Hyperdimension Neptunia is owned by Sega, Idea Factory and Compile Heart and whomever else worked on it.
Chapter 6
It was fairly early in the morning, as evidenced by the fact that it was still dark outside.
Yet despite the fact that it was dark outside and the lights in the Basilicom were mostly off, save for some night lamps and a few hallway lights and a few front desk lights, which were in place in case there was an emergency that happened at night, there were people in the Basilicom getting up and moving around.
"And I was having a most pleasant dream..." Vert, who was laying in one of the spare bedrooms in just her underwear, put her hand over her mouth as she yawned before she stretched her arms above her head and let out a soft groan as she felt the tension in her back peel away while she woke up. She took a deep breath and looked around. "What is that delicious aroma?" Throwing a robe on over her shoulders, she tied it so that her breasts wouldn't flop out by accident and walked out of the room. As she got into the hallway, she was greeted by Blanc, who was in pajamas, and a sleepy Noire, who was in an over-sized black shirt that hung loosely on her shoulders, but went past her butt and fought the urge to giggle at the zombie-like look on Noire's face. "Do you need some coffee or something?"
"Grounds... Grounds..." Noire-Zombie growled as she stumbled her way towards the delicious smells.
The three got to the kitchen and the first thing Noire-Zombie did was spy the pot of coffee on the table. "Grounds..." Noire -Zombie groaned out and grabbed a coffee mug that was available and poured herself a cup of black coffee and drank it down in one gulp, returning her to normal. "PAH! That hit the spot!"
"Careful, Noire," Neptune was heard speaking and Noire turned to see Neptune and Nepgear, both dressed and in aprons, making breakfast. "Drink too much coffee and you'll turn into a big grump."
Noire gave Neptune a flat look. "Don't you say that I'm a big grump all the time?" Neptune gave her a confused look in response and she sighed. "Never-mind."
"You're making breakfast?" Blanc asked and the Planeptune sisters both nodded. "...Is Nepgear doing all the work again?"
"Even after a thousand years, you can't cook?" Noire asked. "Then again, it's you, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case."
"Actually," Nepgear smiled at them nervously, "I've only been helping, Neptune's been doing the cooking."
The others gave her a surprised look and then looked at Neptune, who was busy chopping ingredients up. "Sorry I don't know what you all like for breakfast, so I thought I'd make some omelettes."
"Well, that seems lovely." Vert smiled, though she was slightly worried that Neptune would cause a fire or something.
"Don't worry, the pancakes we had yesterday were really good." Nepgear smiled and Neptune suddenly giggled. "Neptune?"
"Oh nothing, just remembering when I made my first pancake that didn't taste like charcoal."
The others sweat-dropped at the idea of a pancake tasting like charcoal, but decided to not comment on it. After all, it didn't look like Neptune was going to poison them by accident or blow something up.
"I'll get Rom and Ram." Blanc said as she went back to the room she had been sleeping in.
"I'll go get Uni." Noire said after downing a second cup of coffee.
After they left, Vert looked at Neptune and Nepgear. "So why are you two up so early anyway?"
"Couldn't sleep." Neptune told her while looking at the food she was making. "I got five hours of sleep, so I'll be good for the rest of the day." She didn't look as Vert stared at her in shock.
"Yeah, it surprised Histoire and myself too the first couple of days, but she's been like this every day." Nepgear smiled and helped Neptune by getting some dishes set up at the table.
A few minutes later, Rom, Ram and Uni, all looking kind of sleepy, shuffled into the kitchen, along with Noire and Blanc, all of them still wearing their sleepwear. After sitting down, Rom grabbed the tall glass of milk in front of her and threw her head back as she chugged the milk. "Yummy!" She giggled happily and put it down, gasping as Nepgear served them food. "Yay! Omelettes!"
As they got their food, the group dug into the food, all letting out groans of pleasure from how good the omelettes tasted.
"My goodness, the mixture of cheese, eggs and everything else is just perfect." Vert smiled as she finished her food up. "Thank you very much."
Neptune smiled at her. "Glad you all liked it." She went back to eating and the other CPUs were surprised she wasn't wolfing her food down like they knew she had a tendency to do. "So," Neptune began as she finished her food, "what's going on in your nations? Histy told me about the CPU Shift Period, but I don't know what's going on in your nations."
The others looked at each other and sighed.
(-)
A few minutes later in the living room...
"And then the rumors go and say that I'm a lonely protector with no friends!" Noire let out a near scream of frustration.
Vert complained about rumors of her tea buying habits and Blanc was annoyed by Amazoo reviews that were done in her name from supposed secret accounts and with misspelled words.
"Yikes!" Neptune looked at the rumors that she was seeing on her own device. "Nepgear is totally boring and not worthy of being a main character?" She had an upset look at that. "What are you talking about? Didn't Nepgear do well as the main character when we were all sealed away?"
"Um, Neptune..." Nepgear grimaced as she looked at her N-Gear, "here..." She pointed to a thread someone had started on Neptune.
"Lesse..." Neptune read a random post out loud. "I bet the CPU is just being lazy and playing games while her sister does all the hard work." She had a blank look on her face as she thought about that. "...Wow, is that how people really see me?"
Noire, Vert and Blanc all gave Neptune varying levels of disbelief upon hearing that.
"Oh, there's another post..." Neptune said as she read it. "The CPU is so worthless, she should just disappear forever, it's not like we need her. Planeptune did just fine without her. She never does anything when she's around and in charge anyway." The small CPU grimaced upon reading that. "Ouch, that one hurt."
"Ah..." Nepgear had a concerned look on her face as she saw Neptune's face become neutral upon reading that. "You know that during a CPU Shift Period that people are a lot more... Mean than they are normally."
"Well," Neptune shrugged and tossed the N-Gear into the air, causing Nepgear to shriek and jump to catch it, "oops, sorry, forgot that's yours." She scratched the back of her head.
"You're... Taking that well..." Noire said tentatively.
Neptune gave her a forced smile. "Well, if I exploded every time someone said something negative like that about me, I would probably have had a stress-induced heart attack a hundred times over."
"...I see..." Noire said slowly. "If you're upset, feel free to complain..."
"Oh, I'm not upset, not at all." Neptune said, her eyebrow twitching. "Nope, not at all. I mean, it's not like I'm friends with actual Demons and Overlords who all have higher opinions of me despite me being a Goddess or anything."
'She's pretty mad.' Noire, Vert and Blanc all thought at the same time.
"Gee, this reminds me of when the Mole people snuck in, convinced everyone that they were the reason Gamindustri was safe and booted all of us out to the street!" Neptune grumbled as she threw her hands up and down rapidly while grumbling about people being to gullible and idiotic.
"Mole people?" Everyone said at the same time, confused at the idea of people living underground.
Neptune continued to grumble for nearly three minutes before taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "Sorry about that."
"No, I completely understand," Vert said, a depressed look on her face. "Things are getting so stressful that I've been indulging on sweets to try and make the stress go away. If I'm not careful, I'll get even larger."
"...Her boobs will get bigger?" Uni whispered, partially in dread and partially in shock.
"Well, if that happened, you'd probably need new underwear," Neptune mused out loud, "whenever you eat a lot of sweets, it tends to go to your butt."
"HUH?!" Vert's eyes went white and blank. "My butt is perfectly proportioned, I'll have you know! Though maybe I should be careful not to eat too much then if instead of my boobs getting bigger it would be my butt." She shuddered at the thought of having a butt so big that she would need to get specialized chairs just to sit in them.
Neptune was about to say something when the Vert in front of her was replaced by one in a slightly different outfit and a slightly older appearance.
"What's wrong, Vert?" An echoing version of her own voice rang through her head.
The Vert she saw sighed heavily. "The stress is getting to me, Neptune. I found some gray hairs in my head this morning!"
"Well," Neptune's voice was somewhat amused, "it'll fade away once you relax. I would know, my hair's gone gray from stress so many times I lost count after the third time. You just need a week's vacation and you'll have your golden hair back. I suggest the beach."
"I can't go there!" Vert's eyes were white and blank as she glared at Neptune. "I've been so stressed out that I've been eating lots of sweets lately and..." She pouted and poked her belly. "I've been getting a little flabby and..." Her face went bright red. "My butt got really big! I had to buy all new underwear!"
Before Neptune could answer, she was pulled back to the present as she felt someone shaking her. "What the Nep?"
Nepgear looked at her in concern. "You okay, sis? You zoned out like at the restaurant."
Neptune smiled at her. "Yeah, just a memory, that's all." She waved down the others as they looked at her in concern. "It was just about going to the beach is all."
"That would be nice." Blanc admitted and wondered if they could go to the beach when this was over.
"It's so not right." Ram pouted. "I wanna know who the big meanie is that's spreading rumors!"
"Huh?" Neptune blinked in confusion. "There's someone spreading rumors?" Vert and Blanc both spoke about the rumors and how it felt like someone or a group of someones was spreading rumors and taking their best intentions out of context to make it worse than it really was, but Neptune wasn't listening too much as she thought about a way to salvage the situation. "Ooooh!" Her eye sparkled as everyone looked at her. "I have an idea! Why not work together and throw a big three day festival to celebrate everything we love about Gamindustri?"
"That..." Noire paused and thought about it. "That wouldn't be a bad idea. Any ideas for the days?"
"How about a parade with floats?" Blanc suggested, getting nods from the others.
"Perhaps we could even throw in a music concert?" Vert suggested.
Neptune nodded and pointed at them. "Yeah! Yeah! Let's do that on the first day! We can have old-fashioned carnival rides and games on the second day and have a big play!"
"...A play?" Noire, Blanc and Vert asked at the same time.
"Yeah." Neptune smiled and pulled out a script. "I even have a finished script right..." She trailed off while holding it in front of her. "Here..." The book was a bit worn out and had several creases in it as it was well used.
As Neptune held it, a sense of sadness fell over her that she couldn't explain.
"What's wrong?" Nepgear asked and Neptune shook her head.
"Oh, just realizing that this was the play that Blanc and I were working on before I came back." Neptune smiled at them as mental images of her and Blanc working hard on making the play as good as possible went through her head. "We still had like nine months before the play was going to be done since we just finished the script." She handed the book to Blanc. "It's got everyone's parts in it."
"Let's see," the Lowee CPU said as she opened it up and flipped through it while reading the script. "Hmm... Kind of a traditional piece about heroes and monsters... Even a princess part?"
"Yeah, it was about the time we got roped into helping an alien world deal with a civil war and all the monsters that were running around and causing problems." Neptune smiled at the memory. Sure, it had taken them awhile to sort the problems out, but it had been for the best in the end.
After all, they wouldn't have been able to stop the alien conqueror that had taken over most of the galaxy without help from the aliens of that world.
"But what should we do for the third day?" Vert asked, trying to not focus on the topic that seemed to make Neptune sad.
After a few minutes of no one coming up with a good idea, Noire shook her head. "How about we just ignore it for now and start planning the rest of the festival?"
"Right." The others said, nodding in agreement.
"I don't think we can wait for nine months..." Noire muttered as she looked the play script over. "Then again, I bet that was because you needed all sorts of props and stage help, right?" Neptune nodded and Noire smirked. "Well, don't worry about costumes, I, err, I know someone who's really good at making cute outfits."
"But where are we going to find someone to play the big, loud bodyguard?" Blanc asked as she was looking at the script half-way through.
"Oh! That was supposed to be Copypaste, but we don't have one of him here." Neptune tapped her chin. "Hmm... Well, we got some time, right?"
"Yes, but we'll need to figure this out sooner rather than later." Blanc pointed out and Neptune nodded.
Still, with the help of the CPU Candidates, it didn't take them long to come up with all sorts of ideas for the festival.
I think I'm legally obligated to write a play now. Oh well, wouldn't be the first time I did something like this.
And yes, CPUs can show signs of aging due to really high levels of stress. In Super Neptunia RPG, Neptune herself had gray hairs popping out of her head (Compa pulled one out) because she was over-worked and took everyone to a hot springs (mostly so she wouldn't fall behind further than she was, I'm guessing it's a pain to get her nation out of the ocean) to relax and let her body recover.
...Though, dang it, I kind of want to see Vert with silver streaks in her hair now.