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

Interlude: Hyperdimension 3

Back in the Hyperdimension...

"We're here!" Neptune smiled as she, Croire and Uzume stepped through a purple portal.

"Neptune!" Nepgear cried out and rushed at the bigger version of her sister, hugging her tightly while trembling.

"Woah!" Neptune's eyes widened as she hugged her little sister. "What's wrong? I thought you'd be okay if Tiny Me was gone for a few days."

"It's not that." Nepgear looked at Neptune and trembled. "She sounds so tired, so defeated and so worn out when I talk to her. I just want to get her home. Or at least, if we have to, I want to go there and give her a hug and let her know everything's okay."

Neptune smiled at Nepgear and patted her head. "You're such a good little sister." She then let go of the hug and flipped open her Nep-note. "Okay, just tell Crostie where to go and we'll go and..."

"Can't do it." Croire interrupted from inside the Nep-note.

"HUH?!" Everyone gaped at the notebook.

"Um, Crostie, this isn't the time for jokes." Neptune had a slightly irritated look on her face. "If Tiny Me is in trouble, we should..."

"Moron! I didn't say I wouldn't do it. I said I CAN'T do it." Croire sighed while her wings flashed. "I'm out of power. Between this damn notebook draining me and the fact that I HAVEN'T EATEN ANYTHING IN A WEEK!" She screamed so loudly that Neptune nearly dropped the book. "I got NOTHING left in me. I can get you around in this dimension, no problem, the notebook has enough power to do that, but jumping dimension? Nah uh. I'll need at least a week if you leave me in here."

"...Croire..." Nepgear began slowly. "If you were let out of the Nep-Note, how long would it take to recover?"

"Gah! I don't know, sheesh. A day or two at most? Even then I don't know where I'm going, so it might be even longer than that. Why? You going to let me out? There's no way to know if I'll disappear on you when you need me." Croire teased Nepgear, who looked at the notebook with a stern determination on her face.

"...What would it take for you to stay and help?" Nepgear asked her. "You owe my sister, you know that, right? Otherwise you'd be dead because Kurome would have used you to destroy the dimensions and she wouldn't care about you."

Croire huffed at Nepgear. "Is that supposed to move me? I don't see how that's, AAAAH!"

The next thing anyone knew, Nepgear had the Nep-Note in her hand and was grabbing at the page that Croire was sealed in. "Listen here! If you don't help my sister, I'll rip you out of this book myself and cut you into pieces!"

"...That would defeat the purpose of having me help." Croire pointed out, though her voice was slightly shaky.

"Okay, fine..." Nepgear had a grin on her face that was slightly disturbing. "If you don't want to help then... Histoire, could you call Plutia? Tell her we have a naughty child who needs some discipline."

"...She's that crazy psycho sadist CPU from the Ultradimension, right?" Croire asked, getting a nod from Nepgear. "...So... About helping your sister. I'll need lots of food and dimensional coordinates and I'll tell you how long it'll take. Can I come out now?"

"You take off, and I swear I will hunt you down and tell Plutia to go to town on you." Nepgear growled out and the Nep-Note shivered while she removed the tape.

Coming out of the book, Croire, a dusty-skinned fairy with short, dark-blonde hair and blue eyes, trembled and shivered while her face was slightly blue. "That was horrible! Don't threaten me with her again!"

"Behave and I won't." Nepgear told the fairy.

"Nepgear," Histoire spoke up as she floated up next to Nepgear, "while that works sometimes, please remember to not abuse such threats in the future." She sighed as Nepgear nodded. "I share your concerns about Neptune, but please, act like the Goddess you're supposed to be."

"I'm sorry." Nepgear said shyly.

"Whatever," Croire muttered and stretched her arms above her head and grimaced as there was a loud popping sound that had everyone cringing as they heard that. "...That felt good."

"But it sounded horrible." Neptune and Uzume said at the same time, shivering from what sounded like broken joints and bones.

"Anyway, what's the dimensional coordinates?" Croire asked Nepgear, who pulled out a phone and started reading off a string of numbers. As she said more and more numbers, Croire's face got progressively more and more pale. "...Are those numbers accurate?" She asked, shivering and when Nepgear showed her the numbers, she surprised everyone by swearing loudly and very colorfully.

"Crostie?" Neptune asked, blushing at some of the things that Croire was saying. "Um, Crostie..."

"WILL YOU STOP SWEARING AND CALM DOWN ALREADY!?" Histoire yelled, causing Croire to yelp in fright. Taking a deep breath, Histoire slowly let it out. "Now..." She gave the other book fairy a stern look, "what do you know about this dimension?"

"The numbers are quite... Different than what I'm used to seeing." Nepgear said as she looked at them.

Croire sighed and shook her head. "Why? Why did she have to cross over to THAT side of the multiverse? Why couldn't she end up in another area instead? No, she couldn't just stay in the same one, but instead she went to THAT side! ARRRGH!"

Uzume gave Croire a light bop on the head. "Enough, Crozy! What's going on?"

Rubbing the back of her head, Croire sighed heavily. "How much do any of you know about the multiverse?"

"Um," Neptune spoke up and tapped her chin, "can you simplify the question? Isn't it a collection of universes?"

"Not completely," Histoire spoke up, "a dimension has a single universe, yes, but within that dimension there are various realms, such as Celestia, Hell and the Underworld, not to mention that all of that dimension's time, history and future along with other unique elements that make up that reality. For example, Neptune, in this dimension, you were a CPU, but in your dimension, you were born human to human parents."

Neptune nodded and suddenly perked up. "Hey! Nepgear! After Tiny Me gets back, I should take you to visit my parents. Mom always talked about having a second kid."

Nepgear giggled nervously. "Please don't do that, Neptune, otherwise you might have to deal with the fourth wall attacking you."

"Can I continue?" Croire asked, getting nods from everyone. "Alright, Histoire's right, within one dimension is the various realms of reality and all that jazz. The more similar to your dimension one is, the closer they are to each other."

"Like a cluster of stars in the night sky?" Nepgear asked, getting a nod from Croire.

"Yeah, if you look at it like that, this next bit will be easy to understand. Well, within the multiverse there's a near infinite number of alternate dimensions. Most of these are just simply alternate timelines. For example, when dealing with Kurome, there were probably a bunch of ways that the situation could have ended up. Like maybe you didn't free your sister from Kurome's mind control. Or Kurome beat Uzume at the end. Or Uzume died. Or maybe the CPU Shift period ended up with new CPUs."

"Right, and that probably applies to all of our adventures then." Nepgear said as she thought about all the different ways that things could have gone over the years. "And that's just within one dimension, right?"

"Parallel timelines are their own dimension technically." Croire clarified for Nepgear, "however the spatial coordinates will be the same as this one, depending on how similar your histories are to each other up to the time split."

"So, if there was a dimension where there was no Uzume as Neptune's predecessor..." Nepgear began, nodding slowly. "That would be an example of a dimension on a different spatial coordinates."

"Exactly! And if I ended up finding a timeline where you were the CPU, the odds are that you're in the same space, but not the same time." She gave Nepgear a broad grin. "It's called the Time AND Space Continuum for a reason, kiddo!"

"Um..." Neptune scratched her head. "How is it different?"

Croire sighed heavily. "Just accept it, okay? Look, you know that two dimensions can be similar but have different spatial coordinates because they have an entirely different history from each other, while two dimensions which have the same spatial coordinates have a shared history, they just drifted apart at one point."

"I see, that does make sense. Am I to assume that there's more to this?" Histoire asked, getting a nod from Croire.

"Of course. See, here's the thing about the multiverse... What you know is only really half the story." She sighed at the confused looks she was getting. "Let me simplify things. For each dimension out there, there's a dark echo." Seeing as there wasn't any more clarification, she sighed. "Argh! Light side and Dark side, okay?!"

"So that's why you brought it up." A male voice spoke up and Croire let out a scream while almost jumping almost off her book. "Sorry about that."

"Umio!" Uzume's eyes lit up in happiness. "I missed you, buddy! You like living at the Basilicom?" She asked her fish friend with the stoic face.

"Yes, but things sure have been sad with miss Neptune missing." Umio admitted. "Why, even miss Uni here has been affected by it."

"Don't call me out!" Uni growled as she stuck her head out from around the corner. "Sorry, I was coming to apologize to you when I overheard your conversation."

Croire rubbed her forehead. "This is getting annoying. Someone get me a piece of paper and a couple of marbles!" She waited for the others to comply and had Nepgear hold the paper up. "Okay, Neptune, put your marble above the paper."

"Anywhere specific?" Neptune asked, when she was told not to, the busty girl nodded and just held her marble above the sheet.

"Okay," Croire nodded at Uzume, "put that one anywhere underneath the sheet. When the redhead complied, Croire nodded at them. "Okay, the marble on top? That represents this dimension." Everyone nodded, following along so far. "The marble underneath? That's where the idiot's located."

Nepgear frowned in confusion. "So what does this have to..."

"I'M GETTING TO IT!" Croire yelled at her. "Sheesh! Alright, listen up! When you shine light on something a shadow gets made, right?" The others nodded and Croire pointed at the marble Neptune was holding. "That's this dimension, it's mostly light." She then pointed at the one that Uzume was holding. "That one's in the dark side of the Multiverse."

"...Are you saying Neptune's in a dimension of evil!?" Nepgear yelped in fright and Croire shook her head. "What?"

"It's dark, sure, and probably twisted and there's probably a few baddies there that would be good people here." Croire scratched her chin as she ran the dimensional coordinates in her head. "Hmm, odd, that dimension's right on the border. Some things are messed up but the last time I was there it should have been on this side of the divide."

"Then why did you freak out when Nepgear read the coordinates off?" Histoire asked her.

"Because the numbers are backwards!" Croire shot back at her. "If you read the numbers in reverse order you'd get a location that would be on this side of the divide. In fact, it would probably be pretty close to this dimension."

"Crostie..." Neptune spoke up, giving her a stern look, "you weren't doing something bad in that dimension, were you?"

"Me?" Croire pointed to herself and sighed at the looks she was getting. "Nah, didn't have to, things were... Odd there. Lots of weird monsters, but things were pretty peaceful and dull. It was before I started to mess with dimensions, okay?" She crossed her arms and huffed in annoyance. "Things seemed okay, but boring, outside of the weird monsters." She grinned and blushed as she recalled some of the stuff she had recorded. "Yeah! Those had been wicked cool! Don't see some of those monsters in the other dimensions very often!" She sighed at the looks she was getting. "Anyway, it'll probably take me... Two, maybe three days to get enough power to open a portal to that side fully." She grimaced at the thought. "But don't hold me to that."

"I'll start making some food for you then." Nepgear said as she walked off to the kitchen, followed by Uni.

"Hey, Histy..." Uzume looked at the book fairy, who gave her a confused, but concerned look. "I was wondering, could you help me with something?"

"Sure." Histoire nodded and followed Uzume out of the room.

"You know, Crostie..." Neptune smiled at the fairy. "I don't think you're too bad of a person, you're just a naughty girl sometimes."

"Shut it!" Croire yelled, her face flushing as she looked away.

(-)

"Um, Nepgear..." Uni said as she entered the kitchen behind her friend. "I wanted to apologize to you." Nepgear looked at her in confusion. "For the things I said to and about Neptune, I mean."

"Uni..." Nepgear gave her a smile. "Just apologize to Neptune when she gets back. I'm sure she'd appreciate it." Uni nodded and Nepgear tossed her an apron. "But you still need to be punished! So you're going to help me make a delicious cake for Croire!"

Uni smiled as she put the apron on. "Deal!"

Nepgear smiled back at her. 'Hang on, Neptune. We're going to help you get home, I promise!'

End Interlude: Hyperdimension 3

Nepgear is scary!

And man, Nepgear, you better hurry, Neptune needs you.