Hyperdimension Neptunia is owned by Sega, Idea Factory and Compile Heart and whomever else worked on it.

Chapter 4

Histoire looked at the newcomer with narrowed eyes. She knew that the mere thought of getting Neptune back would entice Plutia and Peashy to work with her, but the way she looked and felt... "Even if Peashy and Plutia could help you, the time difference between this dimension and Neptune's home dimension is very intense."

"Oh?" The blue-haired girl tilted her head in confusion. "Ah, yes, there is a time difference, huh?" She suddenly chuckled softly. "That won't be a problem. If you'd allow me to open a portal between Zero Dimension and this Ultra Dimension, the time difference would disappear as the faster dimension, that is, Ultra Dimension, would sync up with the slower dimension, that is, both Zero and Hyper Dimension." She sighed at the confused looks on Plutia and Peashy's faces. "That means that one day in Hyper Dimension would be one day here."

"OOOOOHH!" Both CPUs nodded in confirmation.

"But the thing is..." The girl sighed heavily. "I'm in need of something from Hyper Dimension. A game console. It's a specific one that has an orange swirl mark on it." She shook her head and smiled, though her eyes were surprisingly hollow. "You see, it's the only one in the world and it means a lot to me. I'm sure that two CPUs will have no problem..." She trailed off at the looks on their faces. "What?"

"Well..." Plutia smiled apologetically. "Neither Peashy nor I can transform right now."

The girl frowned in confusion. "But I can sense a lot of shares in this nation." She closed her eyes for a few moments. "Yes, there's lots of shares in this nation." She opened her eyes and looked at Plutia, who sighed. "What's wrong?"

"Well..." Plutia tapped her chin. "Peashy and I haven't been able to transform for a long time now." Seeing the annoyed look on the other girl's face, she giggled nervously. "See, Neppy forgot to..."

"I don't care." The girl twitched in annoyance. "I have no reason to help you anymore." She turned to leave.

"Wait!" Peashy yelled and ran in front of her. "Maybe Ploot and me can't get big anymore, but I can punch a big dragon into Lowee!"

The girl raised her eyebrows at hearing that. "...Reaaaally?" Peashy nodded. "...What's your name?"

"Peashy!"

The girl smiled and looked at Plutia. "And you're... Ploot?"

"Plutia," the CPU corrected her. "And you?"

"Uzume Tennouboushi." The dark-haired girl smiled at Plutia. "Very well, Plutsy and Peasy..." She trailed off and frowned softly. "Hmm..."

"What?" Peashy asked in confusion.

"Oh nothing." Uzume smiled at them and looked at Histoire. "Histoire, do you mind if I borrowed them? If I get what I want, you can have Nepsy come back here, since it seems like you all miss her."

The tiny tome shook her head. "No! You can't have them! I want Neptune to return too, but I know that she wanted to go home!"

"But Histy..." Plutia frowned at the tome sadly. "This is her home."

"Don't worry." Uzume smiled at them. "I won't force Nepsy to do anything, I just need a special console and I'll give her the ability to return here, I promise."

Histoire didn't trust that smile, but she saw the hopeful looks on Plutia and Peashy's faces and sighed. "...Very well. But if this turns into another alien invasion, dinosaur revival or Mole People situation again, I am holding you personally responsible for everything, Plutia."

Uzume raised an eyebrow with a confused look on her face. "...Alien invasion? Dinosaur revival? Mole People?" Her confusion only increased as all three of them shuddered visibly. "...What am I missing?"

Histoire cleared her throat. "To simplify the situation, as telling you would take too long, the incidents involved lasted for over three decades each, separated by centuries and each incident was weird in its own way."

"...I can accept that." Uzume nodded and frowned in confusion. "If you'll excuse me." She seemingly faded from view and Plutia, Peashy and Histoire all looked at each other.

(-)

Appearing in another location, Uzume frowned at herself. "I'm not physically here, but yet I can manifest... I wonder if it has something to do with "me" being able to use share energy from the monsters in Zero Dimension." She shrugged, it wasn't important. "And why am I feeling share energy here, wherever here..?" She trailed off and paused as she saw two large tubes in front of her. Inside both of them were two girls, both naked, and unconscious. "...This would be a great set-up for some sort of porn film." Uzume muttered to herself before smirking. "Sealed away CPUs, huh?" Well, if those other two couldn't transform, Uzume figured it would help to have backups...

Just in case.

Inside the two tubes, a girl with short gray hair and a girl with red, black and blue stripes in her brown hair slept peacefully.

(-)

The next morning in Hyper Dimension...

Nepgear fidgeted as she walked down the hallway early in the morning. When she had found Neptune sleeping in her office, she found it adorable and asked Compa to help move Neptune to her room without waking her. However, when Nepgear had woken up, Neptune wasn't there anymore. "Where did Neptune..." She muttered to herself and stopped as she smelled something coming from the kitchen. "Huh?" Following the smell, she stopped and gawked as she saw pancakes, eggs and other food.

"Morning, Nepgear." Neptune smiled as she flipped the pancake on the skillet in front of her. "I thought you'd be hungry, though I don't know how much you can eat, sorry." She chuckled at Nepgear's dumbfounded look. "I had to learn to cook, Nepgear. You can't rely on people to cook for you, after all."

"...You didn't destroy the kitchen though." Nepgear said, her voice showing her disbelief.

"I know!" Neptune smiled proudly. "It took me nearly fifty years to get good in the kitchen too!" It was a long time, but Neptune had been determined to become a good cook. Not for any good reason, she just wanted to be able to eat when she was hungry without having to go out for food.

Besides, it was hard to enjoy eating out with all the alien food in Ultra Dimension. Not that Neptune cared about the non-humans in Ultra Dimension's Gamindustri, so long as they didn't harm the native residents of Gamindustri, but she couldn't stomach the foods they ate.

After all, the few times she tried to eat some alien foods, she had actually gotten violently ill and the only reason she hadn't died was because she wasn't human.

"Well, I'm not sure I can eat all of this even with your help." Nepgear chuckled nervously as she looked at the mountain of food. She wasn't even sure if Neptune could eat that much.

"Oh, that's fine, we can give this to the staff for putting up with me all these years." Neptune smiled at her and went back to the skillet. "I'm sure they'd like it."

Nepgear nodded and the two took the food they were going to eat and sat down at the table, though Neptune pulled out some sort of thin plate and tossed it at the food. Before Nepgear could ask what was going on, a barrier popped into reality around the food. "What the goodness?" Nepgear gasped at the technology. Sure, such a thing was possible, but not on a thin plate like that.

"That'll keep it good and warm without drying it out." Neptune smiled and went to eating.

After finishing up their food, Neptune took the plates and went to the sink while Nepgear stood up. "Let me take care of the dishes, Neptune, since you made the food." Nepgear smiled at her. "It was really good too."

"Sure!" Neptune smiled at her and grabbed a towel that Nepgear only now noticed that was next to the sink and pulled it away, revealing a lot of pots and pans, much to Nepgear's shock. "You think I could make that much food with only a few pots and pans?" Neptune laughed and walked out of the kitchen while Nepgear stared with blank white eyes.

"GAH! She tricked me!" Nepgear had a slightly angry expression on her face. "...Then again, I did eat a big meal, so... I guess I can do this."

(-)

An hour later...

Walking out of the kitchen with some paper towels in her hands, Nepgear sighed as she dried her hands. "Moooou... My hands are all wrinkly now." She pouted and went to look for Neptune. After turning a corner, she was surprised to see Histoire looking around in confusion. "Ah! Histoire! Good morning."

"Good morning, Nepgear." Histoire smiled at her. "Have you seen Neptune? I went to your room to check on her and she wasn't there."

"She made breakfast. There's still a lot in the kitchen and we were planning on serving some to the staff." Nepgear's enthusiasm died a little when she saw Histoire's uncomfortable look.

"The last time Neptune tried to make food for everyone, she destroyed the kitchen, set fire to three different rooms and destroyed the plumbing and everyone agreed that she wasn't allowed to use the kitchen for anything but simple foods that don't require cooking." Histoire didn't hold it against Neptune, that had been when she was a rather fresh CPU and didn't know her limits on everything.

"Well, the kitchen is still intact," Nepgear pointed out, much to Histoire's shock. "And the food was really good. There was a lot though."

"...I have to see this for myself." Histoire said and floated towards the kitchen with Nepgear right behind her. When Histoire got to the kitchen, she actually fell off of her book in completely surprise and would have hit the ground had Nepgear not caught her. "Thank you, Nepgear."

Nepgear smiled and helped Histoire back onto her book. "I didn't know you could fall off of your book."

"Only in extreme situations." Histoire admitted, an embarrassed look on her face. "But... This much food? ...Did she plan on feeding the entire staff?"

"Apparently." Nepgear chuckled nervously. "How about we get some of the staff to move this downstairs?"

"That would be for the best, yes." Histoire nodded and opened up a screen to make a quick call to the staff. After a few of them showed up and saw what was going on, they left and came back with some serving carts to move the mountain of food.

...After Nepgear remembered about the barrier and removed the plate that Neptune had used to create the barrier in the first place.

After most of the food was gone, save for a small stack of tiny pancakes that Histoire was sure was for her, the fairy looked at Nepgear, who fidgeted nervously. "Do you know where Neptune is?"

"No, she left me to do the dishes and walked off." Nepgear just laughed nervously at the look Histoire gave her. "I mean, I ate a good amount of food too, so I thought I could do the dishes at least."

"Still spoiling her." Histoire muttered softly, though she kind of understood in this case. "How about we find her?"

Nepgear nodded and the two wandered around the Basilicom to find the newly returned CPU.

(-)

Ten minutes later...

"Well, we've searched everywhere..." Nepgear trailed off as she and Histoire came across Neptune's office. "...You don't think she's..."

"The only place we haven't looked yet." Histoire said and the two opened the door to Neptune's office, not sure what to expect.

On the desk was a tall stack of papers, which didn't surprise them. What did surprise them was Neptune sitting at the desk.

Though the fact that she was sleeping at the desk didn't surprise either of them.

Both Nepgear and Histoire let out soft sighs as they realized that some things didn't change. Going over to the stack of papers, Nepgear pulled one off the top and gasped. "Histoire! Look!" She held it in front of Histoire, who stared. "These are signed!"

"Not all of them..." A voice muttered and Nepgear looked as Neptune raised her head up. "I don't know everything in Planeptune right now, so I only answered the ones that I could answer." Neptune yawned and flopped her head back on the desk. "Even after a thousand years I hate doing paperwork. It's so BORING! I had to hire alien secretaries to do the sorting work back in Ultra Dimension so that all I had to do was sign stuff."

"Alien..." Histoire began, sweat-dropping.

"...secretaries?" Nepgear finished, her eyes white and blank.

"Yeah, there are some species that love doing paper work and don't need to rest as much as humans do." Neptune shrugged as though it was natural before sitting up and stretching her arms above her head, groaning softly at the tension in her back made itself known.

"There's a story there, I assume." Histoire said and Neptune nodded. "...Well?"

"Oh, sorry." Neptune giggled and stuck her tongue out. "Their species was part of a resistance movement against a race that liked to go out and take over various worlds. They were really helpful after Gamindustri was taken over and if not for them, we couldn't have gotten freed and beaten the bad aliens up. So now thanks to the aliens that were under the rule of those bad ones, we have gaming consoles all across the galaxy and we can even play in real time with races far on the edge of the galaxy."

"Really?" Nepgear asked, her eyes sparkling. "Oh! The tech must be amazing! I can't imagine just staying on one planet if I knew there were lots of planets out there and..."

"Gamindustri needs CPUs to keep it safe." Neptune pointed out to Nepgear. "Sometimes we go to other worlds, but we need to stay on our planet. Kind of stinks that we can't just go "hey, they need my help on Mangoo Solaris IX" and head out all the time though."

Histoire gave her a raised eyebrow. "I'm surprised you would care about that."

"Well," Neptune had a nervous smile on her face, "if we're too far from the source of our shares, we can't transform."

Histoire nodded, now it made sense. "Out of sheer curiosity, Neptune, how long did the alien invasion last?" She was curious and wondered if it was just a few days or not.

"Um..." Neptune tapped her chin and leaned back as she thought about it. "It took us like... Thirty-eight years to finally get rid of the bad guys."

"That long?!" Nepgear gasped and Neptune nodded.

"Yeah, if not for some Angels, a sardine loving Vampire and alien tech, I dunno if we would have stopped them."

"...Sardine loving Vampire?" Histoire asked and Neptune giggled. "I don't want to know."

"It's fine." Neptune smiled tiredly and yawned. "Sorry, Nepgear, but could you look over the rest of that? I dunno what's good or not."

"Sure." Nepgear smiled and took Neptune's spot. The much older CPU looked at Histoire, who had a contemplative look on her face. "Well, Histy, how about you get me caught up on what I've missed, okay?"

"Sure." Histoire nodded and the two walked over to the couch so Neptune could get caught up on everything that she had missed out on after being sealed away for three years.

Nepgear was just happy Neptune was home and that yesterday hadn't been a dream. She just hoped that things could stay like this for awhile.