Yes! I managed to avoid making this a filler chapter! ... Well, it is a filler chapter but we were going to have to go through this one way or the other. Anyway, review responses:
Ikari Zero: O_O Mother of Purple Heart, give me a moment to re-read this... Okay. Yeah, I found that very annoying, especially since the game expected me to do that boss fight four times. Ugh. Don't worry; that'll be explained. Well, I don't know if this'll live up to your expectations since I'm just filling in time until Black Heart appears again but oh well. Thanks for being a dedicated reader!
CrimsonHeresy: Well, here it is now.
Red-Drive: Yes! I have made Noire likeable to EVERYONE, even her detractors! Compile Heart, hire me! Anyway... that reference was completely unintentional. I've never even watched Shakugan no Shana. Also, well, they had no reason to talk to her. They had no idea who she was (they don't even have the excuse of comparing her to Neptune because they didn't know Neptune was Purple Heart) and, in their second encounter, Purple Heart tried to have a civil discussion with Black Heart but the stubborn... girl wasn't going to take any of that and just ran away like a spoiled brat.
Eyeshield: I can laugh at myself because I'm not afraid of taking jabs at myself and my self-image is not a great big deal to me, which is not the case for many self-insert fic writers. Anyway, I've tried that with this chapter. Tell me what you think.
godofmadness43: I dunno. I sometimes wonder "Why is my foot sore?" It's because the world's a jerk. -_-
Saturn56: Yeah, no.
Saturn56: Thanks. I thought that'd be a good moment. After all, Purple Heart and Neptune share the same beliefs, likes, dislikes and everything. The only differences between the two are their manners of speaking and their dispositions. The same can be said for every CPU, including Plutia and Iris Heart. Anyway, Purple Heart's seriousness makes her Neptune antics even more hilarious.
MegaRaziel: Well, let's find out. Alright, maybe I'll check those out later.
liexi: You poor little man. :(
Eisenfaust: Good to know my fanfiction actually has healing properties. Anyway, those questions may or may not be answered later.
one who walks the path of fire: I wish I knew why some characters are silhouettes and some are not. :(
Zaralann: Thanks.
kevin bosak 7: What rest button?
Hydrocity3: YES! I am now converting the hesitant! BOW BEFORE MY AWESOMENESS! ... *cough* Anyway, thanks. Admittedly, Neptune is the hardest character to capture. I blame NIS America for this; it feels like they just chucked whatever they thought was "random" into her dialogue and made it stick. I don't have their... "imagination". What do you think of Jacob himself, by the way?
DMAsh: O_O ASH! *tackles* Where the hell have you been? And why did you read Chapter 15 before 14? That's ridiculous. Anyway, thanks and get back to work on Hyperdimensional Infinite Neptunia.
That Courier: Thanks. I get the impression I'm doing that for a lot of people these days. Still, Bioshock and Hyperdimension Neptunia? That'd be interesting.
It seems that everyone's fond of the plot twist. As for plot twists, allow me to speak of them right now. If you want a good plot twist, you need to make sure it matches the following criteria: 1) it re-contextualises past events, meaning that what happened before now has a different meaning, 2) it plays with the expectations of the reader and 3) it makes sense. Let's take the Kingdom Hearts series for example. I hate Tetsuya Nomura for this; while he gets 1 at least partially correct, he fumbles 2 and 3 to an almost unbelievable degree.
He said in an interview that the most important part of a story is to make it "surprising". What he fails to get is that the idea that a plot twist will be in the story is supposed to be unexpected. By this point, it would only be shocking if there wasn't a plot twist. Furthermore, the plot twists always come from out of nowhere and only introduce more questions, which defeats the purpose of the plot twist to surprise the reader with answers to their questions. Yes, it's good to surprise the reader but you should be sensible about it and not use plot twists as a crutch.
On with the fanfic!
Chapter 16: Reminiscence of the Outsider
Three days had passed since the second fight with Black Heart. With no more leads to follow, the party fell into a routine of taking on maybe two jobs a day, playing video games, eating, chatting and, as IF suggested they do, trying to gather more information. Unfortunately, no matter how many NPCs they asked, the party couldn't find any more information on where they could find any Guard Vermins on Lastation. Asking about Key Fragments proved to be an even more fruitless endeavour as no one even knew they existed. This is why the party just spent most of their time lounging about when they didn't have any missions to do.
Currently, it was the afternoon. In the motel room, IF and Compa were sitting on IF's bed while looking at IF's phone. The sixteen dogs were lounging around or playing with each other.
"Hi, 5pb here!" broadcasted the voice of a young girl from the phone. "Been a while! We're taking messages from our listeners right now. I'll read them here and carry the messages on to whoever you want! These can be about anything: life updates, thank yous, love confessions, whatever! The messages can be for someone special or just for me. Okay, here are the messages we got today…"
Jacob, Nisa and Neptune came in. "Hey Iffy-"
"Shush!" IF hushed Neptune quickly.
"… What's going-"
"Shush!" IF insisted.
5pb continued. "This one's from screenname Kurohako, a Lastation resident. 'Good morning, 5pb. I'm writing to say thanks to the people who saved my town from tadpole monsters the other day. Thanks a bunch!' I never knew there were tadpole monsters… I wonder if they grow up to be froggies?" Jacob could swear he heard the girl shudder. "W-Well, I guess that's not too pleasant to imagine. Do we have any other messages…?"
"Kurohako?" Nisa repeated. "Was she not the woman who assigned us the quest of taking care of the Frog Baby?"
"Yeah." IF turned down the volume on her phone. "She wrote a letter to thank us and she sent it to this radio show, Hi-Five Radio, which is hosted by 5pb."
"And I thought IF was a weird name," Jacob commented.
IF sighed.
Nisa seemed pleasantly surprised. "I didn't know you were a fan of 5pb, IF."
Compa smiled. "I said the same thing. I love 5pb's songs. They're so… magical. I sing Ryuusei no Bifrost all the time."
"You too?" Nisa asked, eyes shining. "Kono sekai ni umareta sono imi wa…"
Compa was caught off guard but she continued regardless. "Sadame ni ayatsurareru tame janai…"
"Dakishimete, mamoritakute…"
"… kakegae no nai kokoro wo…"
Jacob had never seen anything quite like it. As Compa finished, she and Nisa were looking at each other as if they had seen the very souls of one another. Their smiles were bigger than anything Jacob had ever seen and he could've sworn the room itself brightened up from their eyes alone. While the two were having their moment, IF just looked the slightest bit annoyed and Jacob didn't really care.
Instead, Jacob's attention turned to Neptune. She didn't have a reaction on the account of her being lost in thought. "You alright?"
"Hm?" she snapped out of it and looked at him. "Oh, I'm right as rain," she claimed with her usual smile.
"... Alright, then." Jacob was not convinced but he dropped the subject anyway.
"Aw, don't worry about me!" said Neptune cheerily. "Anyway, Iffy, we have Avenir's quest to do, right?"
"That's right," affirmed IF as she looked at her phone. "Thanks for being here on time everyone and thank you for not complaining again, Neptune."
"Sorry but I will complain in her place. Anyway, I cannot believe we are helping Avenir again!" Nisa whined. "The first time was tolerable, as we were all only informed of Avenir's heart of darkness. However, the facts have presented themselves to us and still we assist them!"
"I understand. Believe me, I'm also annoyed. Unfortunately, money's money and we need to make ends meet," IF explained.
"That's true but we are rather set as far as money goes and there are other sidequests we could be doing. Why are we going with Avenir's work?"
"Because they pay a lot. Anyway, there's still some time before the mission. We can go now and wait around for them or we can pass the time with video games."
Jacob raised his hand. "I'm going with the video games option and I vote we play LittleBIGPlanet- I mean, GiantSMALLWorld."
"I vote for GiantSMALLWorld, too," stated Compa, also raising her hand.
"I, on the other hand, vote for FreezRed," declared Nisa.
"Yeah, what Nisa said," said Neptune.
"I think we should play GiantSMALLWorld because four of us can play it at once," Jacob argued.
"So? We can take turns with FreezRed," Nisa retaliated.
IF flipped open her phone.
"Some of us suck at fighting games," Jacob countered.
"Well, the same can be said for platformers."
"It's GiantSMALLWorld. How the hell do you screw that up? Besides, we can pick up the pace if you lose all your lives."
"It's still not very fun! I don't know about you but I don't like dying all the time!"
"How do you die all the time? It's GiantSMALLWorld, not Super Meat Boy."
"What the Underverse is Super Meat Boy?"
"Never mind. Point is it's not a hard game."
"Maybe for you but I cannot get a handle on those ridiculous jumping controls!"
"Well, fine. IF can play instead of you."
"What?" IF wasn't really paying attention to their argument before but hearing her name is enough to catch her focus.
Nisa looked very annoyed, more so than before. "What? No! I will not be beaten by a kid's platformer!"
"Excellent." Jacob turned to the other girls. "Ready to play?"
"Mhm," sounded Neptune.
"Sure," responded Compa.
"Alright, let's get started." After making sure everyone had their controllers, Jacob turned on Lastation's console.
IF turned back to her phone. "Well, so much for that."
For the job that Avenir hired them to do, the party was to go to another floating island. They were to meet the job poster at a large, steel vertical bar gate that was in horrible shape. While the gate itself still looked reasonably sturdy, everything near it was in horrible shape. To the left of the gate was a fence made of wooden planks, most of which were falling off if not outright missing. To the right was a steel fence made of vertical bars, most of which were bent out of shape. At the top of the fences was barb wire that was arranged haphazardly and broken apart in some places. The gate had three chains connected to the ends and middle of the top of it that would serve to lift it up if it needed to be open, which was an okay mechanism but it'd be easily bypassed because the wooden wall looked like it would fall apart if someone so much as farted on it. As if that wasn't enough, the grass was long and unruly and in dire need of mowing, preferably via a lawnmower made from the bones of a dragon.
This surprised the party because beyond the gate was a small town that looked somewhat clean from a distance. At least, they think it was a small town. For all they knew, it could've been a collection of small factories that looked like a small town from afar. It was hard to tell. Before they could investigate, however, they had to talk with the quest giver silhouette.
"You're the ones Avenir hired to fight monsters? What the hell's that company thinking?"
IF recognised him right away. "Wait, aren't you that guy who almost didn't let us into the Basilicom? What are you doing here?"
"I'm substituting for an Avenir employee. They asked me to explain the job to you." The Basilicom's doorman cleared his throat. "You are to defeat as many monsters per their specification as you can and deliver the bodies, dead or alive."
"Wait, what? How are we supposed to do that?" Jacob asked. "Monsters vanish when they're defeated."
"That's not my problem," he answered dismissively. "If you have any questions, just ask the damn employee later."
"But he's not even here and we don't even know how to do the job assigned to us," Jacob argued.
"I don't suppose you have some sort of monster paralysing bullet?" IF inquired. "If you do, that'd be very useful."
The doorman did not look happy. "Look, my job was to explain your job to you."
"And we don't even know how to do it," Jacob interrupted.
"Again, not my problem. Figure it out yourself."
Jacob sighed. "At least tell us where we're supposed to go."
The doorman groaned. "Do I have to explain everything to you like you're snot-nosed infants?"
"Hey, I expect you to tell us the bare minimum required for us to do the job you want us to do," Jacob snapped.
Even though he was a silhouette, the doorman's efforts to restrain his rage were evident to the whole party. Finally, he seemed to calm himself down before he pointed at a building through the gate. "Do you see that beige factory over there? That's where the monsters are coming from."
"What beige factory? Do you mean the one you're pointing at, the one to the side of what you're pointing at or the factory that's completely to the side of what you're pointing at?"
The doorman had evidently had enough of Jacob's sarcasm and began to storm off.
"Hey, hold on!" Neptune's call made him stop and turn around. "Hey, how's Black Heart doin'? Is she dandy?"
"What do you care? She's alright. Anyway, you have a job to do." He stormed off again.
IF looked at Jacob disapprovingly. "Did you really have to say that?"
Jacob looked a bit embarrassed. "Sorry."
"Jacob, I'm sorry but I have to agree with IF. You have to be more tactful in social situations," Nisa chastised him.
"I know, I know." Jacob sighed. "I'm sorry."
Away from the focus of the party, Neptune sadly looked at the group of trees that the doorman left through.
"Well, this is a welcome change of pace," Jacob stated. "Instead of another Cave Number 1, we're back in Factory Number 1! Oh, how I missed change."
"You've all been here before?" Nisa asked as the party turned right at the two-way split ahead of them.
"Well, just Compa, Neptune and I," Jacob responded. "It was our first tutorial dungeon in Planeptune. Also, we went to another one here in Lastation with IF."
"… Why would you go to two tutorial dungeons?"
"Well," Compa began, "we found the first Key Fragment in Planeptune's tutorial dungeon so we thought we should try our luck in the next one. Unfortunately, it didn't work."
"Ah. A shame. Now, we are to find monsters and deliver the bodies, correct?"
"It's the deliver the bodies bit that worries me," answered IF. "Jacob was right before. How, exactly, are we supposed to do this? We don't have any equipment that can stop monsters without killing them. Even though they said we can bring the bodies dead or alive, the bodies disappear when they're dead anyway. Although I just really want to know what they want the bodies for…"
Before that question could be answered, the party was crossed by a random encounter, although this was not a typical one. For the first time, the party was not faced with monsters but with machines. One of them was a large, tan-coloured bipedal construct with two strong backwards-bent legs, each with a pump almost as wide as the lower leg that it was pumping straight back and forth into, two arms that had four-barrel guns encased in a thick cylindrical shell replacing the forearms and, from its back, a large cannon pointing straight up. Its main body looked like a small cockpit.
The other two machines were much smaller and bluish-grey in colour. Their main bodies were cylindrical with a gun barrel at the front, a thick layer of steel on the top and a hollow fin-like object protruding from the back. On each side was a long, bulky object parallel to the body that had a flash suppressor protruding from the end. Underneath those objects was where the legs were connected. These legs were also bent backwards but they didn't have pumps and they weren't thick at all. They were more like the legs of a bird if the leg joints of a bird were wheels and their talons were covered in massive metal caps.
"I don't know what these are," Compa informed the party as she pulled out her syringe. "My textbooks were only about organic monsters. There weren't any machines in them at all."
"Do not fear, Compa." The blade of Nisa's weapon appeared as she held the prinny gun behind her. "Those smaller ones are Automatic Cannons and the large one is a Gunner. They sometimes go rogue so people like me have to clean up their mess."
"Robots, huh? Well, this is a first," Jacob remarked.
"Yeah," agreed IF as she extended her weapons. "How do you think we should go about this?"
"Hold on a sec," answered Jacob as he raised his hand to signal for everyone to not attack. The puzzled party only watched as he calmly walked over to one of the Automatic Cannons that were naïve enough to think they were still going by turn-based rules. He grabbed the thing by its sides and lifted it into the air.
"Huh, it's lighter than I thought," the otherworldly teen noted as he flipped the enemy over and placed it back on the ground. As it realised the world was now upside down and it was facing away from the party, it kicked as hard as it could to regain balance. Unfortunately for the silver war machine, it lacked any mechanisms that it could use to right itself.
Jacob dusted his hands together. "A job well done. Seriously, whoever made these things should be fired from making robots."
IF chuckled. "Seeing that thing pathetically squirm to get up again is hilarious."
Neptune, while not chuckling, was still clearly humoured. "Now that's funny."
"While it is funny to watch, I prefer to win my battles with honour," Nisa spoke.
"Yeah, let's put that aside for now. Sensei, I don't suppose you could trip up that Gunner?"
"Sure, allow me." Nisa rushed over to the Gunner and jumped over it.
"Good. Now," Jacob turned towards the second Automatic Cannon, "as for the other one…"
Realising what it was about to go through, the Automatic Cannon tried to flee by running backwards. However, its feet were not made for that sort of thing. Jacob could probably shuffle along the ground faster than the miniscule robot. In no time at all, he caught up with it and lifted it into the air. He would've turned it on its back at that point had the mechanical monster not shot him at point-blank range.
"GYAH!" Jacob yelled as he fell backwards from the shot.
"Jacob!" IF shouted in alarm as she dashed towards him. The Automatic Cannon, however, had gained insight on the party's rule breaking and decided to intervene. It shot several times at IF as she approached but, being the fastest member of the party by quite a large margin when Neptune didn't feel like transforming, they were all easily dodged. When she got within attacking range, the blue-coated girl wasted no time in kicking the bucket of bolts up into the air before slashing at it furiously. Despite being a robot and therefore resistant to cuts and other types of surface-damaging weapons and attacks, this combo was rather effective on it. The best part was that the combo actually made the Cannon land on its back, helpless to get back up.
"Well… that was easy," remarked IF as she retracted her kataras.
"Nngh…" Jacob held his hurting stomach as he pushed himself away from the ground. "Probably should've… seen that coming…"
"Jake, don't stand up!" warned Compa as she rushed towards him with Neptune behind her. At the same time, IF and Nisa approached him. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, actually… I'm fine…" Jacob sat down against the nearest wall. While he was in pain, his clothes weren't ruined and he wasn't physically damaged. "Wasn't I shot…?"
"Must've been a force shot," IF guessed. "They pack a punch but they're not very lethal. Getting blasted by a shot that's right in front of you, however, is definitely gonna hurt. Are you sure you're okay?"
"Don't think it's anything a bottle of reflex can't fix…" To test this, Jacob pulled out the item from his disc, removed the cork and took in the contents with great gulps. He wiped his mouth with his forearm. "Well, that numbs the pain a bit…" Jacob tried once again to stand up and succeeded without much trouble. "I tell you what, I'm getting sick of being the punching bag of the party."
"It's not normally your fault but you weren't careful that time, Jake," Compa lectured him. "Like my grandpa always said, 'look before you leap'!"
"I'll keep that in mind, thanks." Jacob performed a few stretches. "Well, at least we know a way of disabling the monsters without killing them."
IF opened her phone. "Yeah but these are robots. According to the specifications set by Avenir, they want living monsters. I don't think they meant for robots to be caught up in this."
"Alright then, let's go on until we find something. Neptune, take point. I'm sick of taking hits."
Neptune blinked. "What's taking point?"
"It means go in front of the party. You're leading."
"Wait, why do I have to go in front of you lot?" Neptune asked, clearly unhappy.
Jacob sighed. "Again, I don't want to get hurt again. It happens too much."
IF crossed her arms. "Hey, we've all been hurt by monsters before."
"True. I've just been impaled by a whatever the hell Arfoire is and kicked in the stomach by a CPU flying at Mach 4."
"… Touché," was all IF could say to that.
"Now, Neptune, lead. We'll follow."
"… Fine," Neptune gave in, although she looked anything but fine with the decision.
The party continued walking through the Factory #1 until-
"Whoa!" IF shouted.
Never has the party stopped, drawn their weapons and braced for a fight faster. "What is it, where is it?" Jacob asked quickly.
"Oh, there isn't an enemy. Just hold on a sec…" The party watched IF draw up her sleeves, revealing the katara-extending mechanisms braced around her arms. She took them off and put them away somewhere underneath her massive blue coat. Afterwards, she pulled out two gauntlets that had long holes where the knuckles were.
"… What are you doing?" Jacob asked.
"Equipping the claws Neptune got me a few days ago." IF put the gauntlets on. At the flick of her wrist, very long blades snapped out like claws. "I can't believe I forgot about them. How dumb was that?" IF asked with a joking smile as the party began walking again.
Compa couldn't help but smile as well. "Even Nep-Nep and I knew to equip our weapons."
"You're falling behind, Iffy!" Neptune teased.
This sapped IF of her good mood. "You of all people should not be criticising me for mental lapses. Or anything, for that matter."
"But you admitted it yourself," Compa brought up.
"That's not the point!" IF was even more annoyed.
From behind the bickering trio, Jacob just rolled his eyes.
Nisa looked up at him. "Aren't you going to get them to stop?"
"Nah, at least we're moving."
Immediately after Jacob said that, they were greeted with another random encounter in a remarkable twist of irony. This random encounter went back to tradition with two blue cobras that had green and gold markings on their bodies. Also, on the sides of the fins and the bodies were small, stubby horns.
"Oh, we have Hell Vipers," Compa observed.
"How do we trip them up?" Nisa asked.
"Do you have some sort of paralysing agent that we can use on them?" Jacob asked Compa.
The apprentice nurse shook her head. "Sorry, no. The fluid's just there to add weight and make it look pretty."
"… Why didn't you just get an assault rifle, or even a semi-automatic rifle?"
"W-Well, the syringe was free and it came with free training for nurses," Compa explained.
"Besides, guns are NPC weapons and utterly useless when you need them," IF added on. "Now, how do we take care of these snakes?"
The party stood in silence as they thought amongst themselves about how to capture the snakes.
"Hey, Compa?" Nisa began. "Can you open up your syringe and put the Hell Vipers inside it?"
"It doesn't work like that, sorry. It can only draw in liquid like a syringe does."
Jacob rubbed his chin. "So, seeing as they won't move until we make a move, who votes we just walk past them, see if anything else is around that we can kidnap and, if we don't, we can come back to these guys later if we have any ideas?"
"Sounds like a good idea," IF concurred.
"Then on we march."
And so the party walked around the reptiles that never moved from their position or did anything to halt their progress. When the party finally left around the corner, the Vipers just looked at each other as if the world suddenly turned pink while they weren't looking.
"You just got scrapped!" shouted Nisa as she took out yet another Gunner.
"Two random encounters later and we haven't found anything better than snakes," said Jacob as he stood next to an upside-down Automatic Cannon.
IF looked at her phone again. "Maybe the boss will be a good catch. Since we're right in front of the room directly opposite the entrance, it's probably here."
"Poor predictable level design," Jacob mock-lamented as he punched his right fist into his left palm. "Let's get this going on."
The party advanced through the passageway where they anticipated the boss was. As it turned out, they were correct.
"It's a Roc…" Compa noted.
The Roc was a massive bird. Actually, that would be inaccurate, for it had four legs and, if it wasn't floating in the air with its wings that shouldn't allow it to levitate like that, it would be walking around like a tiger (or, rather, leaping at the party because that's what all monsters do). Its front feet were typical eagle talons but its hind legs ended with navy blue paws. Apart from that, however, the Roc looked like a typical bird with feathers that were feathers were primarily white and secondarily black, a black hooked beak and gold and blue stripes running along its length. The only other oddity was the golden medallion embedded in each of its wings.
"Looks surprisingly normal," commented Jacob with the faintest hint of surprise.
"Guess you don't have these things back where you're from," responded IF as she extended her claws. "Now, how do we go about this…?"
Jacob took notice of the features of the boss, trying to find a weak point. "We need to take out the wings first. Actually, let's take out its legs because they're targets in plain sight while it's-"
The Roc rose into the air slightly.
"Wait, what's it doing?" Jacob asked as he wasn't expecting this.
The Roc then dived towards the party as a speed that was ridiculously unsafe in such a confined space.
"Look out!" As Jacob screamed, he rocketed above, Neptune dived to the left and Compa and Nisa dodged to the right.
IF, however, had a different agenda; right before the white avian was about to collide with her, she rolled underneath it so that it passed over her. The cynic of the party swiped at the boss' feet but she missed.
"Damn it," she cursed as she stood up from her roll. "Thought I'd get that attack in. Everyone!" she called. "Change of plans! We're taking out those wings! If that thing keeps charging, we're not going to have any windows to attack!"
"Got it!" Jacob flew after the enemy. Chasing it around the room proved to be a hassle as it never stopped turning but Jacob, being smaller, was still able to match its agility despite his relative inexperience. After finally getting the patterns right, Jacob landed on its back.
"Gotcha now!" he said before the Roc somersaulted in the air and dropped him towards the ground. Thankfully, he activated his jetpack before he collided with the cold steel floor and landed safely.
"Jacob, fire a Wrecking Ball!" Nisa shouted.
"Right!"
He raised his hands at the Roc that was currently coming back around to rush the room again. As soon as it charged at him, he prepared his Wrecking Ball. However, upon realising how quickly the boss was advancing, he cancelled his attack and dodged to the side. He tried again but, while the Roc was turning, it was too fast to get a certain shot, and the Wrecking Ball was not the kind of attack he'd made an uncertain shot with. He would've waited until it charged at him to fire but the Roc cleared the room mighty quickly and his survival instincts said 'Get out of the way' as soon as the monster was facing him.
"What are you doing?" IF shouted at him as she shot at the Roc along with Nisa, Neptune and Compa.
"Sorry but it's too fast! I can't get a clear shot!"
Suddenly, Compa had an idea. "Jake! Please pick me up and drop me on it!"
That was a confusing idea to the black-clad male. "What? Why?"
"I have an idea!"
As the bullets were only as powerful as random attacks and there was no indication of whether the bird would finally ram a party member sooner or later, Jacob decided a potential idea was better than none. Once the Roc flew across the room again, Jacob zoomed over to Compa and, with a great deal of effort, lifted her into the air. He'd never flown while carrying someone before but he quickly learned to adapt to the extra weight. After flying after the Roc for a bit, Jacob finally dropped Compa right over where the Roc would be.
"Take this!" the normally meek Compa shouted as she plunged the needle right in the back of the flying monstrosity, causing it to screech and not turn soon enough to avoid crashing its side into one of the four large cylindrical fuel tanks located on one side of the room. This crash sent Compa and her syringe flying off of the beast and into the wall behind the tanks, from which they fell onto the floor. Miraculously, the syringe didn't break.
"Compa!" the heroine shouted in concern.
"I'll get her!" Jacob flew over to the tank that the team's medic was behind. "Neptune, transform!"
"R-Right!" With a single violet flash, Neptune had once again activated her HDD. However, there was something off about her. Purple Heart always looked powerful, serious and ready to bring the fight to her enemy. Just looking at her face and posture would tell you that Purple Heart was a warrior of great strength that would not be easily overtaken. Now, Purple Heart looked anxious. She was looking at the Roc but something was distracting her and only she knew what.
The Roc charged at her. Planeptune's CPU took out her handgun and shot at it several times with fire bullets but, even while it hurt it slightly, it kept going. Purple Heart got out of its flight path just in time. As the winged beast came around again, Purple Heart charged directly at the head of her adversary with her sword behind her in a reverse grip.
"Neptune, don't kill it!" IF shouted.
"Huh?" Purple Heart looked towards IF, which proved to be a dire mistake as she was caught directly in the Roc's charge. This resulted in her being slammed into the wall as the Roc turned.
"Neptune!" Nisa screamed with genuine fright.
The only response she got from Purple Heart was a slight groan.
Jacob came out from between two of the fuel tanks with Compa behind him. "What happened?"
"Neptune got hit badly! She needs help!" IF reported.
"What?" Compa looked over at Purple Heart and immediately panicked. "Oh no! Nep-Nep, I'm coming!" she called as she rushed over to her comrade.
"Jeez, and I thought I took the worst hits of the party…" Jacob commented as he made his way back into the middle of the room.
Nisa growled. "Screw it!" With vigour powered by fury and impatience, Nisa ran as far as she could to the side of the room opposite to where the Roc would be and turned around to face it, her gun's blade active and ready. Predictably, the Roc chose her as its next target. As it soared towards the heroine, Nisa leaped towards it.
IF and Jacob watched with confused anticipation.
"Justice Kick!" Nisa cried out as she extended her leg towards the monster. Sensing the danger, the Roc banked to the right. Nisa sailed past and her kick never impacted its head.
Nisa directly hit its wing instead.
"SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE !"
Everyone covered their ears as the Roc's shrill cry of pain reverberated around the room. Even so, Nisa landed on her feet unharmed.
The Roc, with its broken wing, crashed to the floor.
"Its wing is disabled! It can't fly anymore!" Nisa called out.
"Wide Roar!" Jacob cried as he fired his massive red laser at the prone boss. He kept the laser on it for half a minute before letting up.
He floated down on the floor to look at the monster with the party. The Roc looked unbelievably exhausted and in agonising pain, which was to be expected as its wing was broken and it was just razed by a laser for thirty seconds.
Jacob winced a little. "Ow…" he muttered. "I hurt just looking at it. Especially my shoulder."
"Me too…" Compa was also recoiling slightly.
Nisa walked over to it. "Well, this thing isn't going to move itself, nor is the job going to get completed with it." She looked over at her 'sister'. "Neptune, can you help me carry this?"
"Oh, sure," responded Purple Heart as she walked over to the Roc. "Where should I lift it?"
"The head will do. Now, on the count of three…"
Jacob and IF were in front of Purple Heart, Nisa and Compa, who were carrying the injured Roc, as the party ventured down the hallway that they came from, fending off random encounters as they came.
Surprisingly, the Hell Vipers from before were still there. As they saw the party walk by, they bared their fangs and hissed.
"Sup?" Jacob greeted with a raised hand. IF also raised her hand, Compa and Nisa nodded and smiled and Purple Heart just nodded. They never stopped walking.
The Hell Vipers, after a moment, just sighed and slivered off.
The party had arrived outside the dungeon with the Roc. After Jacob and IF opened the gate, the party was finally waiting outside of the old, rusted thing.
Not too long after, a silhouette approached the party. "Well, I can honestly say I didn't expect to see you here today," he said to Jacob with a chuckle.
Jacob recognised him. "You're that silhouette who asked us to find Ganache."
The silhouette nodded. "That's right. I've come to collect the defeated monsters." He then turned to the Roc that Purple Heart, Nisa and Compa dropped on the ground. "… Maybe I should have brought more equipment for this."
"Sorry," Jacob apologised. "Most of the factory was filled with robots and the only other organic enemies were snakes and we didn't know how to disable them."
"We didn't specify dead or alive," the Avenir employee answered.
"Doesn't help," IF responded. "Monsters disappear when they're killed. We told this to the Basilicom employee who was here before and he never told us how to do our jobs."
"He was very rude," Compa added.
The employee seemed taken aback. "Oh, they disappear? My apologies, I was completely unaware. I will make sure you're compensated fairly."
IF crossed her arms. "May I ask something?"
"Absolutely."
"What do you plan to do with this Roc?"
This question made the employee rub the back of his head. "That's a very good question. You see, Avenir is currently developing a new machine. It's rather large and we need a good conductor. This creature's nervous tissue does more than enough of a good job. Removing the nervous tissue, however, will kill the monster. Therefore, dead or alive meant nothing to us."
The Roc looked at the party and groaned in pain. It was as if it understood exactly what the man was saying and was frightened of it.
Jacob couldn't stand it. "I'm sorry but I really can't stay. I'm gonna go off ahead. See you girls later."
"Hold on," Jacob stopped as Purple Heart ran up to his side. "I will not let you go off on your own again."
"Fair enough." Jacob looked at the other three girls. "See you later."
"Bye, my student!" Nisa called as Jacob and Purple Heart walked off.
"Um… Am I missing something?" the employee asked, apparently confused.
"Don't worry about it," answered IF.
"Very well, then. In any event, I'm sorry that we asked you to do a job you weren't equipped to do. Regardless, you did a fantastic job. You will receive your payment shortly."
Nisa smiled. "A pleasure doing justice-flavoured business with you."
The employee might have smiled back. "It's even more of a pleasure for me, trust me. If we find ourselves in a difficult position, we will definitely call on you again."
Jacob and Neptune, the latter having cancelled her transformation, were standing outside the gondola lift when the rest of the party arrived. "There you are. Ready to go?" Jacob inquired.
"We've got the reward," IF responded. "There's no reason for us to stick around. Let's get moving."
The party took their seats inside the transport. Jacob and IF were on one side with Neptune on the opposite, sandwiched between Nisa and Compa.
"Hey, Jacob?" Neptune started. "Why did you want to leave?"
"Oh. Right. You know I'm a pacifist, right?"
Nisa didn't, if her surprise was of any indication. "What, really? I thought you enjoyed fighting."
"No, I'm fine with fighting. I just don't approve of killing," Jacob elaborated.
This also intrigued IF. "Even of monsters?"
"Yeah. Well, not really. The monsters are artificial and I have no qualms about killing artificial things, especially robots. Still… when I saw that Roc essentially cry for help…" Jacob released a disheartened sigh. "I can't see things in pain."
Compa looked like she empathised. "I know what you mean. I can't leave injured people alone. I have to help them. That's not the case with monsters, though… I have no idea what you're going through."
Jacob smiled. "Hey, don't worry about it. I'll be fine. Anyway," Jacob swapped out his smile for a serious face as he looked at Neptune, "we need to talk about you."
"Huh? What about me?" Neptune asked, confused, especially since everyone was looking at her now.
"Neptune, you've been despondent for three days. We need to talk about it."
"Wh-What are you…" Neptune decided to smile as wide as she could. "There's nothing wrong with good ol' me!"
"Yeah, that's what you said before we left for this mission. It's also what you said last night, yesterday and the day before. To be honest, I got sick of this after the first day but I put up with your story because you were emotionally hurt and I wanted to give you distance. However, if this is going to put your life at risk, we need to talk about it."
Neptune still seemed hesitant.
"Nep-Nep, please talk to us," Compa pleaded.
This was enough to make Neptune cave. "… I can't stop thinking about Black Heart. I try to stop, I really do, but… she seemed so hurt. I don't want to hurt other people and I want to help but I dunno how." The CPU's voice began to crack. "Why's she so sad? Why does she wanna beat us up so much?" She clenched her fists on her knees. "What happened before I became an amnesiac?"
No one could really answer that.
Compa wanted to, though. "Nep-Nep?" she asked meekly to get Neptune to look at her. "You didn't do anything wrong. You might've done something bad before you lost your memory but you're a really good person. I believe in you, Nep-Nep. All you have to do is say sorry and she'll be your friend. She has to believe you."
This seemed to be insufficient to convince Neptune. "But what if she doesn't believe me? What if she just hates me?"
Jacob groaned. "You know what? Screw this. We're getting nowhere like this. We're going to have to talk to Black Heart herself if we're going to clear this up."
"And just how do you think we're going to do that?" questioned IF, disbelieving. "We can't exactly bust into the Basilicom and I doubt any of your zany Saturday morning cartoon ideas are going to help us."
Jacob leaned back. "… Actually, I think I have a different idea. IF, the Basilicom handles quests, right?"
"… Yeah, why?"
Jacob smirked. "Splendid."
As soon as their ride came to a complete stop, the party disembarked the gondola lift. Oddly enough, Neptune was the first one off, and the most excited one to boot.
"Oh my gosh bosh, tomorrow needs to come now, I can't wait!" she said so quickly it might as well have been one word.
Compa followed her in almost as high spirits. "Nep-Nep, calm down. Tomorrow will come sooner than you think."
"You can't keep down excitement like that, Compa!" Nisa looked like she was about to burst with glee. "I should know! I'm trying and failing!"
IF and Jacob trailed behind the group. "And you're certain this will work?" Jacob asked IF.
"Absolutely," answered the brunette. "If it doesn't, it's proof that the universe itself is conspiring against us." She looked up to Jacob with a smile that she just couldn't keep down. "This is a really great idea."
Jacob blushed and squirmed noticeably. "Aw, thanks…"
IF chuckled slightly. "You are so adorable when you do that. It's like you're only five years old."
"Anyway," Jacob started, "we don't need them but we could always get some supplies. What do you think?"
IF shrugged. "Why not? Let's spend the rest of the day shopping."
Jacob nodded. "Agreed. Tomorrow's plan is not going to fail."
Jacob's stomach rumbled as if to say it was sick of being forgotten. IF and Jacob looked at it.
IF smirked a little bit. "Maybe we should get something to eat."
A little snigger escaped Jacob's mouth. "Yeah."
Later that night, as our protagonists slept, another encounter was about to take place in Lastation's Basilicom. Within the glass dome of Black Heart's chambers, a silhouette was waiting but not for long; from behind the purple curtains walked out Lady Black Heart. She did not look very happy.
"Hello." Regardless, Ganache spoke warmly. "I never expected to be able to meet with Lady Black Heart alone."
Despite her bad mood, Black Heart still held on to her patience. "It was difficult of me to arrange this so don't expect an opportunity like this again. Don't get me wrong, I am glad you feel that way, but we have urgent matters to discuss. I trust you're aware of Neptune's group?"
"Indeed I am," Ganache replied. "I am surprised that they managed to recruit Nisa but that doesn't matter in the whole scheme of things."
Black Heart's eyes narrowed. "And what about Jacob?"
Ganache might have looked surprised. "Well… while it is rather unusual that he is the only male in a group of five, he doesn't seem that special. He is rather unusual, though. I recall him having slapped Neptune in her transformation."
Black Heart definitely looked surprised. "He slapped Neptune?"
"He was very apologetic about it, mind you. He called it a reflexive action when she touched him. I'm surprised someone with anti-social tendencies such as that is part of an adventuring party."
"It's probably just an act," Black Heart responded with the slightest sense of anger.
Ganache could have raised an eyebrow. "What makes you say that? I don't doubt you but I never got that impression from him."
"Ganache, listen carefully," Black Heart commanded with vigour. "He is not normal. He knows about the Console War. During my first encounter with the party, he knew who I was even when I was transformed."
"Th-That's surprising…" If Ganache being surprised was only a possibility before, it was a definite now.
"What's more," Black Heart continued, losing her hold on her anger, "is that he knows about Neptune falling from Celestia and blames it on me. He accuses me of pushing her off!"
"Why would he accuse you of that?" Ganache inquired. "Did you correct him?"
"Of course I did!" she snapped.
"What did he say?"
Black Heart paused for a moment. Her wrath began to wane. "… He seemed genuinely surprised and confused. I think he believed that his accusations were the truth."
Ganache put a hand to his chin. "This must mean he got his information from a second-hand source. But what, though?"
"I don't know," Black Heart answered, "but I will find out."
"Would you like me to capture him and bring him to you?" Ganache offered.
"Thank you but that will not be necessary. I will wait for the opportune moment to strike."
"Understood." Ganache bowed in respect. "Should I still carry out the plan?"
Black Heart paused. She turned around so her back was to Ganache and looked out the window into the dark night. "I can't tell what the representative thinks of all this. Does he approve?"
"We don't really get involved with each other. He does things his way and I do things my way. Do not worry about Nisa or Jacob. I guarantee you that they will not impede the plan in any way. Sit back and relax, my lady, for I will take Neptune down."
Black Heart closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "… I'm sure that you will."
*head desk* *head desk* *head desk* I can't BELIEVE I forgot about the claws! … Actually, I can because I forget a lot of nuances in this fanfic. I forgot I gave BlazBlue a parody name and I was about to call it "CoolRed" this chapter. One of these days, I'll have to re-read my entire fanfic just to make sure I'm not getting any inconsistencies. I'm not even keeping any notes; I'm really just writing this as it goes. Lesson, people: this is not a good thing. Keep track of your writing or it will get waaaaaaay away from you. If any of you spot any inconsistencies, please tell me.
Also, I am very well aware that The Secret Meeting takes place before The Scheming Solicitor but I don't care. Also, why are those cutscenes called "The Scheming Solicitor" if Ganache never shows up in them?
Well, the plan is going into motion next chapter. How will it turn out? See it for yourself in Chapter 17: Super Dimension Game Party, Roll Out!