Hyperdimension Neptunia is owned by Compile Heart, Idea Factory, Sega and whomever else worked on it.
I really am not meaning to update this every couple of days. I just get bored easily.
Oh well, it's my fic and I'll update when I want to!
Chapter 6
"Filyn!" Gust yelled as she finally caught up with the redheaded little girl and grabbed her arm. Panting heavily, she gave Filyn an angry look. "What are you doing?!" She gave Ram a side glance and Ram flinched, looking away. "You know what Chrome says about CPUs!"
"Huh?" Filyn gave her a confused look and looked at Ram. "...Are you the CPU of Lowee?"
"I'm... Um... A CPU Candidate." Ram said nervously, a totally dejected look on her face as she slowly turned away. "I'll go now."
Before she could turn away completely, Filyn grabbed her hand, much to both Ram and Gust's shock.
"Well, you're not the CPU yet, right?" Filyn smiled at her. "So that means you're not as bad as the CPU, right?"
Gust groaned, while the logic was somewhat sound and Filyn couldn't be faulted for not knowing the truth, Gust knew that CPU Candidates were just ticking time bombs. "Gust is warning Filyn, this won't end well." She sighed at the look Filyn gave her. Gust knew that she should pull Filyn away from Ram and get her out of the area and explain things to her.
But Gust also knew that if Filyn knew the truth about CPU Candidates that Filyn would be rushing back here to make friends with Ram and make her as happy as possible.
'Such a thing will only end in tears.' Gust sighed and nodded at Filyn. "Fine, Gust won't stop you." Suddenly she was hugged by tightly by Filyn.
"Thank you, Gusty!" Filyn smiled and let go of the small girl and turned to face Ram, before looking around on her left side. "Um... Gust, where did Ram go?"
Gust sighed and turned Filyn to her right and Filyn gasped as she saw Ram right there. "And you keep saying that you don't need anyone to help you."
"I can't help it! I only have one eye!" Filyn pouted at the bunny girl.
"What happened?" Ram asked, getting a helpless shrug from Filyn. "You don't know?"
"I don't remember." Filyn admitted and looked down while scuffing her feet on the ground. "One day I wake up and Chromey is there smiling at me and asking me how I am and I can only see out of one eye."
Ram bit her lip softly. Part of her wondered if Blanc had done that to the girl. 'That sounds like something she'd do.' Still, there was something that was bothering Rom. "Um... Miss Bunny... Why do you hate me?" Her eyes teared up and she looked down. "Everyone hates me. Why? What did I do? No one tells me. Other than Rom, there's only been three others that liked me. One is dead, one works at the Basilicom and one got really hurt because of me."
"...I like you." Filyn answered her as Rom looked up, tears running down her face silently. "So that's four people now."
Gust sighed and wondered if she should tell the girl the truth before shaking her head. "Gust doesn't hate you. Gust hates the CPU."
"Then treat her better!" Filyn yelled, causing a few people to look at them before quickly looking away as they noticed who was with the two small girls. "She's not the CPU!"
Ram just slumped and looked down. "It's okay, I'll just go away and look for Rom."
Gust sighed as she saw the young-looking girl and rubbed her forehead. "Dammit, this is just a bad idea and Gust hates herself for doing this." She walked over to Ram and looked the girl in the eye. "Gust is sorry."
"Um..." Ram fidgeted softly and smiled at her. "It's okay." She gave them a small smile. "...Do... Do you want to hang out? I know a store where we can get some yogurt."
"Yogurt?" Filyn perked up at that. "Cool! Let's go!"
Gust sighed and followed after them. "Well, probably no worse than time Gust was helping Linda fix the water pumps and the sewer pipe burst." At least they were near the ocean, so getting clean wasn't too hard, but that was still incredibly disgusting.
(-)
Linda sighed heavily as she loaded the last of the stuff onto the boat. "Urgh, I hate being the muscle for everything."
"Sorry, Linda." IF said and handed her a bottle of water. The green haired girl took it and downed the contents in almost one gulp. "We can't even leave yet because Artisan doesn't have the stuff ready."
"Want to go for a walk and see what's going on?" Compa asked them.
"Why not?" Linda shrugged as she got up, took another bottle from IF and doused herself to wash the sweat off of her body. "Okay!" She smiled after shaking her head to get the water out of her hair. "Let's go."
Warechu looked around, a concerned look on his face. "Something's not right, Chu."
"What is it, Mr. Mouse?" Compa asked Warechu, who shook his head negatively.
Linda bit her lip softly. "You know, the last time the rat said that something wasn't right it stormed really hard for three days straight."
The four of them looked at each other nervously and ran into the city. They didn't know what was going on, but whenever Warechu thought something wasn't right, bad things tended to happen.
(-)
A couple of hours later...
"Phew!" Neptune smiled as she and Rom sat on a bench that was near a busy street. Most of the passersby ignored them as they made their way to their destinations. Holding up a couple of packages, she handed one to Rom, who looked at it in confusion before opening the top, revealing a jiggling substance under the lid. "Here." Neptune handed her a plastic spoon.
"What's this?" Rom asked as she dug a spoon into the substance and pulled it out to take a taste of it. Her eyes widened in shock as the flavor not only caused her taste buds, but also her brain, to almost explode from the flavor.
"Hee hee," Neptune giggled as she took a bite of her own food. "Pudding is awesome, unless it's eggplant pudding." She pouted, remembering when the Arfoire from Plutia's world had sent her a pudding on April first after reforming but before they had opened the portal back to the Hyperdimension fully. That had been the most disgusting, vile and nasty thing Neptune had ever ingested and almost made her swear off eating pudding entirely for the rest of her life because of it.
The two ate in silence for some time, just enjoying the pudding and suddenly Rom started to hiccup, causing Neptune to look at her. "Hmm? Rom? Are you..?" She stopped as she saw Rom crying. Neptune didn't say anything as she wrapped an arm around Rom's shoulder, causing the small girl to turn and bury her face into Neptune's chest and cry silently.
Neptune was reminded of IF for several months after Peashy had been captured by the Seven Sages and how the tough girl would crawl into bed with her at night and hug her when she thought Neptune was asleep.
After nearly ten minutes, Rom pulled herself away from Neptune and rubbed her eyes. "Nothing happened." Rom groused, her face red as she looked away.
"Huh?" Neptune blinked in confusion. "Did something happen?" Neptune fought the urge to grin as she saw the corners of Rom's lips curl upwards. Looking up into the sky, Neptune grimaced as she saw how late in the day it was. "Hmm, Imma need a place to sleep, huh?" She had kind of hoped to run into Blanc since there were so many people out and ask her some questions, but that didn't look possible now since it was getting so late in the afternoon.
"Oh..." Rom nodded. "Well, Ram and I have been sleeping in trees." Neptune gave her a sharp look and Rom looked down. "We, um, ran away from the Basilicom."
Neptune was about to speak up when a voice suddenly yelled at them. "HEY!" Neptune and Rom both looked up to see IF, who had yelled at them, Linda, Warechu and Compa, walking their way.
"Hey, Iffy!" Neptune stood up and waved to the girl. "I thought you were going to leave already."
"Yeah, that didn't work out." IF grumbled and looked at Rom, who was giving her a sullen, though surprised look and blinked, wondering where she had seen that girl before before mentally shrugging it off. "Looks like Artisan didn't have the parts needed, so we gotta wait a couple of days otherwise we'd already be gone."
"Ah, well that..."
Before Neptune could finish that, Rom pushed past her and walked over to Compa, her body trembling with each step. "C...Compa?"
"Goodness!" The amputee's eyes widened as she saw who was with Neptune. "Rom! Is that you?"
The next thing that any of them knew, Rom was burying her face into Compa's chest and hugging her as tightly as her little body could muster, crying out how sorry she was.
"Um..." Neptune gave Compa a confused look. "You didn't tell me that you knew them." Then again, she had never asked, but it looked like Rom knew Compa pretty well.
Compa held up her hooked hand and smiled at Neptune. "Uh huh, I used to take care of Rom and Ram whenever they got hurt."
IF resisted the urge to make a comment about that. Now that she knew who the little girl was, she knew why she looked familiar. 'Great, the CPU Candidate of Lowee. What's next? That bitch White...'
"Well..." Neptune smiled happily at Compa as she crossed her hands behind her head. "It's good to know that you know them." Still, Neptune was a bit disturbed how easily Rom was breaking down and crying whenever someone did something nice for her. 'What the heck is going on here?' She really wanted to have a talk with Blanc about how Rom was acting. 'Man, if Rom or Ram were acting like this back home, I know that the other Blanc or Vert would swoop in and take them away from Blanc.'
(-)
Elsewhere...
Walking into the public square, complete with benches around a large outdoor clock, Chrome raised an eyebrow as she came across Filyn and Gust. Artisan had already left to go deal with another client, leaving Chrome to wander around Lowee on her own. 'I really don't want to be here any longer than I have to and...' Her eyes widened as she saw who was with Filyn and Gust.
She was about to run up and grab Filyn and Gust and run away but she stopped as she saw the absolutely happy look on Filyn's face as well as the CPU Candidate's face. '...Dammit.' Seeing Gust looking cautious but also somewhat happy made her resist the urge to run in there and get them away from the other girl. 'Well, if she's able to smile, then it's not so bad right now...' Maybe she could get this girl away from her sister before something bad happened. 'Still...' Her fingers twitched as she resisted the urge to call forth her weapons to deal with the CPU Candidate.
It was hard, but she did so.
"Chromey!" Filyn yelled as she saw Chrome and ran up to her, giving her a hug. "Are we going home then?"
"Sadly no." Chrome shook her head. "It looks like Artisan didn't have the parts ready yet, so we have to wait a couple of extra days."
"Oh, okay!" Filyn smiled at her and let go of the hug. "Did you meet my friend? This is Ram."
"Um... Hello." Ram fidgeted under the intense look that Chrome gave her. "Did I do something wrong?"
Chrome sighed and shook her head. "No, you didn't." She knew it wasn't Ram's fault, but her fate was one that couldn't be changed. 'Not since that day...' Chrome shook her head and sighed softly. "Well, we should get caught up with the others and..." She trailed off as she saw them walking her way. "Well, speak of the devil and she'll appear." Chrome would have smirked, but she saw the other CPU Candidate walking next to Compa and mentally sighed as the two groups met up.
Ram's eyes widened as she saw Compa and Rom and ran over to them, hugging both of them happily.
IF was lagging a bit behind the others and blinked as she felt a tug on her coat. Looking, she saw Warechu looking at her somewhat worriedly. "I'm fine, just a little tired." She hated the fact that the burns on her body, even though the worst of the effects were long over, were not only slowing her down, but also preventing her from being able to do all that she wanted since she got tired so easily and her skin tended to crack without regular applications of her treatment lotions.
"You shouldn't lie to me, Chu." Warechu spoke to her. "If you need to rest you should tell us. We help each other, you know?"
"Thanks." IF said as Warechu helped her over to a bench where Linda was at. "You okay?"
"Yeah, but I wanna just get off of my feet." Linda sighed softly and leaned back on the bench. She turned her head to see Neptune running around the square with Filyn, Rom and Ram while Chrome, Compa and Gust just looked on. "Sheesh, don't they run out of energy?"
"It's kind of nice though." IF commented and smiled softly as she looked at the group as they ran around. "I don't know why, but seeing that girl... Nep...Tyuuno or something? Anyway, seeing her like that just sets me at ease and I don't know why."
(-)
Rom laughed as she ran away from Neptune, who was shambling after her, Ram and Filyn while pretending to be a zombie who wanted to snack on their brains or something. "Slow zombie can't catch me!" Rom yelled while running backwards, she turned around to see where she was going, only to hit something hard, which caused her to fall backwards. "Ooof! Hey! Watch...It..?" Rom's eyes widened and her face paled as she saw just who she had run into.
The familiar short blue hair, blue eyes, bow on the back of the head and that calm expression while wearing a white short dress. "Well, Rom..." The person looked past her and saw Ram, who was staring and trembling in fear. "Ram... It's been a few days, hasn't it? Don't you think you should come home?"
"B...Blanc..." Ram trembled in fear.
"Nep what?!" Neptune stared in shock. "Since when does Blanc have blue hair?" She squinted her eyes to see if she could get a better look at Blanc and tilted her head in confusion. 'She's not in HDD mode, so why is her hair blue? Why does she feel... Wrong?'
Blanc let out a dramatic sigh and slowly grinned at Rom. "You should have gotten up." She said softly.
What happened next had Neptune staring in both shock and anger.
"YOU LITTLE SHIT!" Blanc screamed as she quickly stepped up to Rom and kicked her in the stomach so hard that the little girl was lifted off the ground. Blanc then grabbed Rom's head and slammed her onto the ground hard, leaving a crack in the ground and causing the little girl to cry out in pain. "Oh please! That was just a love tap. Let me show you what real pain is like!"
Neptune could only stare in horror as Blanc kicked and stomped on Rom over and over again. 'Stop it... Stop it Blanc... Stop...' She called out in her mind and idly noted that no one was doing anything to help Rom out, not even Ram, who was staring at the scene and crying. "...stop it..." She whispered.
Before she knew what was going on, her feet were moving.
Standing behind Neptune, Filyn could only stare in horror and she jumped as she felt a hand on her shoulder, turning, she saw Chrome looking at the scene with a pensive look on her face.
"There's a sad fate that affects all CPU Candidates..." Chrome said softly. "Sadly, there's nothing that we can do against a CPU."
"But Rom doesn't deserve this!" Filyn protested and looked at Gust and Compa, both of whom had sad looks on their faces. "Please! Help her!"
On the ground, Rom was coughing and spitting up blood as she felt her ribs break from the beating she was getting. 'Why? Why do I deserve this? Why isn't anyone helping? Why?' A thought entered her mind. 'Why should I care? If they won't help me then I should just end them all!'
Blanc grinned as she saw Rom's body start to glow red. 'About time, just a little more and...' She felt a tap on her shoulder and she turned to see who was touching her. "What do you want? I'm busy!"
The next thing she saw was a fist filling her vision.
"STOP IT!" Neptune screamed as she punched Blanc so hard that the CPU went flying into a nearby wall, which caused everyone to stop what they were doing and stare in absolute shock. "WHAT THE NEP DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING, BLANC?!" Neptune yelled, pure rage in her voice. "ROM'S YOUR SISTER FOR NEP'S SAKE!"
On the ground, Rom turned her head and looked up at Neptune, confusion and pain on her face as the red glow slowly started to die down. '...Di...Did she help me?'
Blanc, who slid to the ground, stared stupidly at Neptune before raising her hand to her face and touching her nose. 'What the fuck just happened?' She thought to herself and pulled her hand away from her face, noticing a red stain on her fingers. '...I'm bleeding...' Her eyes turned red as she jumped to her feet. "YOU BITCH! HOW DARE YOU MAKE ME BLEED?!"
A moment later, Neptune's foot was in her face as Neptune did a flying kick at Blanc, knocking the CPU of Lowee down to the ground. "How dare YOU do that to your sister?!" Neptune yelled and grabbed Blanc by her hair and lifted her up.
Blanc winced from the hair pulling but gave Neptune a confused look. "What? She's my sister! I'm supposed to punish the little shithead when she screws up." She punched Neptune in the stomach, causing Neptune to let her go.
"Oww..." Neptune rubbed her stomach and glared at Blanc. "You're wrong!" She suddenly ran forward and tackled Blanc, hitting the blue-haired CPU in the stomach at full force, causing Blanc's eyes to bug out from that. 'Thank you, P-Ko, for all those tackles you did to me!' Neptune thought to herself with a small grin. When Blanc landed on the ground, she straddled Blanc and glared at her. "You're wrong! Sure! If your little sister does something wrong, you give her a bop to the head or if she really screws up you give her a spanking, same with your children, but you always make sure that they know why they're getting punished and you show them that you love them after! YOU DON'T BEAT THEM FOR NO REASON!"
"Love?" Blanc suddenly burst out laughing. "Love?! OH MY! BWAHAHAHAHAHA! I'm the CPU! I can do what I want! These are my people!"
"WRONG!" Neptune glared at her. "You're supposed to work for your people! A good CPU makes sure that their people are happy, protected and safe before doing anything for themselves!"
Chrome, who wasn't too far away, was torn between cheering Neptune on and getting the hell out of there stiffened as she heard Neptune say that. "...What did she say?"
"The fuck you talking about?" Blanc forgot her anger in her confusion.
"You're supposed to make your people happy! You're supposed to make sure that they have a safe place to live, grow, play games and live!" Neptune yelled at Blanc.
Privately, Neptune loved being a CPU, but there were times she felt like she had been put in a cage by Histoire and made to like it. In some ways she envied IF, Compa and her big self. They were free to choose their paths, Neptune never was.
Well, except when she had been turned human in Plutia's world, but she had turned back into a CPU so fast that she never had time to stop and think about her situation or the ramifications of her actions, she had just wanted to regain her Immortality and keep her youthful figure. 'Plus the fans might have gotten upset if I had gotten older at the time.'
Blanc suddenly laughed at Neptune, who stared at her in confusion. "Is that what you think, dumbass?" A sudden burst of strength had Blanc throwing Neptune off of her as she stood up. "As if that would work." Blanc said as she stood up and dusted herself off. "CPUs draw upon power of the Fearicite, which is powered by people's fear, pain, anger, hatred, and suffering."
"...Fearicite?"
"Blanc?" Ram, who was with Compa next to Rom, looked at her sister and trembled. "What do you mean?"
Blanc shook her head and a wide, toothy grin filled her face. "Well, shit, since I said this much, I might as well continue. You keep crying when I beat that worthless shit stain Rom, so I guess I'll tell you why."
Neptune wanted to say something, but seeing a smile on Blanc's face that was more at home on Rei's face when the former Tari Goddess was in one of her psychotic moods caused her to pause.
"The truth is, you CPU Candidates have a pretty sad and pathetic future." Blanc chuckled as Ram's look of fear increased. "To even access the power of the Fearicite, you need to feel nothing in your heart but pain, anger, hate and suffering." Seeing the looks of shock on Neptune, Ram and even Rom's face was rather amusing to her. "Heh heh heh heh..." Chuckling, Blanc put a hand on her face as she started to laugh like a maniac. "And then... Heh heh heh heh... Once you're finally able to transform... Once you're finally able to feel nothing but those emotions..." A smile that could only be described as psychotic crossed Blanc's face at that moment and Neptune seriously wondered if she had bitten off more than she could chew. "You can transform and you fight the current CPU... To the death." Blanc licked her lips. "Oh, I look forward to the day you two become monsters like me. For a CPU Candidate to be able to kill their elder sister... They have to be an even WORSE monster than the current CPU!" She threw her head back and laughed. "It's so pathetically sad! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Either you die after you transform or you become a monster even worse than I am! Either way, the people around you continue to suffer until they can't stand you and new Candidates are born!"
"And the cycle of destruction just continues." Chrome whispered sadly.
"YOU BITCH!" IF screamed as she ran forward, but was stopped by Chrome. "YOU BURNED THE GUILD DOWN! YOU CHOPPED COMPA'S ARMS OFF! YOU PROBABLY TORE OUT FILYN'S EYE TOO!"
"Huh?" Blanc looked at IF in confusion. "Guild?" She had an absent look on her face. "Oh!" Her eyes widened. "Ah yeah!" She scoffed. "I had no use for them, so they all died. You must have been the one that survived the fire."
"I..." Neptune was looking down and trembling.
"Hmm?" Blanc raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO MAD IN EITHER OF MY LIVES!" Neptune suddenly screamed and tackled Blanc to the ground again, this time she punched Blanc in the face over and over again. "HOW DARE YOU DO ALL THOSE THINGS!? CPUS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE GODDESSES OF PROTECTION!"
Not even the Deity of Sin, not even Kurome, not even the CFWs, not even Anonydeath when he brainwashed Peashy, none of them made her this mad in her life.
Suddenly both of Neptune's hands were grabbed and Blanc, her face bloody, glared at Neptune. "You know what? I'd say fuck you, but I decided that doing that to you, even if it's until you die is too good for you. So instead... I'm just going to kill you."
Neptune was thrown off of Blanc, who stood up and glared at everyone. "You want to mess with a CPU? Fine!" Blanc's eyes glowed red as she grinned savagely. "I haven't had the chance to do this in so long that I almost forgot how to." The air started to shake and crackle with energy as Blanc started to glow red. "Verwandeln!"
There was a pillar of light that surrounded Blanc, but much to Neptune's shock and everyone else's horror, the light was black with red numbers surrounding it.
When the light died down, whatever Neptune was expecting Blanc to look like, she didn't get it.
Her legs were covered in grey-colored metal that covered her legs completely from her feet up to just past her knees with the outsides of her legs that went up most of the way up her thighs were covered, but her inner thighs were completely exposed. She had gray metal armor that hovered just over the outside of her hips and a metal bikini bottom with blue highlights with a metal bikini top over her still flat chest, there was a strip of metal just over where the bottom of her ribs would be. She had shoulder armor with spikes at the ends of them, her arms from her shoulder to her hands were covered in gray armor, though Neptune saw some blue armor where Blanc's elbows should be and her hands were covered by sharp pointed blue gloves. Coming out of Blanc's backside was a tail that looked like a spear tip and Neptune privately wondered if it was attached to her tail bone or shoved up into her butt.
Blanc's hair was the same as Neptune remembered it in both color and style, though Blanc had what looked like some sort of hair clips in her hair similar to what Neptune had in her normal and HDD forms, except that they consisted of one large ring with a mostly filled in center with a single blue bar in the center that made it look like a coin slot and under it were two smaller circles with the larger one filled with a sphere and the smaller one had nothing in it. On Blanc's back were two wings that were blue on the bottom, but pitch black on the top and tips. If Neptune had to compare it to anything, she would compare them to that electric rat's tail from the pocketed monstrosities game that her Blanc put out every couple of years. Blanc's eyes were a bright orange, but they were wrong. While they still had the power symbol in them, the symbol was upside down and black, as was the sclera that surrounded the irises of her eyes.
But what really made Neptune nervous was Blanc's chest.
The area that was above and between Blanc's tiny titties...
Was a hole of pitch blackness.
Grinning as she pulled out an axe that looked like it was designed for murder and executions, Blanc chuckled at the group, which was staring at her in a mixture of shock, horror and pure fear. "CPU White Void has arrived."
To be continued...
If there are any German readers, I apologize for butchering your language, I ran some of the stuff through Google Translate, you know how reliable THAT is.
If you're having trouble picturing what White Void looks like, go look up images of Chaos White Heart from NepNep Connect: Chaos Chanpuru which was a Japanese exclusive PS Vita game.
BTW, I hope you were playing "Monster" by Skillet when Blanc transformed.