Hyperdimension Neptunia belongs to Compile Heart, Idea Factory, Sega and whomever else worked on it.

If you clicked on "go to last chapter" and ended up here, wondering where the real chapter is, click back one and read that first, you silly people. Leave a review for that and then come here and read this.

Afterword

So this is the end of Echoes of the Dark. To everyone who made it this far, thank you. I hope you enjoyed the story and all the twists and turns it had.

I'm actually going to talk about some of my thought processes for the story here.

Let's start with the nations. When I was brainstorming this fic, I thought "Okay, Lowee should be a frontier-like place, forests, jungles and kind of the Wild West small towns." My next thought was about Planeptune and I was thinking along the lines of a fortress. The idea to make it Castle Grayskull as Neptune put it came to me later. Though I did change the interior. The residential area of Planeptune was based around the residential area of Xenoblade Chronicles X for the Wii U. If you've not played it, that's fine, just letting you know. Lastation was easy for me, at least the nation, as I remembered that Noire in Re;birth 1 was like "I don't want my nation to be ruined by pollution" and I thought an evil version of Noire wouldn't care about it.

I actually had no idea what Leanbox would be like and I just put it off until later.

As for the CPUs themselves, all of them had their HDD forms based off of the Chaos Hearts from Chaos Chanpuru for the PSVita, which is a Japanese exclusive, sadly. Their human forms were based off of concept artwork as much as I could. Sadly, Vert, Peashy and Plutia didn't change too much from the concept stage to what we got in the final product. Though there were some neat clothing choices for Plutia. And, also sadly, there was no Chaos Yellow Heart or Chaos Iris Heart to draw upon.

The Nightmare forms were something that came to me because I thought it would be interesting if Neptune had to be at a disadvantage for most of the fic because of it.

White Nightmare was based off of a beast. Honey Badger/Giant Cat, hence why she had those large floating hands that were like they would be from a Stand from Jo Jo's Bizarre Adventures. Hence why I said "why YES, this IS a Jo Jo's reference!" when White Nightmare was revealed.

Green Nightmare was a spider with tentacles, but, much like with Leanbox, I had no clue what it would be. But just before I got to writing Green Nightmare, I saw a clip from Taimanin Asagi with a girl who had a spider body and tentacles and thought "bam! Perfect!" As for Leanbox, well, that was based on the fact that a lot of the adult RPGs I've played on PC were dungeon crawlers such as Lightning Warrior Raidy among others. And we all know the most infamous form of offbrand anime is the tentacle genre, so that was an automatic given.

Why did she have so many sisters? Because that would be ironic that the Vert who didn't want younger sisters would get them while the Verts that wanted a younger sister didn't get them.

Now, as for Eden, since that was the next arc in the fic. The area of all the buildings and businesses that Chrome remembered was actually based on the small town that I grew up in. Hence the comment about a small town that had lots of good memories for many people but it stopped growing and there were no opportunities for younger people. The idea of turning the nation into a decaying swamp was kind of a shout-out to the Legend of Zelda, specifically Breath of the Wild.

If you're curious, Iris Nightmare would have been based on a lizard.

As I mentioned in the fic, the idea of Lastation being Cyberpunk was a last-minute change thanks to my beta reader because he wanted to see humans being the bad guys for an arc. And that changed everything.

But if you want to know, Noire was originally going to be like Balalika from Black Lagoon who would torment Uni by trying to isolate her and make her feel lonely. In fact, the original first scene with Noire would have had Uni, K-Sha and a white cat in front of her and Noire would berate Uni for trying to make friends and she should only be alone before killing K-Sha and the cat in front of Uni, who would be greatly disturbed by it.

These original concepts did make it into the finished product, albeit heavily modified though, as you saw with Noire's comments to Uni about friends and humans. It's also why there were two cats in Lastation and one of them got blown up by K-Sha and why K-Sha got killed by Noire.

I prefer the version I did over the original concept.

As for Black Nightmare, the idea of a wolf was perfect as Noire, being a loner, would have been a Lone Wolf... Plus she had to be an Alpha Wolf to deal with the stuff in Lastation. Though I did kind of base the fact that it was a tiny thong and her butt was on full display off of the "Dangerous Beast" outfit that's in the Fate series. You know the one.

Allow me to address a couple of giants in the room. Namely Dark Black and what Neptune saw just before the battle against Dark Black. What Neptune saw was the gauntlet of her NEXT form appear on her wrist for a moment. Dark Black's appearance was to hint that the Kurome we met in Lastation was actually the Kurome from Gamindustri. I'll explain more about Kurome in a little bit.

So, as for Eviltune, I based her off of the Joker from DC's Batman series, hence why she was completely... Well, psychotic and evil. MAGES. was based off of Harley Quinn, specifically the Harley Quinn from her own show. Where she's a bad guy, but not a bad person. The fact that she had rings on each finger is actually a reference to The Mandarin from Iron Man.

Nepgear being a maid is rather interesting and a complete accident on my part. Apparently her Japanese voice actress voices Belfast from Azur Lane, and yes, she's a maid there. So, happy coincidence.

The reason I had Peashy and Filyn face Trick was because I thought it would be funny when they transformed from two lolis into women with giant breasts and you know how Trick hates big boobies.

Purple Nightmare's first form was actually the first Nightmare form I thought up. Her second, and out of control, form was something I wanted to do with Green Nightmare, but I decided against it then, but I decided to do it at that point.

Purple Heart's corrupted Void transformation was based around Evil Ryu from Street Fighter IV, which was actually something I had planned on doing as soon as the idea of Neptune being corrupted by Fearicite entered my mind. Which was right around the time Leanbox was over.

As for Kurome... Originally it was going to be Gamworld's version of Uzume and Rei that caused the world to go to Hell. One of my beta readers was like "that doesn't sound good" so I had to think about it and I was about to put the fic on hiatus to plan it out when NepShrimpz left a review about how the fact that one month in Gamworld was one day in Gamindustri and that the time just seemed to work out.

This was NOT something I had planned on in the slightest, I admit. The numbers, both for the years since the Fearicite came into being and the time difference between the dimensions, were just randomly chosen. The fact that it ended up working out was, again, a happy coincidence. And once NepShrimpz pointed that out, my mind went into overtime and I was able to make the final bit of the story work out the way it did.

A few more notes about the characters...

Steamax, funny enough, was only slightly changed from what he was going to be originally. Original idea was that he watched over Uni and made sure to bring her back to the Basilicom when she was out too long, but was apologetic to Uni for all that she suffered through. That was basically it. Yes, the plan to make Lastation a Cyberpunk setting made everything about it better. Well, except for maybe the length, as that was the longest arc of the story. What do you all think?

Chrome was originally going to be a good, if cynical, version of Arfoire, but after playing Super Neptunia RPG, I decided to go with Chrome instead and then I brought in Filyn. And when I saw concept artwork for Filyn with an eyepatch and I saw that her Japanese voice was the same as Arfoire and CFW Magic's voice, I knew I had to have Filyn's HDD be CFW Magic.

This is also the reason that Trick and Judge appeared in Planeptune. If I was going to have Magic show up and I had Brave appear in the fic, I felt it was wrong to not have those two so I could have them get smashed. XD

If I'm honest, I had no idea what I was going to do with Filyn, but she was great for some running gags and I'm honestly surprised how things went for her. I think I did a decent enough job. I hope I did at least.

As for Poofy, and I'm sure some of you were waiting on this, my original idea for this fic was for Planeptune to be a flying fortress, hence why it was hovering over the ocean. In fact, my very first idea with Planeptune was for Purple Void to announce, after Noire was dead, that she was going to be showing up soon and killing everyone in Lastation who didn't submit to her. So the fight against Purple Void would have happened in Lastation instead of Planeptune. Poofy was going to show up at some time during the fight against Purple Void/Nightmare as his large self and basically tackle Purple Void/Nightmare to protect Filyn, giving Neptune the chance to end her evil self.

I actually was going to go with that for awhile, but as I wrote the story, it just didn't end up working out that way.

Oh, and he was supposed to be a Gem Dragon, hence why they were mentioned at the beginning. I suppose if this was a visual novel or a video game, the fact that they took a boat to get to Lowee City in Gamworld is why they don't have Poofy. They didn't trip the event flags to unlock the secret character, like they would have if they went through the forest, but Rom and/or Ram would have likely been dead or turned into a Void, so... Which would you prefer?

Copypaste WAS originally slated to be in the fic, he would have been Nepgear's butler. But I realized that I didn't want to write him into the fic, that would just increase character bloat and I decided he would be cut out.

Rom and Ram's attitude and behavior at the start of the fic was based heavily on "Into the Abyss" by Blade of Justice as that gave me the idea to do this fic. Also why I had them dressed that way.

Okay, so, why does Rom have boobs? Besides the joke with Blanc in the epilogue, that was actually inspired by "Candidates in Time" by Histy is Pissty when Rom mentions that in the future after she became a CPU in her timeline, she actually developed breasts. Hence why Rom here has boobs that are between Uni's human form and Nepgear's human form in size. Ram having a ghetto booty is just to compliment Rom's boobs. No other reason.

Financier, Chika, Kei and Histoire weren't thrown in at the last minute, I swear! Most of the rest were last minute additions, though it was more because I didn't want to focus too much beyond the arc I was in as it would delay my writing and frustrate me that I wasn't in the next arc already.

Once I included K-Sha, C-Sha, S-Sha and E-Sha, I felt that I had to include B-Sha into the fic. Same with Mina after realizing that I had Chika, Kei and Histoire. It would feel wrong if I didn't have her in the story too.

But I didn't want her to be there just to be there, so I thought, how could I make Mina actually mean something to the fic? And the idea of her being a clone that Eviltune made popped into my head. If you're wondering where Mina, Financier and most of the other named characters were at... Chika, Financier and Mina were helping doing paperwork during the time they got to Planeptune and the ending in the epilogue. They wouldn't let their hero do much work while she's recovering after all.

Not that it stopped Neptune from working.

As for Compa and Warechu as well as IF and Linda... None of that stuff with them was planned from the beginning. I swear! As I wrote the story, as I gave them scenes, the idea of them being with each other just developed as the story did.

Gust having blue hair was, yes, a reference to NISA as well, though NISA did eventually appear in the story anyway.

The Voids were, and most of you figured this out, I bet, at their cores, evil inversions of the CPUs we all know and love.

White Void was all of Blanc's rage and anger, but none of her restraint or caring that she has for Rom, Ram and her friends.

Green Void was what happens when you take away Vert's restraint, enhance her hedonism and perversion and you get a horrible rape machine.

Black Void was taking Noire's lonely nature and her Tsundere attitude to an extreme. Ironically, this is what saved Uni from suffering like Rom, Ram, Peashy and Nepgear did, as Black Void stopped caring about everything, including the Fearicite's influence on her. Weird how that worked out.

Iris Void was all of Plutia's sadism with no brakes on the rape train. And yes, she very likely raped more than a few people before torturing them to death. I mean, even Neptune calls regular Plutia a sadistic rapist in this fic.

Purple Void was Neptune's perversion, laziness, pettiness and greed but greatly enhanced, along with her randomness.

So, if you were wondering what each OC CPU's human name is, I'll be going by Neptunia naming conventions here.

Red Void's human name is Rouge, Sapphire Void's human name is Saphir, Emerald Void's human name is Esmeralda (derived from émeraude), Silver Heart's human name is Argent. Basically, like how Noire, Vert and Blanc are named after the French names for Black, Green and White, so too are the OC CPUs. I do wish that we'd get some other CPUs from the other nations though, whether past or alternate dimension CPUs, because I'd love to know if this is correct or not.

I guess the final thing I'll say is for all of you who wish to write your own stories in the future or are working on your own stories: Don't be afraid to make your characters suffer. The greater the personal challenge, the greater the feeling of triumph when they overcome it. That's why I put Neptune through the literal hell she went through in this story.

See you all when I work on my next project. What it is, I dunno.