First part is me rambling on about how I started and the development of this story, the "What's next" part comes after a vertical line. Last are some words from my editor and the link to the commission I put in while writing this batch.
Interdimensional RED-Coded Contract
Author's Note and What's Next
…It feels weird knowing that for the next batch I'll have to wrap everything up. No more 'we're so close to the end', we are AT the end. After the next batch I'll be slapping the "Completed" tag on this story. Period.
I also don't really want to spoil the actual ending by putting an author's note at the end, so I'll do all of this here.
Here we go…
Thank you everyone for being with me on this journey! After YEARS of constant work, the Interdimensional RED-Coded Contract is finally coming to an end!
…I lost count how many times I said that we're at the final stretch. But it's true, while writing this story the progress might've been slow, but when I look back it really was just a couple chapters left.
My feelings on the whole thing are a rollercoaster. On some days I feel nothing about it, just wanting to get this whole thing over with. On the other days I'm like an excited puppy, cheerful and with a bright smile plastered on his face.
But truth be told, I was… and am getting tired of this story. I started writing it when I was starting high school. My only writing experience back then was a shitty SYOC Danganronpa fanfic that I've long since removed from this site. If you look back at the early chapters you could still see its name.
Now I'm reaching 23 years… and I can actually consider myself a seasoned fanfic writer. Not the best one, probably not even a good one, but definitely with some experience under his belt.
The last time I've played Team Fortress 2 was in 2020. Ever since then I've lost interest. In addition, I haven't touched any of the IF games for a much longer time.
The only reason I continued to write was because I was committed. Because I had people wanting to read the next chapter. Because I didn't want my story to end up being another abandoned work.
I was tired of writing this, but I wasn't unhappy. There's some difference in that.
My editor is putting some serious work turning my burnt out mess into something readable. IF vs Hilda was a total mess before they started working on it. The chapter afterwards was an even bigger disappointment. He turned both into something great, and then wrote Nepgear vs Hilda practically all by himself.
Everyday I'm thankful he's doing this for me.
Anyway, some facts about RED-Contract:
The whole idea for this story came to me when I was driving a bus to school. I imagined a scene where mercenaries and CPUs were fighting Gray Mann's machines inside Planeptune. There was a scene where each maker character received a TF2 gun and they became something of a volunteer army, or a militia.
The chapter title P.V.M. was actually with me right from the start! But I forgot why it stuck with me for so long.
Of course the actual battle played out differently… mainly due to my tiredness and burning out. Back then I didn't really have any ideas of how this could actually play out, I just winged it. I've done it a lot when writing this story.
A lot of battles, scenes and plots were just me winging it. That made the plot very chaotic which some of you liked, but it also made some scenes a pain in the ass to actually finish.
Speaking of finishing… My very first idea for a finale was a battle with Arfoire. Just like in Canon. Then all of it changed when I asked myself one simple question: Why did the CFW even want to summon her?
I don't think Re;Birth 2 actually answered that. Not really beyond "for the evulz" anyway. In any case, that one question was quickly followed up by another, and then another… until I eventually created an entire fucking backstory, introduced several new characters and also connected all of this to Uzume Tennouboshi.
This "Why did the CFW even want to summon her?" was what sparked Hilda Gehaburn, Samantha Neikan and the whole goddamn LAN Castle arc!
Speaking of LAN Castle, at first I wanted to turn it into a spin off. A separate short story... I ultimately didn't do that because I didn't want to force the reader to read something else to learn critical information. It was purely an info dump because I wanted to get this done ASAP to get back to mercenaries and the girls.
In hindsight, not my brightest idea. But I find LAN Castle critical to the plot, and to this day I stand by it.
A lot of people told me that this sort of shift was unnecessary, and that it brought the story down… but I actually liked the new thing more. Before the LAN Castle, the plot followed the same routine of: Get into a new nation - Do some shit there - Fight a CFW - Rescue a CPU.
We had it with Blanc, and we had it with Neptune. Next time I did it, it would've been too samey and predictable for my own tastes. I wanted to keep the reader guessing where the story will go next. Hence, again, the LAN Castle and introduction of Sam.
Behind the scenes, there's some interesting stuff going around Sam. He was there in every story I wrote besides "Reddy's 5 Minutes of Power". None of them are on this site anymore, but he was in the very first story I wrote, and the 3rd one as well. In both of them he took the role of a main character.
This sort of thing is what inspired me to give Samuel that "slave of gods" backstory, with the ability to do anything I wanted of him. He had everything needed to fulfill any role I wanted of him.
At first a lot of people either didn't mind, or didn't like Samuel. Which I understood. However one funny dude even called him a "Harem protagonist", despite the fact he has about 2 people that actually like him. (CFW Magic doesn't count. She is only with him because he was her ticket to getting Uzume.)
But I saw some people's opinions turn around after Samantha's failure at the end of Leanbox's arc.
Do you guys still like Sam? Please do tell me.
The "Be careful of what you wish for" moral was actually something my editor cooked up on the spot. I initially wanted to go with "Actions have consequences" to highlight the fact how everything seems to be so interconnected, but the "be careful of what you wish for" was better suited to the reveal that the Administrator has the Uzume's Console. So we went with that.
But this story didn't start with any theme. I was just connecting an event after event because it seemed like a sensible thing to do. Sure, some things didn't work out (looking at you, Nisa), but overall this was one crazy ride. Writing this monster and reading your reaction to me killing your favorite characters was an absolute blast.
I may have lost a few readers doing this, but I found a niche I really liked: Mixing comedy with tragedy and drama.
Comedy is good on its own, but I absolutely adore when a story eventually grows darker and more tragic, especially if it contains some of my beloved characters tragically dying. Yes, I do find fanfics like that.
…This might be why I killed off a few characters.
Speaking of killing, Cave was honestly killed just to add some drama and show that Miss Pauling was not to be trifled with. I honestly did not expect some people to react as they did.
Though I do admit it I could've killed her better.
Lastly, some fun trivia about this current batch:
Remember when I said that this story wasn't really going on hiatus? WELL it kinda went into hiatus while I was writing this batch lol.
It wasn't for long, like a week or two, but writing IF vs Hilda was honestly such a drag for me that I had to take what I think was my first actual break. Until that moment I literally wrote almost everyday, 7 days a week. I didn't write much, my daily goal is about 200 words a day, but it was at least 200 words a day every day. So at least 1400 every week.
But in this batch, each chapter I wrote I had to fully rewrite at least 3 times. Every single one… Besides Unkindred Spirits, but that was due to my editor writing it.
At first the final battle was supposed to be a double battle, instead of simply having Nepgear and Hilda duel each other. The initial draft had Hilda fight the CPUs and the Mercs on the outside, while Nepgear and Falcom helped them from the inside.
However I struggled to make the battle interesting, especially right after IF and Magic versus Hilda. So I decided to throw it all away and just have Soldier snap Hilda's neck. GG ez.
We had all the drama and no humor for quite some time, so why not end it on a lighter tone?
But then MortalitasBorealis (my editor) comes up with an idea to have Nepgear fight Hilda using the Power of Friendship and mercenaries' entire arsenal. Give Hilda an actual and proper send off. That idea was just too good to throw out.
That madman actually volunteered and WROTE the whole fight. It's over 17k words! The longest chapter to date! And it was just him writing it! I just edited a few tidbits and answered a few questions. He did all of the work and it came out gloriously.
So for the final battle the two of us reversed our roles. My editor became the main writer, while I became the editor.
So I technically took two breaks. Heh.
I remember once talking about how this story will have a bad ending. I did consider it. I considered having Hilda win and kill everyone. But I didn't know how to make it good. So eventually I gave up on the whole idea.
Okay, rapid fire some last stuff before the scene change.
Favorite Battle: Sam and CFW Magic chasing after Miss Pauling. Nepgear vs Hilda. Hilda versus Planeptune Basilicom. In that order.
I really enjoyed writing Miss Pauling pull out trick after trick to escape CFW Magic. I also enjoyed having good characters (Noire) help bad characters (Miss Pauling), or fight other good characters (Samantha vs Vert). The pun of using magic against Magic was just a cherry on top.
For me, Nepgear vs Hilda was just a really great battle. An amazing send off to the last villain of the story.
Hilda versus Planeptune Basilicom meanwhile was when in my opinion the story peaked. Hilda directly attacking the home of a CPU? Fighting her way through several characters? Histoire fighting?! The only reason it loses to Sam and Nepgear fights is because of the stuff before or after the fight.
Favorite Scene: Vert stopping Sam from killing Miss Pauling. Writing Samantha's outrage gave me so much joy, and this is also where some readers changed their opinion about Samantha. Her losing her shit was painful and glorious to read.
Favorite Gag: Compa becoming basically Little Medic. Don't even try to change my mind, I find it hilarious.
Biggest Regret: The first chapter. God, I hate it. I hate the whole early section of the story. I hate it and I regret writing that everyday.
My biggest gripe with it was the sheer amount of infodumping I put in it. It puts people off and gives the story a bad first impression.
Unfortunately rewriting that was very hard, as some of that stuff was by that point very important to the story. I would need to rewrite about half of the story in order to get it "good".
Another questionable thing I did was the introduction of the enhancements. That was a young me's attempt at somehow explaining how the mercenaries were able to do everything they could. Even if there was literally zero mention of anything like that in canon.
If I introduced them later, it wouldn't be so jarring and info-dumpy. But I didn't. Because I didn't plan ahead at that time.
At least these had some story significance.
One detail no one pointed out: NEO Hyper Dimension being a different place from Hyper Dimension (Where canon Re;Birth 2 happens.)
Neo means "new"... At least that's what 5 minutes of google told me. So "NEO Hyper Dimension" becomes "NEW Hyper Dimension." That means hypothetically speaking Adult Neptune could travel there with Canon Nepgear and Neptune and meet the RED-Contract Nepgear and Neptune, and also Mercenaries and Samantha.
I actually had some ideas to include Croire into the story, at least briefly, but I decided not to. Samantha wouldn't allow her to act.
A detail I didn't expect anyone to point out: The Burning Agony and Freezing Yasha. No one actually asked anything about it, but I basically took both of these weapons from an indie game "Helen's Mysterious Castle" (The game is pretty fun, and cheap. Check it out on steam!)
These swords act just like ingame. Burning Agony increases its damage after every attack, without any cap. While attacking with Freezing Yasha lowered the enemy's Max HP. I gave them to CFW Brave simply because I struggled to give him a meaningful upgrade.
No one actually pointed it out, and I didn't expect anyone to. Those were niche weapons from a niche game.
Some of the lessons I learned while writing this story. (A.k.a, my advice if you want to write something too)
1: Plan your shit ahead, and then ask yourself later if it's a good idea.
Treat my story as a warning what will happen if you don't do that. My crossover is a gigantic shipwreck with so many twists and turns that everyone who reads this will find themselves asking "What the hell even is this story?"
That might sound like a good thing, but I will again say that I cannot stand the early chapters because of it. There was a lot of infodumping, a lot of stuff turned out to be useless filler. Some other stuff, the enhancements, straight up wouldn't be added if I just let myself think for a moment.
2: Your character should have a role in the story.
There are a few characters in this story that didn't play much of a role. Most of them came and left within a single chapter or even a scene (Like Cyberconnect2, yes she did briefly appear in one early chapter.)
But one became a recurring character that didn't really have a role. Namely Nisa.
Truth be told, the only reason why Nisa exists is so that I wouldn't have to write RED in. Because in mk2 RED's role was actually played out by Nisa.
If I included RED, then sooner or later she would end up fighting the mercs cuz "get off mai waifu!", and then she could get potentially shot. At that point in the story this would be a pretty bad thing.
Nisa was a safer option, but after months of consideration I realized it would be better to just not add any of those two. Especially when Nisa bailed literally the next chapter. (And I legitimately didn't realize that until after I uploaded the Death Merchants chapter!)
For a long time I struggled to justify Nisa's existence in this story, and in the end I failed to do that. There was that "killing is bad" message, but that one was already nailed home a long time ago. Nisa simply didn't have a place in the story.
So why did I keep adding her into the scenes?
Because I struggled to remove her too! That's how problematic she was!
3: Try to keep your cast small. At least the major cast of characters.
Count it, how many characters do we have on the "good side"?
The mercenaries are 9 characters. Add Neptune, Noire, Vert, Blanc and Uni… 14. IF, Compa, Histoire and Nepgear. 18. Samantha and Fay. 20.
Twenty. Twenty characters. As you might've guessed, I had to cut out some folk. This was the reason why the mercenaries were appearing so rarely. I had to focus more on the story-critical characters and the mercenaries became less relevant as plot went on.
The more major characters you add in the story, the harder it will be for you to keep them on screen. Side and minor characters? Add them as necessary, but try to focus on just a few major characters.
And last and most important thing.
4. Know how your story will end.
This is an extension of the first lesson, but this warrants its own section.
It doesn't really need to be an ending specifically, but it's good to have that one major scene in your mind and start your questions from there. Ask why does it happen?
For me, it would go like this:
How does the story end? The mercenaries fight Arfoire. - Why do the mercenaries fight Arfoire? Because the CFWs summoned her. - Why did the CFWs summon her? -? err…
Do this for a long enough time, and you will either have a solid outline… or you will find out that your initial plan sucked, and now you have a better option. Once you have that "major event" in your mind, it's much easier to set up the rest of your story.
If I went with Hilda Gehaburn from the get go, I could've foreshadowed Hilda and Samantha much earlier, and smoother. I could question more mercenaries' willingness to abandon the Administrator and fight for Histoire (something that Samuel wanted them to). Samuel's first appearance would look much less like I just pulled him out of my ass, and I wouldn't need to have the LAN Castle be so jarring.
While the ending wasn't 100% the way I imagined it, Hilda's plotline still ended somewhat similar to the way I intended. In fact it ended even better.
While I learned much more than that, it would take me too long to list every single lesson. If you want to know more, or simply want to ask me about something else, feel free to PM me. I actually do check those often.
WHAT'S NEXT?
A long time ago I put a poll on my profile. That poll allowed you guys to vote on the next story. I forgot if I already told you this, but Terraria x RWBY crossover won. So for the past few years I applied the lesson no.1 and 4 and I was thinking up stuff with my editor: ideas, plots, the lore of the world (I have an actual document on that one), and the backstories. Unlike RED-Contract, this one has some actual thought put into it before the first chapter was even finished.
And when I was taking a break, I've finished the first chapter of my next story, The Astral Bridges - Interdimensional Travel. While I have the first chapter fully complete, I'm not uploading it until I have more chapters finished. I've learned my lesson with the RED-Contract, and I'm not making that same mistake again.
Besides the new story, I'll also have to write the epilogues. I already have a list of what to put in there, and an idea on what the epilogue should be about, but I would still be happy if you could tell me what you want to see in them.
Unfortunately, you guys will have to wait another long break. Just like Gehaburn's Final Moments, the Epilogues will also be a batch upload. I grew to like this type of uploading.
EDITOR'S NOTE
Hello, MortalitasBorealis here, the silent editor of this story since the first chapters. It's been years, but we're finally at the end of this ride, and I figure I may as well say my piece at this point.
It was quite a different age for me when I first volunteered for this role, in a time where I had a lot more time on my hands, both to read and to write, and in the time during my commute to college or between classes, I'd look for good fics to read. It's not easy, I'm an incredibly picky sort, and when it came to Neptunia fics there were few I'd give the time of day unless they were about the 2nd game, arguably the only Neptunia game I'm even interested in, and solely due to the infamous Conquest Ending. The existence of something so grim in an otherwise extremely moe fanservice franchise fascinated me, and to be honest, the vehement fan reaction to Conquest is quite amusing to me. Of course, that meant a fic about Mk2 wasn't easy to find, much less a good one. One fic that focused on what happened after Conquest, with Nepgear desperately trying to hold a collapsing world order together as its last CPU, still holds a special place in my heart for how well they executed the ending, and cements her as my favorite character of the series.
Anyway, after pretty much exhausting the supply of decent Neptunia fics, I went into the crossover section to try my luck. Out of all forms of fanwork, a good crossover is one of my absolute favorites, and a cross between Neptunia and TF2 of all things caught my eye. I've had some good experiences with TF2 crossovers before, so hopes were high, and after reading through the first chapters of RED-Coded Contract, I thought the idea had some good potential, it just needed some work with execution, and with the fic still in its infancy and myself having too much time on my hands, I offered to help beta for the fic, and now here we are.
A lot has changed since then, especially after college life finally ended and I had to get a job. I haven't really even read another fanfic in a long time, and my own 2 stories have gone untouched for years, a mixture of work-related burnout, discovering forum-based RP as a more short-form outlet, and realizing I kind of wrote myself into a corner with over-ambitious, poorly done planning over the years. Unkindred Spirits was probably the longest single thing I've written in these last few years, in the sense that I wrote the whole original thing on my own without bouncing it between a partner. We've done several passes afterwards to bring it more in line with the previous chapters' writing, but it probably still sticks out quite a bit due to sheer stylistic difference.
The fight was originally going to be much shorter than that, ending after the first round, after Hilda uses Divine Execution and destroys the stage. Nepgear would feign falling to death with the Dead Ringer, and kill Hilda as she does now. Orange complained about it being too short for a final battle, and I was worried about the fight dragging on for too long and losing its intensity, but a stroke of inspiration later and I was glad he urged me to extend it. Characters with rapidly shifting arsenals are my favorite to choreograph for with the flexibility of it, and combined with a pocket dimension unbound by reality, I ended up having a very good time.
As an easter egg, those of you that have played Elden Ring might have recognized a few things. The blackfire explosion Hilda does in Lowee is from the Godskin Noble, her telekinesis is from the Bellbearing Hunter, and the entire recreated Gamindustri takes heavy inspiration from Crumbling Farum Azula. Less blatantly, the general tone of the chapter, and my writing in general, takes some influence from FF14. This was much more blatant in the original rendition, where Hilda was significantly more verbose, and the language of the chapter more flowery as a whole. I was also listening to Footfalls and Heroes Forge Ahead pretty much the entire time.
It was a nice capstone for my time with this story, I think. It's a ride that's had its ups and downs, there have been times when it's felt like a chore, and co-writing for a fic that's not my own results in some conflict from time to time. There was quite a bit of wrangling about OC balancing and the inclusion of memes, I recall. I think having someone to actually bounce ideas off of and keep each other's motivation up made the experience a lot more enjoyable though, and is a big reason why this story is reaching a proper ending, and why I've come to enjoy forum RP a lot more than writing on my own.
Anyway, there's not much more to say. Thank you to you for sticking with us to the end, even bothering to read these ramblings, and have a good one.
