Chapter 4: Adventures in Art

"Why would you keep me cooped up in there for so long?" Croire demanded. "Do you want me to suffocate?"

Neptune and her mother were sitting in the latter's bedroom. They agreed that it was time to talk to their resident tome, and try to convince her to act appropriately around the young Nepgear.

"Wanting you to suffocate and wanting you to behave are two different things, Croire," Merci said.

"Not where I'm standing," Croire countered.

"I hardly think that sort of attitude is needed right now."

"You're not my mother!"

"You know, Croirsty, all we want is for you to not be rude to my sister, or to say bad words," Neptune spoke up.

"Oh, I'll do whatever the f*** I want, b****," Croire replied.

"Then, I suppose we'll have to leave you inside my desk for now," Merci said.

"What! No wai-" Croire started, but she was plopped in her desk drawer, which was then closed and locked. Croire's muffled complaints sounded through, but Merci just sighed.

"How do you sleep like this?" Neptune asked.

"Earplugs," she answered simply.

"Oh..."

"Still, this is very stressful... You know what, let's do something together as a family."

"Oh, that sounds fun! What are we going to do?"

Merci thought about it for a moment, and then asked, "do you still like drawing, Neptune?"

"...Hm, haven't done that since I was younger," Neptune answered. "But maybe Nepgear would like to color."

"Yes, that's what I mean."

"Then let's do it!"

With a plan in place, Merci went to grab some paper and crayons, while Neptune got her sister, along with Uzume and Umio.

Once everyone gathered, Nepgear looked up at her sister and mother, asking curiously, "what are we doing?"

"Yeah," Uzume chimed in. "What's going on?"

"Well, my mom needs to de-stress..." Neptune replied, "so we're going to color together!"

"Really..."

"That actually sounds very interesting," Umio said.

"You sure?" Uzume continued, skeptical.

"Awe, I'd thought you would've loved to draw something cool," Neptune told her.

Uzume gave her a determined look, and said, "Alright, I will draw the coolest thing ever, and you can't stop me!"

And then Nepgear responded with, "wow...!"

Merci chuckled. "Yes, I think we could all use some de-stressing and take some time to color. Artistic expression is a good way to process feelings."

"Then let's do it!" Uzume exclaimed.

"Yay!" Nepgear cheered, as she reached for the crayons in her mother's hand.

Within the next few minutes, everyone was in various positions, on the kitchen floor (Neptune, Nepgear, and Uzume), sitting at the table (Merci), even Umio had joined in, working on the counter.

Nepgear had already finished one drawing, and was working on a second, through a seeming surge of inspiration (for what, nobody knew, yet). Neptune was taking her time with her piece, and Uzume was deep in thought about what she was doing. All the while, Merci and Umio were pretty calm as they drew.

"...And, done," Merci announced.

"It seems that I am done as well," Umio said.

"Ooh, ooh, let's see, let's see," Neptune replied, getting up.

As the others looked up, Umio smiled. "Okay, I'll start," and lifted up his paper.

His work of art was a crayon drawing of himself, wearing sunglasses, riding waves on a surfboard.

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 image itself on DeviantArt, titled "Smolgear Crayon Drawing #1 - Umio's Drawing" by author Cobalt-Gemini.

"Looking good there, Umio," Merci replied.

"Yeah, that's really cool!" Neptune added.

"Mister Fishy is so cool," Nepgear said.

"Well, this is what I drew," Merci said, showing off her piece.

It was a simple drawing of Nepgear and Neptune, both sitting on a gray circle with hints of blue and yellow.

You can the image itself on DeviantArt, titled "Smolgear Crayon Drawing #2 - Mercury's Drawing" by author Cobalt-Gemini.

"Oh, cool... what is it?" Neptune asked.

"Why it's my two wondering daughters sitting on the planet Mercury!" their mother explained.

"So, you're the planet?"

"Well, I'm named after the planet... and you're named after a planet, too!"

"Fair enough. Why do I look like mini-me?" Neptune had noticed that the drawing of her looked more like her counterpart in the Hyperdimension.

"Well... that's you before you... left," Merci answered, a tad bit ashamed. "Do you not like it?"

"No! No, not at all. I love it!" Neptune replied. "I was just a little confused. It makes perfect sense now!"

"Look at what Uzume drew!" the red-haired girl exclaimed, and everyone immediately noticed that she was in "valley-girl" mode again, with her high-pitched voice.

As she brought up her drawing, everyone could see that what might have been a large, epic, and most definitely cool beast, was now a cute-looking, black dragon with a happy expression.

You can the image itself on DeviantArt, titled "Smolgear Crayon Drawing #3 - Uzume's Drawing" by author Cobalt-Gemini.

"Uh, wow..." Neptune said. "By the way, your voice..."

"Huh, oh!" Uzume began clearing her throat, her voice deepening again. "Yeah, um, guess I kind of messed."

"I like it!" Nepgear exclaimed in her cute, tiny way.

"Well, at least I got someone's approval. What did you draw, Nepsy?"

"Oh, I'm almost done." Neptune turned back to her picture, and added the finishing touches. Once she finished, she lifted her piece.

And to the surprise of everyone, it was a super impressive drawing, even though it was done with just crayons. It was a landscape piece, the edge of a grassy field overlooking a cliff, which in the background, there was an endless sky, with a few floating landmasses.

You can the image itself on DeviantArt, titled "Smolgear Crayon Drawing #4 - Neptune's Drawing" by author Cobalt-Gemini.

"Wow, Nepsy," Uzume replied.

"Big sis is amazing!" Nepgear added.

"Neptune, I didn't know you were such a good artist," her mother replied.

"Huh?" Neptune responded, a little surprised. "You really think so? I mean, I'm not that good."

"Sweetie, look it at what you've done. It's amazing! You're one of the best artists I've ever seen."

"Yeah, you're awesome big sis!" Nepgear added after her mother.

"You think so…" Neptune mused, looking at her art. "Ok, sure. I guess it's alright." She looked up, turning her sister. "Welp, you're the only one left. What did you draw, Nep Jr.?"

Nepgear got really excited at this, and lifted up her first picture. "Ta-da!"

It was a very simple, childish drawing of four figures, three with long purple hair, one of them shorter than the others, and another with her hair in a big strand, and then the last of the four had red hair in two strands.

You can the image itself on DeviantArt, titled "Smolgear Crayon Drawing #5 - Smolgear's Drawing 1" by author Cobalt-Gemini.

"Wow. Is that us?" her big sister asked.

"Uh-huh. That is me, and big sis, and mommy, and miss Uzume!" the little girl said, pointing to each figure. "Everyone I love!"

"Ah, that's so sweet!"

"Yeah, that's so awesome!" Uzume added. "But... what about Umio?"

"Yes, I do seem to be missing from this drawing," the fish exclaimed.

"Oh, I drew a special one for you!" Nepgear explained, as she brought up her second piece.

And it was Umio, ...as a robot. Complete with laser eyes and loaded missile launchers, and even had some screw-tops and mechanical joints drawn in, though they were crude.

You can the image itself on DeviantArt, titled "Smolgear Crayon Drawing #6 - Smolgear's Drawing 2" by author Cobalt-Gemini.

"O... kay… That's… interesting," Neptune replied.

"Oh goodness, Nepgear," Merci said.

"Well, this is certainly... unique," Umio added. "Not sure what to think about the idea of... being a robot."

"I think it's awesome!" Uzume said.

"Yeah!" Nepgear cheered. "I call it 'Metal Umio Ray 2.0'!"

"Really?" Neptune replied. "If it's '2.0', what happened to version one?"

"Uh... um... he..."

"I think that Nepgear was so excited to make the upgraded version, she accidentally skipped the original version," Merci explained.

"Yeah!" Nepgear agreed.

"I think it's lovely, by the way. And you certainly love your robots." Merci added as she tickled her youngest daughter, causing her to giggle.

Neptune and Uzume laughed, as Umio thoughtfully said, "well, when you say it that way, it certainly makes sense."

"Yeah, I think that's her way of saying she likes you," Uzume said between laughs.

"Yep, I'd say you're our 'Umio Ray'," Neptune added.

"Well, I suppose I am," Umio said, then adding to the laughter.

Soon, all five of them had joined in the group laughter, enjoying themselves, drowning out the muffled, unhappy groans of the imprisoned tome in Merci's desk drawer.

Author's Note, Jacob: Okay, so this note of mine extremely long, so hand on to something.

So, I have a lot of things to say here. One, sorry this took so long. Again, coordinating with my co-writer was not easy. I'm not a mean person who wants to force priority on anyone (I mean, this is just fanfiction, plus I've been on the receiving end of that before, and it did go well for me), and Savannah had lots of personal things going on. And so did I from time to time. But I'll admit, I was getting frustrated with it, especially since it took so much longer to get a shorter chapter out, then a longer one. And again, I had to finish by myself.

But enough of that. We'll leave that in the past. Let's talk about the chapter. There was something I was planning for us to write, but I wanted to save that for Chapter 5, and we needed something in between that and the last chapter (Chapter 3). So, we came up with this simple idea of everyone coloring together.

What was fun about this chapter was figuring out what everyone would draw, and perhaps why? So let me explain each character's drawings.

Umio: This is literally his EXE Skill for his playable DLC appearance for Megadimension VII. It's an entertaining Skill, and we couldn't come up with anything better, so this is what we went with.

Merci: This one was just playing up Merci and her relationship with her daughters in a cute way. So, about the description of Mercury the planet. We looked it up online to get a better idea of what it looks like. We all know what it looks like, but the two of us wanted to get a better idea of what it looks like in pictures.

And well, some showed it as a grey planet, that looked too close to the moon to me. I mean, Mercury is more scared than our cratered moon, but that's not easy to detail with crayons. Others showed it with lots of blue and yellow, and I couldn't tell you why. We only looked at images, not details about the planet itself. Though I should at some point. I grew up loving space and astronomy, due to my ex-astronaut grandpa, so it would be good to know.

And one last bit on Merci's drawing, yeah, she drew Neptune as her younger self. It's because Merci still kind of sees Neptune as a teen, and is still getting used to her as an adult. And yes, in VII, during Ultra Neptune's backstory scenes, she did look exactly like Hyper Neptune's human form, even the same outfit, the developers basically using the same sprite's as goddess Neptune for younger human Neptune. I find this amusing, because while stuck in the Ultradimension, Hyper Neptune wore a different outfit than she does in the other games, though it's probably so she matched up with Ultradimension goddesses, who wear different outfits than their Hyperdimension counterparts.

Uzume: This one was purely to be funny. Uzume would start by trying to draw something cool and epic, like her cool side, but ends up drawing something cute, like her girly side. We went with a dragon, going from a big epic one, to what I referred to as Toothless. Yes, everyone's favorite dragon from How to Train your Dragon. In fact, that's basically what she drew.

Neptune: This one I want to go into further detail. If you've read the Hyperdimension manga, you would know that there was a chapter about the goddesses painting. That's what this Neptune's piece is a partial reference to. If you don't know, basically, Histoire made the goddesses paint something for an art showcase. But all of their art was of varying quality (I can't even DESCRIBE what Vert made), so Histoire realized that this was a mistake, and gave the goddesses the option to drop out.

This is what Neptune did, claiming she wasn't that good anyways. We don't get to see what she drew, but we do see someone finding the painting she threw, and in the next panel, he is on the news, saying that they need to find the artist because the work was a masterpiece. In short, Neptune is apparently an AMAZING artist. And yeah, as an artist myself, I get where she is coming from. Lots of people say my art is great, but I feel that I am not as good as other people. It's the artist's curse to be hypercritical of your own work.

Anyways, yes, we added this trait to Adult Neptune, too. And if you are wondering about what she drew, it's a landscape shot of the Superdimension from the original Hyperdimension game and Re;Birth 1. Yeah, those games don't actually take place in the Hyperdimension, despite the name. I figured Re;Birth 1 would've, but I guess not.

Nepgear: So our little friend here drew two pieces. The first was a simple cute drawing of her family and friends, you know, like lots of kids draw. But that was simply supposed to be a lead into her actually drawing. As you know, Nepgear loves tech, and of course, we added that to little Nepgear, too. But we've yet to mention if they share Nepgear's real love: Robots. And so here it is!

If you're wondering, "why Umio?", well in earlier chapters, we had little Nepgear call him "mister fishy". It was supposed to be just a cute little thing, but it stuck with me, and I decided to expand on it, giving Nepgear an interest in the character. Later, he'll probably become her father figure.

As for her drawing, the name is a reference to Metal Gear Solid (which in turn, is a play on Nepgear's name, because I love wordplays and puns), particularly on the Metal Gear Ray, which fits because it was an aquatic mech, and Umio is a fish. And as suggested in the chapter, the 2.0 was just to be cute.

One final thing about the drawing they made. As I said, I myself am an artist. I draw digital-vector art, which I put up on DeviantArt under the name "Cobalt-Gemini". But I do draw sketches to work as a reference / guide to my pieces and with that, it is so tempting, to go out and by crayons and draw everything they made in this chapter. What do you think, should I?
(Edit: I have, clearly)

Also, I have a question I want to answer. Yeah, we have been getting reviews for this story on some of the sites we post this on, and I'd like to answer a good question someone asked. So here we go. Question from Gigarot here on Fanfic: "How about buying Gear some gear so she starts building her own tech and stops taking apart stuff?"

My answer: It's not that they wouldn't let her do, ever, just not now. Because she is five years old. While she has the innate skills, little Nepgear is not old to handle this stuff properly, and it can be dangerous when not handled properly. Merci's just being a responsible parent.

Probably when this Nepgear is a bit older, probably in her pre-teens / early teens, when she is more responsible and careful, she would be allowed to mess with this stuff. In fact, it would be a good idea to do it then, because she has the inherent interest, and it could lead to a career when she grows up. In fact, I imagine we all think that normal Nepgear, our favorite Planeptune Candidate from the Hyperdimension, already has a hand in her nation's technological developments.

With that said, going back to little Nepgear, this question did make us realize something. Little Nepgear is not allowed to mess with the tech in her home... yet we gave the kid her own screwdriver. We didn't realize this oversight at the time, and we really can't go back to write it out now. It would take too much effort to rewrite everything in a good, concise way, and it's just not worth it. So for now, we're going to leave that in the air, until we can find an explanation for this.

As a final note, I've gone back to Chapter 1 to make some edits to the text hinting towards the two different Hyperdimension stories I'm planning on solo-writing, along with some fixes. If you don't remember, Big Nep was talking about dimensions she visited midway through the chapter, and these were personal hints to what I'm working on. In fact, I'm thinking of adding cameos of Big Nep and Uzume for these stories, just to connect everything together.

Author's Note, Savannah: As per our usual shenanigans, Jacob and I started this with a random discussion. Jacob changed some things around, as far as Uzume's dialogue, but didn't change much else, so it's pretty unadulterated. Also, apparently, the haptic feedback of a phone sounds like Minecraft dirt smacking... which I had fun teasing Jacob about.