come up with their own "moves"? There not capitalized, like I normally do, which was to emphasize for they're not really skilled attacks, because they're just kids. Once they're older, and allowed to train in fighting (if they wanted to), I'd imagine that they'd come up with better moves.
Okay, that's all for now. Hope you enjoyed this shorter chapter. We're finally going to Lowee next chapter (why is it always Lowee that I write going to first?)
