Chapter 7: Stroll to the Future

In the Basilicom, an infant girl sat on a couch with eyes that told a restless battle against the darkness that was sleep, and the light of activity that held possibilities.

This girl, Euri, was desperately fighting with the darkness of sleep for she wanted to play more hide-and-seek with her mommies. She couldn't get enough when they would cover their eyes with their hands, only to move them away within a blink of an eye.

On the other side of this battle, with her opponents ironically being her parents, they wanted her to accept the darkness of sleep.

Noire and Neptune sighed. Their body and mind had been placed through the wringer after spending hours trying to make their daughter take a nap. They used all sorts of tactics like reading, soft music, and cradling her.

Victory was within their sight as Euri yawned in protest, yet her eyes grew heavy and her focus started to falter.

"She's about to go down!" Whispered Neptune with excitement.

"Quiet!" She's going to break out of it if you rile her up," said Noire.

Euri tilted her upper body like a pendulum in motion until she leaned too far to one side, and her soft pink hair landed on a pillow that Neptune had placed.

"It's over," said the black-haired mother as if she was delivering the final strike on a hunt. Instead of any violent acts, she placed a blanket to cover Euri's body.

Euri was down for a nap and the two CPUs were finally able to stretch their legs after they had been sitting on the floor to be at eye level with Euri.

"Wowie, she didn't want to go down for her nap," said Neptune. This long battle with her daughter had left her tired with messy hair and bags under her eyes just like her wife.

"Don't remind me. Now, all we have to do is leave her be-"

"Kyaa-!"

Both CPU parents jumped out of their skin from the outside scream that came louder toward them with a large crash hitting the side of their balcony patio window. Two bodies were visible that looked like their landing was painful.

"What the Nep?! That was Nep Jr. and Uni."

Their eyes darted back to Euri who had awoken with fright in her eyes. She then blasted the room with a piercing cry that made both Noire and Neptune's left eye twitch.

Neptune strained her hair with her fingers as she had reached the last of her patience. She was not going to direct her anger to her daughter but to the rowdy two that had made a rude entrance.

On the outside, Nepgear and Uni groaned at each other. Their faces were painted scarlet due to reasons that caused their landing.

"You said you were going to catch me," said Uni with puffed cheeks.

Nepgear shook the stars out of her foggy mind. "I... I..."

The balcony door opened, and Neptune towered over them. "What the nep is wrong with you two?!" She said with her hands to her side. Noire joined her with a sobbing Euri in her arms.

Nepgear nervously swallowed. "Sister...?"

"Don't try to play the cute card, Nep. Jr. Here we are, trying to win the battle of making Euri take her nap that she desperately needs, and you two come crashing down from the sky like it's going out of style."

Noire could say that she was stressed but in no way was she aggravated by the fact that her daughter woke up. She let her motherly instincts kick in and began to rub her daughter's back to soothe her. "Momma Neptune must be livid if she made such a provocative claim with her being the resident expert on crashing down on people," teased the black-haired mother to her daughter.

Both Uni and Nepgear lowered their heads in shame as all they could do was accept that they messed up.

"Why did you two crashed at our balcony door? I'm just happy that the door isn't damaged, " said Noire with a sigh of relief.

"Huh?! Don't you have any wellbeing for our health?" Asked Uni.

"Not after you woke up, Euri!" Fired back the twin-tailed CPU.

Guilt had crept into the candidates' hearts, and the two groveled for forgiveness.

"You won't get out of this with just words and gestures like those. If you really want to be forgiven, then you must take Euri out for a daylight stroll," demanded the purple-haired girl.

They couldn't accept those terms any faster when the Nepstation candidates found themselves pushing a stroller across the downtown district.

Uni sighed heavily. "Jeez, Nepgear, we totally messed up this time."

"Yeah, we did. I rarely see my sister so explosive."

"You can't blame her. I bet that they were struggling for hours to put Euri down for her nap, and then here we come, crashing into their window," said the black-haired girl. Uni gave her wife a leering look. "So, what happened back there? You said you were going to catch me if I changed back in mid-air? If this is how we support ourselves, then we need to work on our trust fall."

"Uni, I didn't mean for that to go the way it did. I felt my HDD glitch out for a second that reduced my strength. Then, before I knew it, I had reverted from HDD."

"Hmm? That sounds serious and we should tell Histoire about that."

"No, it's okay. I have a feeling that it was because of Euri," said Nepgear. She happily peeked over the stroller to see her niece with half-opened eyes as she remained oblivious to her hand in the misfortune of the candidates.

Uni also peeked over the stroller to see the oblivious look of her niece that looked entertained by the shops that passed them by. Her red eyes were filled with wonder at the eye-catching signs that cracked a smile from the CPU-to-be.

"How can you be sure about that?" Asked Uni.

"Well, picture our share flow like a river. It flows toward us, that gives us our power, but then I felt that a new path had been carved out that redirected some of the water somewhere else. My heart told me not to worry because this brief change had Euri's presence to it. I could feel that my share energy went to a could place."

Uni locked eyes with her niece that gazed at her with wonder. "Hey, remember that sharing is caring, okay? We are working hard for our nation to have plenty of shares to go around, so don't start taking from other peoples' plates," said Uni with a teasing tone of voice.

"Uni, that's so mean. Besides, if you're talking about plates as an analogy, the only ones that have plates are our sisters who share with us. That's something that the three of us have in common."

"You make it sound like we get the share scraps that our sisters let us have," said Uni with a hand on her hip.

"Okay, that was a bad comparison. Let's not focus on the plate part as we do pull our own weight that doesn't make us look like-"

"-Freeloaders?" Said Uni who finished off her wife's sentence.

Nepgear puffed out a tired breath and gave Uni a frown. She could tell that Uni wasn't hurt by the plate insult as they knew they worked hard enough to warrant their shares. "I wouldn't use that word, sweetie."

Uni chuckled sweetly at her wife's annoyed face that was worth the tease. "So, what should we do to get her to fall asleep?"

"Hmm… Neptune likes to take a nap after eating her fill with food. She also gets knocked out when she's forced to work, but then again, that's old news for her that doesn't apply anymore," she said with a small laugh.

"If we're going by her parents' traits, Noire tends to fall asleep when she overworks herself. She also falls asleep when she tries to avoid certain people. Other than those, she normally goes to sleep when she feels like it," said Uni.

There wasn't a lot of ideas to go off from, so a stroll was the best that they could come up with. The toasty warmness of the sunlight as they made their way across the streets filled Euri with comfortable heaven between her soft seat and pillow, however, it wasn't enough to put her to sleep.

To add a sense of challenge to their task, they soon found themselves running away from crowded areas when random bystanders started to grow obsessive over the rare sight of the candidates looking after a baby. They managed to lose an overexcited group of fans that wanted to suffocate them with pictures and overly adorable comments about their situation that was too sweet for anyone's ears and eyes.

The place that they found themselves in, was a construction zone for an office building that had no one else working on it that day. They used their HDD to get them high in the sky toward the still-in-progress rooftop.

"Ah, maybe we didn't need to take this drastic route to lose those crazed Euri fans," said Nepgear. She stood a good distance away from the rooftop edge to make sure that the possibility of Euri falling was out of the question.

Uni was observing from the edge with her trained sniper eyes, making sure that no one was nearby or following them. She relaxed when she was satisfied with her conclusion. "There's no one around. I never knew how obsessive the people could get by seeing our niece."

"The majority of them were Planeptune citizens, and as you know, we can get pretty passionate when it comes to seeing an adorable baby like Euri, right?" Replied Nepgear. Her last part of her statement was angled toward the pink-haired baby who joyfully giggled at being talked to.

Uni smiled to herself at the sight of her wife holding Euri. This picture expressed a deeply close desire of one day having a kid of her own. Of course, that day might be far off with many unfavorable scenarios that would have to unfold first before they were allowed such a reality. "Let me hold her," said Uni.

Nepgear carefully passed Euri toward the black-haired girl.

Uni's face hid nothing back to what she felt at that moment. Her smile could rival the brightest lightbulbs. While she knew that having a kid was a faraway future, Euri being here was enough for her. "Hey, there, Eu. Jeez, you're pretty heavy. I wonder what my sister and Neptune feed you," she said with a tease.

Euri made no angry response to her comment as she was in her world that involved her putting her fingers in her mouth.

Uni materialized a magazine from her inventory and showed it to her niece. "Do you know what this is?" She felt silly for waiting for some response from the little one. "This is my monthly gun subscription. Here, it talks about all sorts of neat and cool info about the latest guns of Gamindustri. Is this something that you would find interesting?" She said with her voice sounding toned down and baby-like for Euri.

"Not this again, Uni," said Nepgear.

Uni sheepishly turned away with a blush. "Don't be like that, Nepgear. Wouldn't it be cool if she took up traits from her aunts? Just imagine her helping you work on some giant robot or she deciding to use guns for her fighting style, too."

"I don't think it's a good idea to force our wishes onto her. She should be able to become her person when she gets older. We won't even know for sure if she would act like Noire or Neptune later down the road, but we do know that we will still love her no matter who she becomes."

"Hmm, yeah, I guess you're right," replied Uni.

Euri giggled loudly and swung her arms to reach the pages from the magazine. She then used all her strength to pull downward, taking out two of the pages.

"Ahh! Hey, I wasn't done reading it!" Woefully cried Uni to the sky.

After a while later, they were both walking back to the Basilicom with a sleeping Euri being carried by Nepgear. The robot fanatic CPU smiled brightly as she could feel her niece's gentle breath hitting her neck.

I hope you enjoyed these two small updates, and there will be more to come soon. I remember that when I decided on making this continuation from NVOP, that I wanted it to be short-story focused like episodes that could be read in any order with a background plot that did focus on something grander. That's the vision that I aim for going forward.